October 11th 2017 - Citizenship Applicants under 3/5 rule
- Thread starter HamiltonApplicant
- Start date
I was going to ask the same question
To the OP... Don't fret over meaningless (to you) details on the ATIP/GCMS notes. My guess is Prohibitions refers to the list of all Prohibitions that could disqualify you. So it's probably not a single agency doing the check but your case officer updating it on the basis of other reports. Then again it's just me trying to guess at the meaning.
Hello All,
I did my test on Friday in Montreal and got 19/20.
I have lived in Canada since 2010 as a student and since 2014 as an immigrant, overall I filled 1450 eligible days. I was working full time from 2014 to 2018 as an engineer and I have filed all my taxes.
I also have a green card since 2016 and before I apply for the citizenship I travelled to the US for 10-15 times and each time less than 2-3 days.
At the interview the officer kept asking me a lot of questions about my green card and he also asked why I still kept my green card. I explained my boyfriend lives there and I had to keep it to be able to visit him. Then he found a arrival stamp on 5 September 2016 in my passport and he said I could not find it in my travel history. He was right, when I got home I realized instead of 2016/09/05 I wrote 2016/10/05! I became student again currently and he was surprised that I am getting my second master's degree.
When I asked him what is the next step he told me he could not decide now! and I must wait to see if they need any further documents. Plus he asked me to wait and he copied my green card (I had already declared my green card on my initial application, so there was nothing new).
I am a bit worried since he said he does not know! Do you have any similar experience among you or your friends?
Thanks much,
I did my test on Friday in Montreal and got 19/20.
I have lived in Canada since 2010 as a student and since 2014 as an immigrant, overall I filled 1450 eligible days. I was working full time from 2014 to 2018 as an engineer and I have filed all my taxes.
I also have a green card since 2016 and before I apply for the citizenship I travelled to the US for 10-15 times and each time less than 2-3 days.
At the interview the officer kept asking me a lot of questions about my green card and he also asked why I still kept my green card. I explained my boyfriend lives there and I had to keep it to be able to visit him. Then he found a arrival stamp on 5 September 2016 in my passport and he said I could not find it in my travel history. He was right, when I got home I realized instead of 2016/09/05 I wrote 2016/10/05! I became student again currently and he was surprised that I am getting my second master's degree.
When I asked him what is the next step he told me he could not decide now! and I must wait to see if they need any further documents. Plus he asked me to wait and he copied my green card (I had already declared my green card on my initial application, so there was nothing new).
I am a bit worried since he said he does not know! Do you have any similar experience among you or your friends?
Thanks much,
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First line screening for prohibitions is, obviously, the responsibility of the applicant.
Applicants are required to disclose not just any prohibition, but the existence of a range of situations which could possibly constitute a prohibition.
This is important to recognize because unlike much of the information an applicant provides in the course of applying for citizenship, prohibitions tend to not only be essentially cut&dry, not subject to any believable "but I did not understand . . . " or "I overlooked . . . " excuses for failing to disclose the relevant situation, prohibitions are almost always matters of official public record available for a very long time (often for one's lifetime) and thus easily discovered and easily proved.
If the applicant fails to disclose a prohibition while an application is pending and that is caught by IRCC prior to the oath (which it is likely to be but not necessarily), that is a stand alone ground for denying the application (even if the matter giving rise to the prohibition is resolved in the meantime) and imposing a FIVE YEAR ban from being eligible for citizenship. (Some possibility of jail time lurking as well.)
If the applicant fails to disclose a prohibition and IRCC fails to discover it before the applicant takes the oath, the grant of citizenship is VOID. Odds are rather substantial that sooner or later the matter will come to IRCC's attention. While other types of fraud are probably more common, this in contrast is the single most likely to be discovered and result in proceedings to revoke citizenship. Best case scenario is a TEN year ban on eligibility for citizenship. Criminal prosecution is a real possibility.
There is a reason why the failure to identify and disclose a prohibition is the most likely discovered and prosecuted misrepresentation by omission . . . again, there is very little chance of credible denial. It is one thing to apologize and say "oh, I overlooked those two or three trips" for an applicant who fails to disclose all absences, or say "because I was working in different places, I thought it was OK to say my address was still at XYZZ St. in D'oldetown" even though the applicant was not actually living at that address.
Not so easy to claim you did not remember getting arrested. Or reported at a PoE. That's a hard and very unlikely sell. And there is an official record to document it.
Most applicants must affirmatively certify IN WRITING there are no prohibitions THREE times in the course of citizenship application processing, and at least in one of those also do so verbally: in the application; concurrent with the interview event (during which the applicant is almost always also asked to verbally verify there are no situations potentially constituting a prohibition); and prior to taking the oath. Moreover, the required disclosures are broader than the prohibitions themselves, so that if there is any situation for which it is possible a prohibition applies, even if that is not certain, the applicant is required to disclose it so that IRCC can properly address and assess the situation.
Thus, IRCC is thereby giving applicants every possible opportunity to NOT miss the need to disclose any situation which could possibly be a prohibition. A very comprehensive approach. The burden is clearly on the applicant to be absolutely certain there is no applicable prohibition.
Beyond that, there are numerous ways in which IRCC will discover a prohibition if the applicant nonetheless fails to properly disclose a relevant situation. All three (RCMP, CSIS, and GCMS) of the background clearances are structured to identify potential prohibitions. The GCMS screening in particular is supposed to be done on every application on the occasion of any and every action taken . . . thus there is a full GCMS screening attendant the initial completeness check and referral of application to a local office; another attendant preparation and administration of the interview and test; another attendant making a decision to grant citizenship; and another prior to the actual administration of the oath. Some of these may be consolidated, such as where these events happen at effectively the same time or close together. But at a minimum there are probably at least THREE GCMS screenings done.
What the GCMS screening consists of is not public information. But it is easy to apprehend that this GCMS screening is not merely a review of the citizenship application file but the client's entire GCMS record. And at the least we know that it should trigger a hit for any arrests in Canada or the U.S. (as FOSS, which is encompassed by GCMS, should capture any RCMP or NCIC/FBI name-record hits), a hit for any flags or alerts in FOSS from a PoE examination or overseas office examination (such as pursuant to a PR TD application), a hit for any negative CBSA or IRCC action regarding status (referral of applicant for refugee-status cessation, for example, or flag for PR RO concerns attendant an internal IRCC processing of a sponsored family PR application, among various transactions which might evoke action). And so on.
It is also possible (and at least for some applicants, probable) that the processing agent and/or citizenship officer assessing the particular applicant will make further inquiries, the scope of which we can hardly guess . . . including research into Internet open source information, ranging from Canada411 to various kinds of social media . . . which might trigger attention for an applicant who has failed to disclose a possible prohibition.
BOTTOM-LINE: The applicant is the one who needs to pay particular attention to identify and disclosing any situation which could possibly constitute a prohibition. This is not like estimating travel or address or work history. This is get-it-right-or-not at your peril.
My test in 3 days from now in calgary
How was ur interview
Did they had any remark on u
Received mail to write test on May 15 (Mississauga visa office). The letter is dated April 19.Did you get email yet?
No email is received, but received letter in mail today.
Depends on the office...some send an email and others just a mail.
ECAS will be updated.