How do they imagine proving which country you've been within the Schengen area? There are no borders, no proof whatsoever, I have mostly stayed with various family members and moved around by car, there are no train or plane tickets, hotels, absolutely nothing beyond landing in a country and flying out of another and that's it.
Police certificate requirement is madness
- Thread starter chx
- Start date
The applicant has an obligation to declare countries traveled to or resided in during the relevant period of time. Long before the new requirements were even proposed, the instructions for the residency calculation said to identify additional countries traveled in, using the reason-for-travel-box. Providing this information is the applicant's responsibility.chx said:
The applicant was there, so there is no basis for pleading the information is unknown, let alone unknowable.
All that information is well within the control of the applicant, so it does not matter to what extent CIC or Canada can prove where the applicant was, the applicant is required to disclose this information. And to disclose presence in any country for more than six months within the previous four years. If yes, if the applicant spent a total of six months or more in any given country, then the applicant is required to provide a police certificate for each such country.
I suppose one could easily not recall a stay in, say, a certain part of Amsterdam, like I have at best a foggy recall of where I was during the 60s (even the early 70s), but generally people know if they spent six months or more in a given country during the previous four years.
And, after all, practically speaking it is not possible to have spent a total of six months in more than, say, two or at the most three other countries and still meet the requirements for physical presence in Canada. Well within the range of even someone with a rather poor recall.
More obviously, if you are interested in being a candidate for citizenship, would you not do extensive record keeping in the period leading up to that application, in anticipation of this requirement?
The obligation is for the applicant to disclose which countries, if any, the applicant has spent a total of six months in during the previous four years.chx said:
In particular, the application states (in item 8. K):
In the past four (4) years, were you present in any country, other than Canada, for at least six (6) months (cumulative)?
If have checked "YES", provide police certificates for each country.
There is nothing confusing about this, let alone anything constituting "madness." The item is straight-forward. The applicant does not need to prove he or she was present in the country at least six months. The applicant only needs something official if the applicant has been in a given country six months, and the only thing official needed in that case is the police certificate to submit with the application. Obviously it is the burden of the applicant to truthfully disclose whether he or she has been in another country six months or more, and the burden of the applicant to obtain and submit the appropriate police certificate.
This only indirectly relates to the requirements for citizenship. The requirement is that the applicant not be subject to any of the prescribed prohibitions. The prescribed prohibitions now cover offences outside Canada (see items 8. B and 8. D in the application). As with all the requirements, it is the applicant's burden to prove he or she is NOT subject to any of the prohibitions.
CIC is not asking for a police certificate from every country in the world in order for applicants to meet their burden of proving they do not have criminal offence convictions in those countries. That would indeed be madness.
CIC is not even asking for a police certificate from every country the applicant has been in during the previous four years. That would not be madness but it would pose an unreasonably excessive burden.
CIC is, however, asking applicants to submit up front, with the application a police certificate from any country in which, during the previous four years, the applicant has spent a total of six months.
Frankly, to me and probably many others, this still seems like an excessive burden in the absence of any reason to suspect the applicant has been involved in criminal activity. Which is to say, if I was making policy, this would not be required. But this is the current requirement as crafted by the previous, Conservative government.
We can disagree with the government about whether this should be required, but frankly it is not likely to be judged to be an unreasonable requirement beyond the scope of what can be required.
At some point in the not too distant future, I suspect that Minister McCallum will have staff reviewing the application form and deciding what to change, and this is one item which might very well be dropped from the application (after all, items 8. B and 8. D in the application already require the applicant to disclose any criminal offences or sentences abroad).
That noted, given the inclusion of foreign offences in the prescribed prohibitions, and the applicant's burden of proof, even if police certificates are not required with the application itself, obviously CIC will be able to request additional information and documentation in individual cases, and thus CIC could request any particular applicant to provide a police certificate from any country the applicant has traveled to, even if for significantly less time than a total of six months.
CIC probably does not verify whether an applicant has spent six months or more in any given country. Remember, this is not about a requirement for citizenship. This is about information CIC considers relevant in determining whether the applicant meets the requirements, and in particular about information relevant to whether or not the applicant has any prohibition due to offences abroad.chx said:
No one needs to prove anything relative to whether or not an applicant spent six months or more in a country.
The real information CIC wants is whether or not the applicant has any foreign charges or convictions.
If CIC (I guess we should soon start referring to it as "IRC" given the name change, maybe it will be "CIRC") perceives a reason to request a police certificate, it will request a police certificate.
These days there are a number of sources of information through which CIC has very good odds of identifying if there are absences the applicant failed to disclose. Deliberately failing to disclose absences is simply not smart . . . well, actually, it would be down right stupid actually.
In the meantime, if the total time you are abroad during the previous four years exceeds six months, and you do not check yes to having been in a country for six months or more, my guess is that CIC takes a closer look at your travel declarations, probably a much closer look, and will of course also examine your passport stamps more extensively. At the least. After all, the applicant who has been abroad a total of six months plus some is fairly likely to have spent six months in one country or another, or at the least has spent enough time abroad for CIC (IRC) to bother taking a closer look, including, potentially, requesting police certificates.
If CIC (IRC) perceives reason to look more closely, how extensive or probing CIC makes inquiries will vary depending on what it perceives. Response may vary from merely some questions at the interview to a request for fingerprints, or perhaps a request that the applicant submit a police certificate from any country CIC perceives the applicant may have spent a significant amount of time.
If CIC suspects misrepresentation, not merely an oversight or an otherwise innocent discrepancy, that is likely to trigger far more probing inquiries if not an outright investigation. How serious this would get would, of course, depend on all the attendant circumstances, and the applicant's response to further inquiries.
Again, as I noted in my previous post, CIC can require the applicant to provide a police certificate from virtually any country. So it is not as if CIC needs to accuse the applicant, let alone support a claim, let alone prove the applicant was in fact in a country six months or more . . . all CIC has to do is specifically request a police certificate from any country that CIC believes the applicant spent any time at all in. Even if you spent two days in a country, CIC could still request a police certificate (not likely a brief stay would trigger a request for a police certificate, but the point is that no minimum time is necessary for CIC to make the request).
To be clear, a reminder that the obligation is to truthfully disclose the information requested in the application is NOT cute, but actually is simply the best approach, the approach which is likely to work better than so much as fudging information let alone making any outright misrepresentations. Lying in the application to avoid submitting a police certificate would be incredibly stupid . . . except for someone looking, perhaps, for accommodations provided in a public institution, all expenses paid, steel bars included, potentially to be followed by loss of PR status due to serious criminality. The impact of misrepresentation ranges from merely compromising the applicant's credibility, to being grounds to deny citizenship, to potential criminal prosecution. While the reality is that the most commonly seen impact is compromised credibility, leading to a conclusion that the applicant has failed to prove qualification for citizenship, and thus denied, there are also some cases in which there has been a criminal prosecution and jail time imposed. Real behind bars time. Risking that in order to avoid submitting a police certificate is just plain stupid.
If the reason for wanting to avoid submitting a police certificate is that there is a foreign offence, a driving while impaired or domestic violence offence say, the only intelligent thing to do is to not apply for citizenship until that is at least four years in the past (unless this prohibition is removed by amending the Citizenship Act). Again, CIC can dig into foreign records anyway, and any applicant who has spent six months total abroad, or more, is naturally at an elevated risk for CIC to make inquiries of this sort, even if the time spent in any one country did not approach six months.
Best case scenario for slipping it past CIC: applicant is approved for citizenship, and then spends the rest of his life worrying whether a disgruntled lover, partner, business associate, or family member knows enough about the foreign offence to make a credible tip to CBSA or CIC . . . then CBSA and CIC and the RCMP will do the rest, recognizing that such records will usually be easy to dig up for a long time. Many, many minor misrepresentations would not trigger a post-oath investigation let alone the government proceeding to revoke citizenship, but the failure to disclose a foreign offence constituting a prohibition is probably among the types of misrepresentation which could lead to revocation of citizenship, this hanging over the person's head for the rest of the person's life.
Otherwise, if the reason for not revealing six months spent in a country is about wanting to avoid submitting a police certificate simply to avoid the inconvenience of submitting a police certificate, no advanced degree in mathematics is necessary to see that arithmetic does not add up.
Interesting topic.....
Let's say someone spent more than 6 months working in Tanzania and there is no option to order a police clearance certificate from that country online and he doesn't work for that company anymore.
So what that person should do now? Apply for a visa and buy airplane ticket on his own expense to get there??
that sounds very ridiculous to me....
Maybe cover letter explaining the situation should help to sort that issue out.
Let's say someone spent more than 6 months working in Tanzania and there is no option to order a police clearance certificate from that country online and he doesn't work for that company anymore.
So what that person should do now? Apply for a visa and buy airplane ticket on his own expense to get there??
that sounds very ridiculous to me....
Maybe cover letter explaining the situation should help to sort that issue out.
The embassy of Tanzania should be able to help in this case.HighFive said:Interesting topic.....
Let's say someone spent more than 6 months working in Tanzania and there is no option to order a police clearance certificate from that country online and he doesn't work for that company anymore.
So what that person should do now? Apply for a visa and buy airplane ticket on his own expense to get there??
that sounds very ridiculous to me....
Maybe cover letter explaining the situation should help to sort that issue out.