I have an Indian passport. I moved to Canada from the USA and has recently completed my 1095 days of stay in Canada. There were some vacations in India and USA, around 70 days overall. I applied for Canadian PR from the USA itself.
My questions are:
1.
Is my country of origin USA in this case? I checked CoPR and it says Country of Residence(COR) as USA.
2.
Do I need FBI clearance from the USA? I read the below and if my country of origin is USA then likely I wont need the FBI clearance. Please advise.
Source https://eservices.cic.gc.ca/rescalc/resCalcStartNew.do?lang=en
During the four (4) years immediately before the date of your application, if you spent 183 days or more in a row (since the age of 18) in a country (other than Canada), you must provide a police certificate from each country. If you were in your country of origin immediately prior to becoming a permanent resident and landing in Canada and this time falls within this four year period, you are NOT required to provide a police certificate. Please indicate this in the explanation box of the application form.
Overall:
It is not entirely clear, but it appears the U.S. is your country of origin based on that being the last country in which you resided before immigrating to Canada. So, the country of origin exemption for including a PCC could apply to you if you were in the U.S. for 183 days in a row during the four year period preceding the date you apply for citizenship, and that time was prior to when you landed and became a Canadian PR.
My understanding, however, is that you will still need to include a U.S. FBI clearance with the application since you have returned to the U.S. after you became a PR.
BUT not everyone agrees with this. Some interpret the country of origin exemption, which you quote from information in the physical presence calculator, to mean no PCC is needed for the country of origin if the 183 day period of time there was before landing and becoming a PR, EVEN if the PR returned to that country after landing.
My understanding is that
Example 1, in the examples posted above by
@abbas.pasha, illustrates how the country of origin exemption applies. In particular, as illustrated by Example 1, the exemption applies applies if:
-- the 183 days in a row in the other country (here that is the U.S.) were BEFORE the applicant became a PR, and
-- the applicant did not return to that country AFTER becoming a PR, and
-- the applicant had provided a PCC for that country during the process of becoming a Canadian PR
As noted, not everyone agrees with this. Some believe it does not matter, for example, if the applicant returned to the country of origin after landing.
NOTE: if the applicant asserts the exemption in response to Question 10.b. in the application (referring to the country of origin as the explanation for not including a PCC, in the Question 10.b. chart), that will likely suffice to make a complete application (get through the completeness screening). Nonetheless, IRCC can ask for a PCC later in the process (IRCC can also ask for a PCC later in the process from an applicant who was not in another country for 183 days in a row). Hard to forecast what IRCC will do for any particular applicant.
Explanation:
For determining if a PCC needs to be included with the application, start with and focus on Question 10.b. in the citizenship application form, and the instructions for that question in the Guide for making a citizenship application. See Step 4 instructions for Question 10.b. in particular.
See
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/application/application-forms-guides/guide-0002-application-canadian-citizenship-under-subsection-5-1-adults-18-years-older.html#Step4 and scroll down to the instructions for Question 10.
Those instructions include the five examples that
@abbas.pasha quotes above. However, four of the five examples (examples 2 through 5) are about how to answer 10.b. itself, about determining whether the described scenarios are situations in which the applicant was in another country for 183 days in a row. Generally the applicant must include a PCC with the application if they check [Yes] for 10.b., yes meaning they were in another country for 183 days in a row.
Only Example 1 is about the country of origin exemption, but not everyone agrees that Example 1 actually is about the country of origin exemption. There is a current conversation precisely about this here:
https://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/threads/citizenship-police-certificate-clearance-requirement.848487/
