@dpenabill, i'm currently residing in the USA and meet RO until June 2025 (move to US in July 2022 after being in Canada continuously since 2018 Jan as PR). I have a Citizenship application in progress as well and expect it to complete in a few months.
My PR card is expiring in Feb 2023, and I want to renew it to be able to visit Canada for my citizenship process.
Would I be able to apply for PR renewal, after travelling temporarily to Canada, to apply? The renewal application does ask for a Canadian residence address - which I can use a hotel address and have it mailed to a friend in Canada. I've also updated CIC my US address as part of the Citizenship application process.
Thanks in advance.
I am NO expert. But even more importantly, I am NOT qualified or competent to offer personal advice, and this is as much about practical reasons as it is formalities.
How this will go I cannot say. There are uncertain contingencies. The particular details in your situation, including history as much as currently, can have a lot of influence.
It appears you largely know the score, so you should be able to figure out what that means and how it relates to your situation, sufficient to exercise your own judgment and make personal decisions, balancing your own needs, preferences, priorities, and risk-assessment.
It is obvious, for example, that IRCC's changes to the forms this year (among other indicators) signals an increase in the importance of distinguishing between PRs getting a PR card versus a PR Travel Document based on whether the PR is present in Canada or is located outside Canada. Temporarily being located in Canada means a PR can truthfully check the box, in the application, that says "
I am in Canada," enabling them to proceed with making the PR card application. How it then goes, however, considering what IRCC can and will discern from address and work history, and information about travel history obtained through CBSA, remains to be seen, given how recent the changes have been, too recent to see how this might effect PRs taking the approach you are contemplating.
Obviously, if you have a citizenship application pending, officials handling the respective applications will likely compare and contrast the two applications, including respective address and work history. While historically it was clear that relocating abroad after applying for citizenship often triggered elevated scrutiny, and sometimes an outright more skeptical screening of the applicant, in recent years it has become less than clear what impact living outside Canada after applying might have; for many, no problem, but the jury is still out on whether being abroad after applying still increases certain risks like it has in the past.
Some further observations re residential address:
IRCC does not ask PRs for addresses they can "
use." They ask, for example, for the PR's "
current residential address in Canada." If you have established actual residence in a hotel, and can honestly declare that is where you are residing in Canada (not just a temporary place of abode, a location where you are temporarily staying or boarding), that's not about it being an address you can "
use" but is about it truthfully being your residential address. And of course section 8 in the application requires the PR to certify that this information is "
correct, complete and accurate," and acknowledge they understand the serious consequences for any false statement or concealment of a material fact. Sure, many, a great many PRs, play around in declaring addresses, and for many this does not lead to problems. There are risks in doing this however.
The current PR card application form does not appear to require the PR to verify they will notify IRCC if there is a change in the information provided, so for example if the PR changes residential address after applying and does not notify IRCC of the change, this might be interpreted to mean IRCC could not determine there is a misrepresentation by omission in failing to notify IRCC of a change in address. This is different from the citizenship application form, which does require the applicant to verify they will notify IRCC of changes, so on its face requires an applicant to notify IRCC if their residential address changes after making the citizenship application. Here too it appears many more or less conceal or hide a change in address from IRCC without that causing a problem, but here too this entails some risks, even if only as to the impact on the applicant's credibility.
