Question About declaring day trips to US on physical presence calculator

[Amu7809]

Hi Experts,

I am eligible to apply for citizenship but not sure how to declare my trip to the US (especially day trips) which are quite a few. I pulled info from I-94 website however some of the dates are not properly aligned with the stamps I got in the passport.

Not sure how to go about in such scenario, can someone able to help and guide me with this?

Regards

 

[kelly0920]

Do you get stamps on your passport when you travel to the US? I believe, you just crossed the border since it's just day trip, so that means that your trips were land travel, correct?

I suggest, use your credit card statement to know the exact dates. Or your social media postings in case you posted your location..

I have quite a few too but didn't have any stamps.. When I had my interview, I was asked how I remembered all the dates since they don't have any stamps on my passport. I said social media, dates on my google drive (since pictures are saved there) and my CC statements which shows the dates of my purchase in the states//

Hope that this answers your question.

 

[dpenabill]

Questions about reconstructing travel history for the purpose of declaring dates the applicant exited and entered Canada, in the presence calculation, are common. There are many discussions in other topics here which go into depth about how to best reconstruct or otherwise verify one's travel history. There is NO doubt, however, that the best approach is for PRs to keep ongoing complete and accurate records of these dates (as encouraged by IRCC in its online information for new immigrants) and to report these completely and accurately.

These days there are indeed a number of resources prospective applicants can use to help reconstruct travel history. None are as reliable as a PR's own records.

Whether to apply, and when to apply, based on reconstructed travel history is a very personal decision. For most, for those who might minimally miss being totally accurate and complete, waiting to have a good margin over the minimum presence requirement should suffice. Recognizing some risks (mostly as to non-routine processing and a longer timeline).

In any event, while I have offered similar observations in the past, in other topics, given how often these sorts of queries still pop up here, I again offer some lengthy observations.


SOME LENGTHY OBSERVATIONS ABOUT RECONSTRUCTING TRAVEL HISTORY:

(So lengthy this will take two posts.)

Hi Experts,

I am eligible to apply for citizenship but not sure how to declare my trip to the US (especially day trips) which are quite a few. I pulled info from I-94 website however some of the dates are not properly aligned with the stamps I got in the passport.

Not sure how to go about in such scenario, can someone able to help and guide me with this?

Regards

How to approach this depends a lot on how confidently you are able to reconstruct your travel history, and are thus able to confidently declare ALL dates you exited from Canada in the five years prior to applying, and likewise ALL dates you entered Canada during that five year "eligibility period."

To be clear, the applicant is asked to report/declare ALL dates the PR exited from Canada in the five years prior to applying, and likewise ALL dates the PR entered Canada during that five year "eligibility period." Even if the trip was less than an hour to get cheap gas on the U.S. side of the border (which used to be rather common before the border crossing times blew up). The burden is on the applicant to do this.

Reliance on other sources, including government sources, is NOT a reasonable excuse for failing to completely and accurately report ALL dates the PR exited and entered Canada. (Will expand on this observation below.)


THUS, IF . . .

IF . . . if you can CONFIDENTLY reconstruct your travel history so that there are MINIMAL omissions or inaccuracies, using your memory and other resources (including those referenced by @kelly0920 BUT also including the CBSA travel history), you can do that and add an explanation that some "day trips" may be overlooked, or something to that effect (being truthful of course). And then be sure to have a bigger margin over the minimum than many might otherwise have when they apply. And this should be OK . . . or at least not a significant let alone serious problem.


OTHERWISE . . . IF you are NOT able to CONFIDENTLY reconstruct your travel history, and thus unable to be sure there are NO more than minimal omissions and very few inaccuracies, how to best approach this going forward is a more difficult question, subject to the particular circumstances of your situation, and is very much a PERSONAL DECISION for you to make. To be clear, if you are NOT confident you can completely and accurately report all dates of exit and entry, within a close margin, the prudent approach will be to WAIT to apply when you can confidently report travel for a long enough period of time to fully cover meeting the minimum presence requirement during that period of time and include, within that period of time, a significant margin over the minimum.

What constitutes sufficient confidence is for YOU to decide. And there can be competing priorities which influence what decision is best for you.

For example, some prospective applicants are willing to proceed notwithstanding a risk of non-routine process resulting in the process taking considerably longer.

These days the CBSA travel history can be a very helpful resource since it should include, at the least, NEARLY all dates of entry into Canada. The CBSA history is almost always accurate BUT can still have some omissions (distinguishing between completeness and accuracy). Even though the application form and instructions urge applicants to NOT request their CBSA travel history, PRs are entitled to a copy of their CBSA travel history. Any prospective applicant who is uncertain as to the COMPLETENESS AND ACCURACY of their travel history would be prudent to request and use this source to aid in reconstructing their travel history for the presence calculation.

Thus, with the CBSA travel history and CAREFULLY and DILIGENTLY reviewing all other sources of information the prospective applicant can access, with all that almost all prospective applicants should be able to reasonably reconstruct their travel history to warrant making an application, so long as they do so WITH A LARGER THAN TYPICAL MARGIN OVER THE MINIMUM. (How much of a margin is a very personal decision, best made with due consideration given to all the relevant factors, including to what extent it might APPEAR the applicant has significant ongoing work or residential ties outside Canada.)


ULTIMATELY THERE ARE TWO RISKS AT STAKE:

RISK of FALLING SHORT: The most important risk is that IRCC is not persuaded the applicant has sufficiently met the burden of proving actual presence to qualify for citizenship. This would result in the application being denied. This risk can be largely minimized, and perhaps virtually eliminated, by waiting to apply with a good margin over the minimum presence requirement AND minimizing the extent to which the declared travel history has omissions or inaccuracies.


RISK of NON-ROUTINE PROCESSING and DELAYS: This is the more probable risk if an applicant makes an application which has omissions or inaccuracies in the presence calculation travel history. Basically the more accurately and completely the applicant declares trips outside Canada, the lower the risk that IRCC will make presence-case related requests for additional information or documents, the lower the risk there will be non-routine processing and delays. A larger margin can significantly lower this risk . . . but will not necessarily eliminate the risk if there are significant omissions or errors in the travel history.

 

[dpenabill]

SOME LENGTHY OBSERVATIONS ABOUT RECONSTRUCTING TRAVEL HISTORY PART II --
IN-DEPTH OBSERVATIONS ABOUT OBLIGATION TO ACCURATELY and COMPLETELY REPORT TRIPS OUTSIDE CANADA:

As noted above, again to be clear, the applicant has the burden of accurately and completely declaring ALL dates the PR exited and entered Canada during that five year "eligibility period." Reliance on other sources, including government sources, is NOT a reasonable excuse for failing to completely and accurately report ALL dates the PR exited and entered Canada. It is, quite simply, the PR's obligation to sufficiently keep records in order to do this.

Also to be clear, that should NOT be particularly difficult for any PR who kept records of all trips outside Canada, which of course the prudent PR does. Note that for years now IRCC has provided a template for printing a form in which PRs can record their trips outside Canada, with additional information such as the reason for the trip, in order to encourage PRs to keep such a record.

The need to keep such records was obvious when I landed more than a decade ago. At that time, and when I applied for citizenship, reporting day trips was not required. But reporting day trips has been required since at least June 2015. Moreover, long before that it was apparent (based on both anecdotal reports in forums like this, and in some official Federal Court decisions) that day trip information could be important . . . CIC officials (before name change to IRCC) sometimes reacted to a CBSA reported date of entry, which was not declared by the applicant, as if it was an omission, requiring some applicants to verify that was a return to Canada the same day as the exit, a "day trip."

In any event, the importance of keeping a personal travel history has been obvious for a long time, and for many years it has been emphasized in IRCC information for new immigrants.

The point of stating and emphasizing the above is NOT to criticize those who have failed to keep such records and who, upon preparing to apply for citizenship, find themselves in the difficult situation of having to reconstruct their travel history or, depending on all the circumstances, deciding to wait longer to apply. What is done is done, and the real question is what to do going forward.

For the majority of prospective applicants the number of trips outside Canada add up to little more than a few dozen, or less, over the entire eligibility period. And for most of these prospective applicants, reconstructing the travel history can indeed be reasonably accomplished by memory and reviewing other sources including personal records (even personal emails can help) as well as business (ranging from credit card records to telephone records) and government resources. While the U.S. records can be very helpful, more than a few have reported problems with them, albeit the most commonly reported issue is that they can be incomplete. As previously noted, the CBSA travel history is currently one of the best other-sources for reconstructing dates of entry into Canada.

NONETHELESS, the individual applicant is responsible for completely and accurately reporting ALL dates of exit and dates of entry, REGARDLESS what any other sources show or fail to show. IRCC still relies on the applicant's declaration of travel history to evaluate whether the presence requirement is met. What IRCC essentially does is review all the information, including information in other sources (such as the individual's CBSA travel history) TO DETERMINE IF THE APPLICANT'S ACCOUNT IS SUFFICIENTLY CREDIBLE (which includes completeness and accuracy) to meet the applicant's burden of proving presence. To the extent IRCC identifies or suspects omissions or inaccuracies, IRCC can and typically will assess the applicant's travel history, and if deemed necessary the applicant's responses to requests for supporting evidence of presence, to ascertain if the applicant has met the burden of proving presence NOTWITHSTANDING the omissions and inaccuracies.

To better illustrate this, it helps to recognize that if and when IRCC discovers indications the applicant may have been IN Canada during a period of time the applicant's travel history reports being outside Canada, THAT HURTS the applicant's case. IT shows the applicant is NOT an accurate reporter of facts. It undermines the applicant's credibility generally and compromises the reliability of the applicant's declared travel history. Make no mistake, there are actual cases reviewed by the Federal Court in which the FC affirmed that evidence of presence in Canada in addition to that reported by the applicant can be used AGAINST the applicant and support a finding that the applicant has failed to meet the burden of proving presence.

Much of this is rooted in something I have stated many times: the PR is the ONE and ONLY person in the whole world who was FOR-SURE present each and every time the PR exited Canada, each and every time the PR entered Canada. A PR is the single BEST source of information about travel history dates. So as long as IRCC perceives it can rely on the PR's credibility, so long as IRCC perceives it can rely on the PR to be an accurate reporter of the facts, the PR's presence calculation rules. If IRCC discovers or suspects the PR cannot be relied upon to be an entirely accurate reporter, that means the very best and most reliable source of this information is NOT reliable . . . and since the burden of proof is on the PR, that will tend to make things more difficult. How difficult will depend on the extent to which the applicant's accounting is suspect.