Received eCOPR While Outside Canada

[provoc]

Hi everyone,

My wife and I are preparing to apply for Canadian citizenship, but we have a concern about our PR process and would appreciate any advice.

• We were in Canada when we received the IRCC PR Confirmation Portal email in October 2022 and confirmed our presence in the country.
• We had to leave Canada on December 8, 2022, and informed IRCC PR Confirmation Portal email on November 9, 2022, asking about the correct procedure, as our PR application was still in process. We didn’t receive a response.
• While outside Canada, we received our eCOPR on January 5, 2023. We immediately emailed the PR Confirmation Portal email to notify them of our absence and to ask how to proceed but did not receive a reply.
• We returned to Canada on January 10, 2023 through Pearson Intl. Airport and entered Canada using our TRVs. We approached a CBSA officer at Toronto Pearson who verified our PR status and stamped our passports with the “First PR Stamp.”
• On January 11, 2023, we followed up with PR Confirmation Portal email, explaining our re-entry and including images of the PR stamp, but again, we received no response.

We are now submitting our citizenship application and the portal doesn't let us enter the date we came permanent residents because it lies during the period when we were not in Canada. One way to bypass the portal limitation is by entering the dates of absence from Canada as - Dec 8, 2022 to Jan 5, 2023 and Jan 5, 2023 to Jan 10, 2023.

We have tried calling IRCC, but the agents have only said that the date we came PR must match what is in their system.

Does anyone have any advice for our case, how we should proceed with our citizenship application? Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[armoured]

Does anyone have any advice for our case, how we should proceed with our citizenship application? Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Note that the date you became a PR - acc to the system - is January 5, NOT December 8.

I can only guess that the way to proceed would be either to enter January 10, OR enter January 5 and then book a 'trip away' from Jan 5 to 10. Putting January 10 makes more sense to me. Either way, include a letter of explanation if you can (possibly with copies or reference to the correspondence you had with IRCC - you certainly tried).

I'd also suggest: do not submit application until you have several days over, i.e. so that any dispute in dates takes you WELL PAST Jan 10.

You should expect that the risk this will get delayed is relatively high.

Side note, which may be particularly important in your case: judging by fact that Jan 2023 to 2025 is considerably less than three years, you're obviously using days you were in Canada on other status (i.e. for the 1/2 day per day 'credit' towards physical presence). It seems that it is quite common here for days prior-to-PR resulting in delays, and sometimes very substantial ones if there is any doubt about status in the IRCC systems.

And "any doubt" should be read as meaning any ambiguity that IRCC perceives, even if you know what status you had - for example, those who applied for extensions and didn't get a response until some months after (IRCC may only 'see' that one status expired and the next was renewed some months later).

In other words: waiting until you are no longer using days prior-to-PR, or at least fewer of them, might mean much less processing time for your citizenship status.

That's not advice, I'm not telling you what to do, make your own choice, and I'd understand not wanting to wait until next January (or so). Just putting the info out there, esp since you already have this ecopr-while-abroad issue. (Which is a real hassle and so far haven't seen any consistent treatment or even acknowledgement by IRCC that this is an issue and how to deal with it).