Risk of naturalized citizenship revocation for misrepresentation (and there are no other grounds) is low, and is very, very low absent a rather blatant, readily documented misrepresentation of significance. Technically any material misrepresentation is sufficient grounds, but practically there must be some more or less outright fraud.If a refugee travels back home with a Canadian passport, can't IRCC and CBSA still be able to file a misrepresentation allegation and revoke your status?
If they say that your return meant that your RPD claim was fraudulent, then this could possibly be used against the refugees. For many, the passage of time is important - I.e., genuine refugee claim, but risk has been reduced or changed over time.
Some times I think even citizenship status is not safe for refugees, let alone PR and other statuses. If they can't get you on cessation clause for citizenship, they can throw a misrepresentation allegation and can still revoke your status.
Do you think there is some sort of protection in Citizenship Act against this kind of situation?
So overall this is not something refugees should fear is hanging over their head . . . well, unless they did indeed engage in overt fraud. Which, it appears, more than a few have. And even then the risk of revocation proceedings is rather low.
Note Regarding Travel to Home Country After Becoming a Citizen:
Once a former refugee obtains citizenship in Canada, and is carrying a Canadian passport, the government of Canada provides that individual the same degree of protection it does any other citizen. While, for example, it would be rather foolish for Canadian tourists to flaunt homosexuality in a country that prosecutes and severely punishes homosexuals, it makes a huge difference if a person is a tourist or visiting on business, and traveling under the protection of the Canadian government, traveling with a Canadian passport, versus being a local person with no protection from any other government.
Which is to say, travel to an individual's home country with a Canadian passport tends to be safer, if not a lot safer. The world can still be a rather dangerous place, so of course anyone and everyone should approach travel to this or that particular country aware of the particular dangers potentially lurking there, but for many former refugees just carrying a Canadian passport is often enough to make it safe enough to visit their home country (although not always, so much caution should be exercised).
Some Longer Observations:
The risk of a proceeding to revoke citizenship based on the individual making misrepresentations in the process of obtaining protected person and PR status is probably the same whether the former refugee, now citizen, travels to the home country or not. After all, the substantive basis for revocation is the misrepresentation of material fact, and thus unless the naturalized citizen made misrepresentations in the process, there are no grounds for revocation. Thus, a naturalized citizen who made no material misrepresentations of fact will never have to worry about losing Canadian citizenship (well, technically this is under current law; there was a short period of time in which the law allowed the government to revoke citizenship on grounds that included engaging in certain criminal acts, which applied to persons born in Canada as well as naturalized citizens, but there is little or no hint Canada will move back in that direction anytime soon, and even then the actions invoking revocation were, at the least, extreme).
Sure, later behavior can trigger suspicion. Potentially leading to an investigation, which in turn can lead to revocation proceedings IF the government finds persuasive evidence there was fraud, some material misrepresentation made in the process. BUT it would require a lot, lot more than a trip to the home country to show there was misrepresentation in the refugee claim.
The threshold for establishing misrepresentation that will support revocation of citizenship is almost always very high.
While there are exceptions, they are rare.
Much publicized when it happens, the exceptions tend to be in regards to either high profile individuals or high profile subjects -- the latter illustrated, for example, by the Helmut Oberlander case, as he was just a Ukrainian born teenager when drafted by the occupying German army and served as an interpreter, late in WW II, and he merely left out details in his applications that, frankly, are rather commonly left out (I confess, I did not disclose each and every posting I had in the military when I applied for PR status, and I have no worries at all this could come round to be a problem) . . . but he was, apparently, an interpreter for a year or so for a notorious kill squad. He was very low profile, himself. And his misrepresentation, by omission, was failing to specifically disclose the posting to that unit. He has never been accused of participating in a war crime. It was not until a full half century after the war ended, a quarter century ago now, that proceedings were initiated to revoke his citizenship. It was the notoriety of that kill unit and the high profile Nazi-hunter programs that led authorities to go after him, again and again actually . . . so just this past month, at age 97, he was still living at his home in Waterloo, Ontario when he died.
As for behavior after becoming a naturalized citizen which could trigger suspicion and, perhaps (but not usually) an investigation, among real life -- it has happened examples -- there are some isolated cases in which the need for protected status was based on persecution for sexual orientation, then later the individual gets married and sponsors a member of the opposite sex who, it turns out, the individual had a relationship with before claiming a need for protection due to the persecution of homosexuals. Even these cases were not, as I recall, about citizenship, but happened while the individual still had protected person status, and I think the RPD typically gave little if any weight to the later behavior, focusing on whether the evidence showed misrepresentation based on circumstances up to making the claim.
All later behavior will typically support is cause to investigate. Not grounds for finding misrepresentation. Things change. People change. Circumstances change. But, yeah, sure, sometimes the later behavior raises questions about what a person claimed . . . whether that is to obtain PR status in a Provincial sponsorship program or to obtain protected person status or . . . perhaps among the most common, the genuine marital relationship supporting a spousal sponsorship, which does not last more than a week or so after the individual obtains PR status. In any of these cases, all the later behavior does is trigger suspicion, even in the case of the spousal sponsored PR who does not live with the sponsor once PR status is obtained. Consequences for misrepresentation will follow ONLY if the investigation documents persuasive evidence there was actual misrepresentation.
Just for clarity: I think that @Fallen_Warrior is asking about situations in which the later behavior, in this context returning to the home country, might lead authorities to believe there was misrepresentation in the process for obtaining protected person and PR status, and the revocation proceedings themselves are based on misrepresentation of fact in the process of obtaining protected person status, as in the person claimed a risk in the home country that travel to the home country later arguably tends to show the individual did not really face.They can't arbitrarily revoke Canadian citizenship like that. Citizenship can be revoked for very limited number of reasons.
Here's an example :
If they found you misrepresented yourself in your citizenship or PR application, they can revoke the citizenship (former case) and revoke citizenship and PR (latter case).
As I discussed above, that could (but usually will not) trigger suspicion and an investigation. But actual revocation proceedings would be brought only if the investigation reveals specific evidence documenting misrepresentation . . . which as you note, would only lead to loss of both citizenship and PR status if there was misrepresentations made in the process of becoming a PR.
It warrants noting, too, that even during the Harper crackdown, when thousands of immigration fraud cases were initiated (between 2008 and 2013; more than five thousand pending at one time as I recall), including many hundreds of citizenship revocation proceedings, almost all of those were NOT close-call cases. Scores involved individuals who had hardly spent any time in Canada at all. There were a number of remarkably active fraud-mill operations back then, and CIC was woefully unprepared to identify let alone interdict much of it . . . in one group of cases a single "consultant" had herded many dozens of clients through using the same address and telephone number, same employment histories. And used multiple addresses, for dozens of clients at each, which were all located in the same complex, just different unit numbers, but it was an industrial facility not residential. It was rather staggering how blatant the fraud was. In just a few years Canada revoked many times more citizenships than it had in its entire previous history.
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