Michael101 said:
Hello all,
Today (January 14, 2016) i took Canadian citizenship test and i passed in flying colors, however, immigration official who was checking my papers told me that my Security clearance is not in yet so i have to wait until it comes in and that could take 3 months or so. I thought they do all the clearance before the test, not after. That puts me in another waiting game after long and brutal 2+ yrs of waiting for this moment
Another question: same immigration official who was interviewing me said, i have to hold on to all my immigration papers forever, even after i take my citizenship and my passport. I don't get it, Why do i need these old papers when i have a passport and citizenship? either she doesn't know what she is talking about or I'm missing something here.
You should definitely securely store your CoPR or Record of Landing. This is an important document as it officially documents the date of establishing residence in Canada for purposes of Old Age Security and Pensions.
Not sure what other immigration papers or documents you might be referring to. In general it is better to keep all identity and travel documents which the respective law does not otherwise require to be destroyed, but I doubt that is what the interviewer was referring to.
Regarding the timeline and security checks:
One to three months is the typical, routine processing timeline for any next step in the citizenship application process. Sure, many applicants are scheduled for the oath very soon after the test and interview, but one to three months is very typical.
As for the security or background checks in particular, there is an initial referral to RCMP and CSIS for security checks, which are done concurrently while the application is screened and then referred to the local office for processing, and these checks are indeed, ordinarily, done before the interview and test is scheduled. But new referrals for an update are typically done after a certain amount of time has passed. Some refer to this as the security checks
expiring, but whatever the terminology, applications pending for more than a year will typically require an updated security check.
These are done in large batches; last internal info I have seen (about three years old now) indicated these would be done in batches of up to a hundred clients in a single referral.
This is routine. This does not ordinarily result in a significant delay. But of course any bump out of the queue tends to add, at minimum, several weeks to a couple or three months.
There are some potential wrinkles.
The main one is that your initial security checks were probably based on the law prior to changes which took effect May 29, 2015. Bill C-24, effective May 29, 2015, expanded the scope of the prohibitions, and yes this does apply to those who already had an application in process. So, for example, the security check has to look back for any convictions of an indictable offence for the last four years now (when you applied, two plus years ago apparently, it was three years).
The expanded prohibitions now also apply to foreign convictions that are equivalent to a Canadian indictable offence. For applicants who have been outside Canada any significant period of time going back four years prior to the date of application, and including the period of time since applying, there can be further screening done.
Another somewhat common, potentially problematic wrinkle, is relevant to those applicants who have been spending extended time outside Canada and in certain more or less troubled parts of the world. Hard to guess who actually gets bogged down in a protracted CSIS security check (update or otherwise), but these tend to be among those applicants burdened by the longer delays.
Overall, however, for the vast majority of applicants, even those for whom the process has taken longer, the updating of security checks is routine and waiting another one to three months to be scheduled for the oath is very typical . . . no guarantee it will happen that smoothly or within that time frame, but statistically that is the most likely scenario.
