tiarachel85 said:
And what if I dont change my address at all with CIC? Is it illegal?
poushi24 said:
It is not illegal if you don't change your address as long as you have mean to receive mails. Also to me your current address is still Burlington since you haven't move to Niagara yet.
The applicant is required to
accurately declare his or her
residential address in the application. A mailing address does
NOT suffice. CIC is asking for where the applicant is actually residing.
The applicant signs a declaration (part of the signature block in the application form) that the applicant will
notify CIC if there is
any change in the material information submitted in the form.
The place where the applicant is actually residing is, of course, material information.
No advance degrees in engineering are necessary to understand what this means.
And that is all a prospective applicant really needs to know and understand: accurately report information being given to CIC. Sure, this can lead to some complications, but it is what is required and it is what suffices, it is what avoids the potential for bigger, more serious problems.
That's the simple and short answer. Accurately report where you actually live on the day you sign the application, and accurately report your address history leading up to that time, and if you move after applying,
timely (not necessarily immediately) notify CIC of the change in address.
Many, many are not content with the simple and short answer.
The other side of the issue, in contrast:
The failure to accurately report this information is misrepresentation, sometimes referred to as fraud.
Scores and scores of people submit applications of various sorts to CIC, including citizenship applications, using the address of a close friend or family member. There are many reasons why some do this, ranging from totally innocent reasons (such as the individual is going through a transition and the family member's address is a more stable and reliable one to use), to some not-so-innocent ones (more than a few have done this because they want their application processed in a different local office, one which is perceived to have faster processing timelines; others because they are going abroad for an extended time period while the application is pending, among other reasons).
And my guess is that for the majority of those who do this, they do not encounter any problems. But, let's be clear what that means. It does not mean it was OK. It means they
got-away-with-it.
We should also be clear that not everyone gets away with it.
In the meantime, the consequences vary. Generally CIC is not a draconian monster out to come down hard on every breach of the rules or technical violation of law.
-- So in some circumstances CIC might perceive the failure to accurately declare where the person was actually living, or to notify CIC if this changes, and in effect shrug, but of course that depends on what CIC perceives.
-- Or, this could be something that triggers RQ, and so long as the applicant's response to RQ is complete and accurate, the only impact is the inconvenience of RQ and the resulting delay.
-- Or, it could be grounds for denying approval (even before the revised section 15 of the
Citizenship Act came into force last August, the Federal Court had upheld the denial of citizenship based solely on the ground that the applicant had failed to give his correct residential address -- this was an applicant living in Montreal who, pursuant to the advice of a consultant who advised that a Mississauga address would reduce the processing time by a lot, used an address in Mississauga, one through which he was obtaining his mail just fine).
-- And, of course, in some circumstances, it could lead to criminal charges.
But, for the majority, nothing happens. CIC does not even notice. The applicant, in effect,
gets-away-with-it.
As for what an applicant should do in the circumstances outlined here, that is for that individual to decide, but there is no doubt that the residential address declared in the application should be the address where that individual actually resides, and if that changes after the application is submitted, CIC should be
timely notified of the change.
While this is not complicated, sure it can impose some difficulty for an applicant in transition. In conjunction with the prospect that RQ might be issued if there are inconsistencies between the address on identification used and that declared in the application, or possibly due to how recently identification was issued, how to approach the situation can be a bit tricky for such a prospective applicant.
In any other year the better approach would ordinarily be to simply wait to apply. Get the move done, settle into the new residence, get drivers license updated, and so on, and wait three months to apply.
But a whole lot is poised to change this year, and waiting until the move is actually done, then three more months after having got things like the drivers license updated (with new address), is at high risk for falling under the revised provisions in Bill C-24.
I cannot say what you should do. I can say, however, what you should not do, and that is not use just any address you can get mail through as your residential address . . . even though there are good odds it will not cause a problem, it is just plain a bad idea to not be straight with CIC.
By the way, regarding changing address after application has been submitted: The reports about this vary considerably. There should be no disadvantage due to this so long as the applicant properly notifies CIC (and follows up to make sure that CIC has in fact made the change itself in its records). And many report no problems. But there are others who, they report, have indeed run into problems, mostly in the vein of long delays. Timing seems to be an issue. And that is difficult to navigate.
Since the obligation to notify CIC is to do so
timely, which does not mean it has to be real soon let alone immediately, the applicant can safely wait even some months to notify CIC so long as, of course, the applicant still has virtually immediate access to mail delivered to the old address.
Most problems tend to be mail related, either the failure to get mail timely, or mail being sent to an address where the applicant does not regularly get mail, or such.
