What will happen if?
- Thread starter obitar
- Start date
You waited for 4 years why not wait a month more to give yourself peace of mind and lower the chance of application rejection?
obitar said:
I absolutely concur with the observations about making sure to have a substantial margin over and above the minimum. Just the impression made can be important, and applying with just a bare minimum gives the impression there is a possibility the applicant was short of the minimum.obitar said:
That alone risks a lengthy processing timeline well beyond the routine timeline. That alone risks RQ or perhaps even skepticism. It is not as if IRCC will promptly say no and you'd have to apply again, but rather that it could take well over a year, perhaps longer, to get any decision.
If you apply with a residency calculation that you sign and it indicates you met the minimum threshold, IRCC must go through the entire assessment process no matter how obvious it is or becomes that you made an error and were short of qualifying unless you elect to withdraw the application. When IRCC decides you have not met the presence requirement, all IRCC can do then is decline to grant citizenship and prepare a referral for a Citizenship Judge to take the case, again unless you withdraw the application. That is, it could take years for a final decision.
And if it is ultimately determined you came up short by as little as just one day, there is NO discretion to grant citizenship, but rather the application must be denied. (There is a remote possibility of obtaining a recommendation to the Minister to make a special grant, but this possibility is so remote the virtual reality is that one day short means the application must be denied.)
That is, again, if the applicant is short of the minimum, IRCC has virtually no discretion, the application will be denied. (This was not the case for applications made prior to June 11, 2015, so long as the applicant met a basic residency standard, which for many just meant that they landed at least three years prior to the application no matter how much time they spent outside Canada.)
But the problem is, if you submit a physical presence calculation showing you met the minimum, IRCC must go through the whole process no matter how obvious it is that you made a miscalculation and were short. And again that could take years.
And this can happen, the long road, the long, long road, even if you are not really short but IRCC perceives a significant possibility that you might be short . . . which will ultimately be a determination to be made by a Citizenship Judge.
Which leads to the more important aspect of your query, the impact of a miscalcuation beyond just the numbers.
OR
The importance of preserving credibility:
It is imperative to avoid, or at least minimize, any miscalculation. The operative element in your query is what happens if you make a miscalculation, and depending on how significant a "miscalculation" that is, it might not matter how big a margin you have. Submitting erroneous information is a sufficient, independent ground for denying an application altogether.
Sure, IRCC anticipates minor mistakes and the scope of their allowance for minor discrepancies is perhaps not just liberal but generous.
But it needs to be remembered that any miscalculation will, to some extent, compromise IRCC's assessment of the applicant's credibility. For obvious reasons.
While the reason why any miscalculation compromises a person's credibility is obvious, the cases and anecdotal reporting reflect that the extent to which applicants make significant errors or omissions is, well, common if not extensive. So, to be clear, a reminder is perhaps warranted: Credibility is about how much an individual can be relied upon to be an accurate reporter of information. Any inaccurate reporting thus necessarily indicates the person cannot be relied upon to be an accurate reporter because indeed the person has not been an accurate reporter.
It is this simple: a person may tell the absolute truth 25 times but stating a falsehood just once will undermine any reliance on the 25 times the truth was told. How much so varies.
A lot of people seem to think that losing credibility is about lying, about deliberately telling untruths. No. No. That is just the worst case. The individual perceived to have deliberately made a false statement is at risk for not being believed about anything.
So sure, if IRCC has reason to suspect an applicant is deliberately not being accurate, IRCC can (and likely will) discount anything the applicant asserts.
Beyond that, if a person fails to be accurate, IRCC will rely less on what the applicant has reported. The extent of this varies widely. A minor mistake may have little negative impact on how much IRCC relies on the rest of the applicant's information. A serious mistake, or multiple minor mistakes, will have a larger negative impact. The nature of the mistake can influence how much it hurts IRCC's perception of the applicant and the applicant's credibility.
I am not sure, but my guess is that omissions loom larger than discrepancies. Many applicants, for example, tend to rely on another country's entry stamp for the date of an exit from Canada, when actually the flight was scheduled to leave Canada the night before so the actual exit was a day earlier. Small mistake which IRCC tends to not hold against the applicant much (although it does deduct at least a day off the calculation). In contrast, many times there is no stamp, no exit or entry stamps, for this or that trip, and the applicant who fails to report that trip is at serious risk for IRCC approaching the case far more skeptically. The latter is the sort of omission which can totally undermine the applicant's case.
And make no mistake about the impact. Say the omitted trip was a flight to Las Vegas and back for a long weekend holiday, just a few days outside Canada, no stamp for the U.S. or Canada: at minimum of course this would mean that the number of days involved gets deducted from the calculation. But the real impact will be on the applicant's credibility. This could seriously undermine the application. Let's be clear: this could raise doubt about the entire presence calculation, not just those few days.
So when you ask about what effect a "miscalculation" will have, the answer it that depends, and even for applicants with a margin of several months over the minimum, a serious miscalculation (and again I think especially for omissions) at the least risks a long, long and contested process, and could risk being rejected. That rejection not coming right away, but more than a year, maybe two years, after applying.
As long as the miscalculation is determined to have been a mistake and NOT a misrepresentation, the applicant who withdraws or is denied can almost immediately apply again, assuming the applicant meets the requirements at the time of applying again. If IRCC determines a misrepresentation was made, that would result in the application being denied, but could also result in other serious consequences . . . all the way to criminal prosecution and some time spent in public-provided housing (of the secured sort) perhaps prior to deportation, depending on the seriousness of the misrepresentation.
keesio
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Search the forums here. You will find several cases where people applied on the day of or maybe with one day buffer. They all said they were very sure they did not miscalculate.... but then they find out they did. Most got an RQ. They all regret not waiting just an extra week or two. Why not wait?obitar said:
