Why list in the application members of family who are not coming to Canada?

[toby]

I’m sure I posted this as an add-on to someone else’s post. But now I cannot find it.

It’s a question that has been bothering me for a while: why is it necessary for a PR applicant to list all members of the family (brothers, sisters-in-law etc) , whether they will be sponsored to Canada or not? It must take Canada a lot of time to investigate each member, and where the member has no intention of coming to Canada, it is a waste of Canada’s scarce investigative resources, no?

I know that PMM answered this for me some time ago, but I admit the logic escaped me. I need to try again.

1. Let’s say that Sam was sponsored to Canada by his Canadian spouse. Sam has a brother, Charlie, who was convicted of theft in the home country. Sam wants a PR visa in Canada, but not Charlie.

2. Sam is required to list Charlie in his PR application, but why doesn't Canada let Sam leave Charlie out of the PR application, and if Sam decides to sponsor Charlie to Canada at a later date, then Canada will investigate Charlie, at that time and not before?

3. Is it because Canada wants to know about Charlie's possibly criminal background, and might reject Sam's PR application because of Charlie?

4. Is it because if Canada approves Sam’s PR application, even though criminal Charlie is listed in it, then Charlie automatically gets approved if Sam later decides to sponsor Charlie to Canada? (This seems unlikely. It seems more likely that Canada will investigate Charlie, again?, at the time he applies to come to Canada.)

5. So, again, unless 3. or 4. are true, I don’t understand the advantage of investigating Charlie as part of Sam’s application process, hence I don’t see why Charlie has to be listed in Sam’s application.

But this is why I read what more knowledgeable people have to say in this forum. ;D ;D

 

[dlee31]

This is just my personal opinion, but I don't think Immigrations Canada will investigate every single family member listed on an application unless they are applying to be sponsored as well. I didn't list members of my family on the main application (where they have boxes for photos and passport numbers, and warn you that if you do not list them, they may not be eligible to be sponsored later) because no one in my family besides myself intends to reside in Canada. However, in the part about my personal family, I listed my immediate family. This may be a formality or it may be to make sure all your family registry records are straight. Or they may run the names and DOBs through their own system, just to make sure no one is connected to previous cases related to Immigrations Canada. In any case, I didn't pay too much attention to it because, like yourself, I didn't really see the point.

If they were doing this to check for criminal activity in the family, wouldn't they just ask for criminal background checks for everyone? I find it hard to believe that the people at the visa offices would go out of their way to do something, especially if it's something that they could make the applicant do.

 

[wilson]

To my understanding it relates to security check/criminal involvements. As mentioned in CIC form itself, they will not consider any one from the family for future sponsorship if that person is not included in the form. Security Check on every individual relative mentioned in the form will not be carried out because it could be a very long process and consumes lot of time. But they may carry out a random check with the family names of those listed and will track the particular family memeber if any of them involved or included in the criminal records.

 

[Harju]

I think your question is really...Why does CIC require you to list members of family. The reason "you" list them is because your PR could be rejected otherwise.

Everything has a definition and "Family member" for the purposes of the main application (imm0008) is defined as your spouse or common-law spouse, their dependent children and your dependent children (again "dependent" has a specific definiton and doesn't necessarily mean they are dependent in the ordinary meaning of the word). That is why as dlee18 noted, he didn't need to put all the others on the main application.

There is imm5406 which asks for all the others but that form never refers to them as "family members". I think this is simply for the background and security checks as wilson said. I doubt much energy is expended initially as all they do is run names etc. through security databases for matches. If something comes up then I'm sure (I hope) more work is done.