Hi,
I applied for Citizenship last November 2019 and due to COVID-19 all the processing has been halted.
In the mean time, I got a job offer to work in another country.
Will my citizenship application be affected, if I accept a job and move to another country while its being processed?
Note that I have already lived in Canada for over 7 years and 5 of them was as PR.
Living abroad after applying has NO direct impact on the applicant's eligibility for citizenship.
Beyond that, however, leaving Canada while the grant citizenship application is in process is a rather complicated subject. There is no simple answer for how an applicant's case might be "affected."
Leading to LONGER, MORE IN-DEPTH OBSERVATIONS:
There are already numerous topics in this forum which address this issue, many recognizing and discussing the logistical and practical implications which loom larger than what may be readily apparent. In this regard, not all moves abroad are created equal. What, where, when, and rather importantly, access to communications from IRCC and means to travel to Canada on short notice, can vary widely and thus the impact will correspondingly vary widely.
If you are primarily interested in how this has in fact affected those who have done it, the anecdotal forum reports correspondingly vary widely. For many there has been NO problem. For many others there were some delays, some non-routine processing and attendant inconvenience along the way, but the outcome was not affected. Others report more difficult problems.
If you are primarily interested in whether living abroad has a direct impact on continuing eligibility for citizenship, recognizing that an applicant must remain eligible for citizenship right up to when the oath is taken, that is a more straight-forward Q & A. No, it does not have any direct impact on any of the eligibility requirements. It does not change the calculation of physical presence for example. Just like the fact that you have lived in Canada for over 7 years has very, very little relevance (where you were prior to the beginning of the five year eligibility period is NOT at all relevant).
There are some other fairly simple, easy to address issues. For example, to be eligible for a grant of citizenship the applicant must continue to have valid PR status. So of course an applicant must be sure to stay in compliance with the PR Residency Obligation. In recent years this has not been an issue for those who move abroad while the application is pending, since the processing timelines allow almost all applicants to take the oath within a time frame for which living abroad raises no PR RO compliance issues.
But even this aspect is not necessarily so simple if one considers the impression moving abroad can make on the total stranger bureaucrats who will make the decisions which affect how things go.
Which leads to an even more complex subject:
For many years before 2015, however, processing timelines for some could run into YEARS, and some of those who moved abroad were abroad so long as to breach the RO and become ineligible for citizenship. There were more than a few instances, for example, in which an applicant living abroad got the notice to attend an oath ceremony but upon arrival at a PoE, when returning to Canada to take the oath, were Reported for a breach of the RO, resulting in the cancellation of their oath taking AND the loss of PR status as well.
We appear to be approaching a return to very long processing timelines, at least for a significant percentage of applicants, so the PR RO could again become an issue for applicants living abroad if and when processing takes years.
There are some indications suggesting that applicants living abroad while the application is pending tend to encounter longer processing timelines. Not all. Not uniformly. And we know of no particular policy or practice which would cause this.
In contrast, back in 2008 to 2014, it appeared the Harper government may have been deliberately shelving or at least stalling processing for applicants perceived to have moved abroad, as if to deliberately wait to see if the applicants might fail to comply with the PR RO. And for a brief time, pursuant to a short-lived eligibility requirement which the newly elected (in 2015) Liberal government promptly ceased to enforce and then repealed, the Harper government implemented an intent requirement which gave the government grounds to outright deny an application if the applicant moved abroad while the application was pending.
There was a lot of misunderstanding about that intent requirement, which in turn has led to some failure to fully recognize the equitable implications of living abroad while the citizenship application is in process. That intent requirement was largely, if not almost exclusively, aimed at those applicants who were perceived to be
applying-on-the-way-to-the-airport. Aimed at giving the government specific grounds to deny those applicants even though they were otherwise eligible. What many fail to grasp is that the sentiments underlying the implementation of that had been a factor in how Canada approached many citizenship applications for many years prior to the adoption of that provision. And likely continues to have some influence despite the repeal of that provision. It should be little or no surprise that more than a few Canadians are not keen to granting Canadian citizenship to those who are not going to live in Canada long term.
In other words, this aspect is about the impression a citizenship applicant makes on the total stranger bureaucrats who will make the decisions in processing the citizenship application. An applicant cannot be denied citizenship just because the applicant made a bad impression on the decision-maker. But the prudent applicant does not totally disregard the real world influence making a bad impression could have on how things go.
