Citizenship

Citizenship applications

Once you attain permanent resident status, the next significant milestone is to get Canadian citizenship. Achieving this has various benefits, like visa-free travel to numerous countries, voting rights, vast job opportunities, and no more permanent residence status renewal applications. To be eligible for Canadian citizenship, a permanent resident must be physically present in Canada for 1,095 days in the five years immediately before the application. The citizenship application is detailed and requires the applicant to demonstrate their physical presence, language (English or French) knowledge, three years of income tax returns, family details, residential details, employment details and so on.

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Issues in citizenship applications:

• Calculating physical presence

• Calculating time for physical presence involving time spent in imprisonment, probation, or parole

• Unable to demonstrate language ability

• Foreign police certificate requirements

• Applying for waivers

• Dealing with prohibition of applying for citizenship

 

You may be ineligible to apply for Canadian citizenship if you:

• Are under a removal order

• Are facing criminal charges in Canada

• Are serving a sentence outside Canada

• Are in Canada serving a term of imprisonment, on parole or on probation

• Have your citizenship revoked because of fraud

• Have a refusal in citizenship application due to misrepresentation

 

Refusal:

If your application for Canadian citizenship is refused or you have been denied citizenship certificates, you can file a judicial review in the Federal court. First you will have to file an application for leave for judicial review. If the leave is granted an oral hearing date will be set; whereas, if the leave is not granted there is no right to appeal the court’s decision on leave application. The application for leave must be filed in the court and served on the other party within 30 days after receiving decision. 

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