Hi everyone. My name is Jade Calver. I own and operate
Caler and Associates Canadian Immigration Services. Today we're talking about
eligibility for Canadian citizenship and applying for citizenship in Canada.
So before you apply for Canadian citizenship it's really important that
you understand the five requirements in order to apply for Canadian citizenship.
So the first is that you have to be a permanent resident of Canada. So this
means you can't have any issues with your permanent residency status in
Canada and you need to have valid permanent residency status. Note this
doesn't mean you have to actually have a permanent resident card. You can still be
a permanent resident without actually having a permanent residency card. So for
example if you came when you were young as a permanent resident with your parents and
you've always lived in Canada and you still retain permanent residency status
you can still apply for citizenship.
The next is the time you've lived in Canada. So often people call it 3 out of
5 years but I like to say it's 1095 days. It's important to note that these have
to be exact days so you have to have an exact calculation of when you were here
and you can also count up to one year while you were a temporary resident
towards that calculation. So every day that you're here is a temporary
residence so that's student, worker, visitor, temporary residence permit
holder - those all count as a half-day towards the citizenship requirement so
for example if you live for one year here as a worker prior to applying for
citizenship then that would count for a half year towards the day requirement.
Take into account how close you are to be 1095 day requirement. If you do that
calculation and you are at 1096 days or 1097 it's just a little bit too close
for comfort for me. I usually tell clients to wait a few months, make sure
that they have well enough days. The reason for this being if an officer ever
determines that you're actually out of Candida for extra, you know three or four
days, that will actually make it such that you are not eligible for
citizenship. So I always tell people to make sure they have a little bit of
wiggle room with their days in Canada so that there aren't any issues with the
residency requirement for citizenship.
The next requirement is that you have to have filed your taxes in order to apply
for citizenship. This is only if you have to. Again, I usually tell my clients to
just keep filing their taxes and make sure those are up to date because you
need to in order to apply for citizenship.
The next requirement is the English requirement. Again it's only for those
aged 18 to 54 so if you're getting close to the age of 55 then a lot of the times
I say just wait another year if you can to apply for citizenship
so you don't have to worry about the language requirements or the tests. A lot
of the times people get confused as to what they have to provide as proof of
language for citizenship applications. It's a little bit more lenient than it
is with if you've done an immigration application in the past. So if you've
gone to secondary so that's high school or post-secondary in English for at
least one year, you can use proof of that education in English as proof of your
knowledge of English. So again lots of our clients come from countries where
their university was in English or their high school was in English. If you're not
sure if it'll be accepted the general rule is that the entirety of instruction
should be in English. If you think that an officer might have concerns about
this, my trick is to include the degree or certificate along with a transcript.
Again if it's not in English it can get a little bit trickier because you'll have to get it
certified and translated but again usually the rule is that if it's issued in
English then it's okay because you've studied full-time in English. If for
whatever reason you don't have this, maybe you didn't finish school, you can't
get that certificate because your school closed then you can take a
language test you can take the IELTS or the CELPIP. You only need to take the
listening and speaking so you don't have to do the writing and reading portion of
the test and then you can get those results for the general test and submit
it with your application instead of proof of education.
The last requirement is sometimes the scariest part of citizenship eligibility for our
clients and that is the citizenship test. So again if you're between the ages of
18 to 54 you'll have to sit a citizenship test for an application. It
covers the rules and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship as well as some
fairly standard Canadian history. All of the information comes from a book
published by Immigration and Citizenship Canada, which if you're applying for
citizenship I suggest that you start preparing for well in advance of your
citizenship test. The test is a 20-question multiple-choice exam. You need
to get 16 out of 20 in order to pass minimum and the test takes about 30
minutes to tak. You get two chances at the test and if not then you have to
go before a citizenship judge. So that's the last eligibility requirement for citizenship.
I'd like to talk now about a few other tips for citizenship applications, things
people sometimes forget or things that can cause hiccups with citizenship applications.
One of those is the police certificate requirement. If you're
applying for citizenship and you've lived in a country for six consecutive
months or more in the last five years, then you'll have to provide a valid police
certificate for that country. If you're applying and you live for six months say
in England or Egypt or whatever, you should provide an original police
clearance issued after you left that country with your citizenship application.
Another pointer that I like to tell people is that they often look for
for proof of name change from birth until now. So if you change your name
because of marriage, I include a marriage certificate. If you changed your name when
you were young, I like to see that proof of name change certificate from the
issuing countries whether your home country or Canada to show that you've
legally changed your name.
Another thing to think about are translated stamps.
This is usually in cases where a person has extensive travel and some countries
will only issue stamps in the language of that country. A lot of the time I'll
have those translated and I'll include the certified translations with the
application so that the officer can easily see where you went and how long
you were there for.
In terms of applying for citizenship, it's fairly standard so you get the
checklist, you provide all the documentation - again you don't actually
need a permanent residency card or a passport to apply but you do need two
pieces of ID. So if you don't have two pieces of ID in Canada you'll have to
include a passport. You cannot use your PR card as ID in the application. So you
fill out the forms, provide all the documentation, and you submit it to the
processing office in Nova Scotia. And overall processing time does take about
one year from start to finish. You'll usually receive a request for
fingerprints during processing. This is standard so don't be alarmed if you
receive a request for fingerprinting after that is the notice of exam - you'll
take the exam and after that, usually around the eleventh or twelfth month
you'll receive a request to attend your citizenship ceremony and at that ceremony
you'll become a citizen of Canada and you'll receive your citizenship
certificate. Thanks very much for watching if you have any other questions
please visit our website at calverimmigrationservices.com