goodman36 said:
Citizenship Application was returned due to missing 1 document. Letter stated to re-submit application with the missing document (option 1) OR to sign under option 2 to request for refund of fee.
Question: If the application is resent now with the missing document, does the main application form need to be signed again as well as the residence calculator need to revised again OR the original package is still valid? Note that the returned application 1st page has the stamp of the receiving date (which was 1 and half months ago). The total days in Canada was 1130 days when it was sent the 1st time.
The
probable answer was provided by
scylla:
scylla said:
The application will be treated as a new application once it's received again by CIC. If you want to submit it now, you will need to first meet the new 4 year out of 6 year residency requirement. If you don't meet the new residency requirement (which it doesn't appear you do), you will need to hold off resubmitting your application until you have four years of residency in the last six years.
Long explanation regarding why those saying it will be OK are most likely wrong:
All those who are saying it will be
OK (so long as no new signature, no new calculation) are overlooking the impact of section 13 of the
Citizenship Act in conjunction with section 31 of the
SCCA.
Section 13 of the
Citizenship Act prescribes what, in essence, constitutes a
made application, which includes that the application be
complete (all required information and documentation included).
Section 31 of the
SCCA is the transitional provision which prescribes how the revised provisions in the
Citizenship Act will be applied relative to when an application was "made."
In short, section 31(1)(a) of the
SCCA specifically says (plugging in the now known effective dates) that an application
"made" on or before June 10 will be governed by the 3/4 rule, while applications made June 11 or after will be governed by the 4/6 rule, the 183 X 4 CY requirement, compliance with CRA 4 X tax-years requirement, and the "intent to continue to reside in Canada" requirement.
Was this application
"made" by June 10? Section 13 of the
Citizenship Act appears to indicate it was
NOT made before June 10, since it was incomplete. Thus, it is
probable (highly probable) it will be subject to the revised requirements for grant citizenship, and a new application using the new form and "physical presence calculator" (rather than a residency calculator) will have to be submitted.
Why I say and emphasize "probable" rather than offering a definitive answer:
I am no expert. I am baffled by how definitively many participants in this forum will respond to questions like this . . . especially when quite often the definitive answer offered is at least partially incorrect, and considering that very often there is no known definitive answer.
I am quite confident about my interpretation and construction of section 13 of the
Citizenship Act and how it will work in conjunction with section 31 of the
SCCA, particularly since CIC has overtly indicated (and actually went to some lengths to make it happen this way) that only
complete applications received as of June 10, 2015 will be processed pursuant to the old law. But this is indeed my interpretation and construction, and we have as yet to see what CIC will actually do in practice.
I agree with the suggestions to go ahead and re-submit, without revising anything other than including the omitted documentation, and see what happens . . . but with the understanding that the odds are very high (very, very high) the application will be returned again with instructions to use the current forms and
physical presence calculator.
I suspect that the
it-will-be-OK responses were largely based on past experience and CIC processing the later returned, then completed application, as if it was submitted at the time of the first submission (albeit incomplete). I suspect they are overlooking the fact that in all those instances it is not the date the application was received by CIC that mattered, but the date the application was signed. Same effect would have happened if the applicant accidentally mailed it to a brother and a month later the brother mailed it back, and the applicant just properly addressed it and sent it to CIC . . . CIC would still process it based on the
date it was signed even though not received until more than a month after it was originally signed and sent (to the wrong address) . . . so long as the application is
not stale-dated as of the date it actually arrives at CIC.
What CIC did, very obviously
deliberately did, was to prescribe that as of June 11, 2015 only applications completed using the new form (which was not available prior to June 11, and indeed not available until late in the day June 11) would be accepted as
complete. CIC had to do it this way in order to implement an absolute cut off. Otherwise applications using the old form could trickle in for many weeks, and so long as they were "complete" and signed June 10 or before and were not stale-dated (I forget what CIC considers stale-dated, probably 90 days), CIC would have to process them pursuant to the old law, the 3/4 rule with allowance for half day credit for pre-landing time in Canada. This is how section 13 of the
Citizenship Act in conjunction with section 31 of the
SCCA would have worked
except CIC has broad discretion to dictate the form in which the application must be made . . . so again, it changed the required form as of June 11, so that as of June 11 only applications made using the new form would be complete. As I have noted otherwise, this was a rather tricky maneuver by CIC, and quite frankly, given the very short advance notice of the date the new form would be absolutely required, a date
less than the ordinary mailing time previous to the implementation of the new form, seems to me to have been patently unfair . . . probably not so unfair as to have been illegal (given that official notice of the changes was given as of August 13, 2014), but so unfair as to warrant harsh criticism.
