Good morning- I am a US citizen w/ PR in Canada. I have enough days in Canada to apply for citizenship but how do I verify this for my application- I have taken a few trips to the US in the last few year. How do US citizens go about getting a travel history of their passports?
Thanks in advance!
All you need to do, for sure, is to accurately report (in the online Presence Calculator) the dates of all times you left Canada, and accurately report all dates you entered Canada. You were there, each and every time, so of course you are the one best source, in the whole world, of this information. If you do that, if you accurately report the date for each time you left Canada, and the date for each time you entered Canada, there is a good chance IRCC will not request any further verification.
Some U.S. citizens applying for Canadian citizenship, however, have been asked to provide U.S. border crossing records (I was not asked for such records, but I waited to apply with a very big margin over the minimum). There are several discussions in the forum about the process of obtaining those records, if requested.
If you personally did not keep a record of the dates you exited and returned, there are others here who may suggest ways to reconstruct your memory as best you can. Additionally there are records you can obtain from CBSA which will likely show at least most, maybe all times you entered Canada. There are records you can obtain from the U.S. which similarly will likely show at least most, maybe all time you entered the U.S. It can take some time to obtain the latter. There are multiple topics here devoted to one or the other process for obtaining either the U.S. entry history or the CBSA travel history.
But if you accurately report all the dates, you do not need to wait to obtain verification from other sources. The key is to put accurate dates in the online presence calculator.
IF YOU HAVE PARTICULAR DIFFICULTY RECONSTRUCTING TRAVEL HISTORY:
Ultimately the most sure-fire way of not running into problems with estimated dates is to wait to apply AFTER keeping clear records and being able to apply without doubt as to the travel dates. Or, at least waiting long enough to apply with a big enough margin that any questions about possible other border crossing dates are not likely trigger any question about meeting the minimum presence requirement.
