CBSA Entry/Exit Record vs. Personal Travel Journal - Physical Presence

[ccaallvviinn]

Gurus, please help advise and thank you very much in advance!

Situation:
1. I have been living very close to the Peace Arch, BC border and regularly commuting between Canada and USA for work. So, in my citizenship application, I have about 280 USA/Canada commutes over the 5-year period. I have always been keeping a very accurate and detailed travel journal.
2. I have submitted citizenship application in Aug. 2025. At this stage, I have background completed, test done (still waiting for tracker update to complete), and everything else in progress.
3. Because of frequent commute, I requested CBSA travel entry / exit records in Sept. 2025 to cover the full 5 years, and just received it last week, which surprisingly misses about ~100 travel records when compared to my own comprehensive travel journal, although I provided my passports, PR cards and nexus card during the 5-year period for the CBSA FOIA request.
4. I have kept a lot of evidence showing my actual residence in Canada for at least 1095 days, while commuting to the USA for work, during the 5-year period, in case a RQ were triggered.
5. I have provided IRCC with all my IDs, including the passports, PR cards and Nexus card, as well as a full scan of my passport together with stamps translation.

Questions:
1. Due to the fact that the CBSA entry / exit records missing so much information, should I be concerned? Not sure how IRCC works with CBSA for the travel history data and if IRCC would see different data from what my FOIA request has captured...
2. Any suggestions on my next step(s) here?

 

[armoured]

Gurus, please help advise and thank you very much in advance!

Situation:
1. I have been living very close to the Peace Arch, BC border and regularly commuting between Canada and USA for work. So, in my citizenship application, I have about 280 USA/Canada commutes over the 5-year period. I have always been keeping a very accurate and detailed travel journal.
2. I have submitted citizenship application in Aug. 2025. At this stage, I have background completed, test done (still waiting for tracker update to complete), and everything else in progress.
3. Because of frequent commute, I requested CBSA travel entry / exit records in Sept. 2025 to cover the full 5 years, and just received it last week, which surprisingly misses about ~100 travel records when compared to my own comprehensive travel journal, although I provided my passports, PR cards and nexus card during the 5-year period for the CBSA FOIA request.
4. I have kept a lot of evidence showing my actual residence in Canada for at least 1095 days, while commuting to the USA for work, during the 5-year period, in case a RQ were triggered.
5. I have provided IRCC with all my IDs, including the passports, PR cards and Nexus card, as well as a full scan of my passport together with stamps translation.

Questions:
1. Due to the fact that the CBSA entry / exit records missing so much information, should I be concerned? Not sure how IRCC works with CBSA for the travel history data and if IRCC would see different data from what my FOIA request has captured...
2. Any suggestions on my next step(s) here?

So:
-We did application for my spouse with a lot of travel (entry/exit to USA mostly, all by plane). We had only one missing exit. However, because we applied with a relatively small 'buffer' over the 1095 days (I forget exactly, perhaps only ten days extra or so).
-Technically this one missing exit could have pushed the days in country below the 1095.
-We did have passport stamps demonstrating the exit (actually arrival at the other end) but did not submit copies of the passports or those stamps.
-I recall we did include a short letter of explanation that one exit was missing (and obviously so i.e. two entries in a row chronologically), and the copy of the entry/exit records.

What happened:
-all went fine, approx two-three months after applying got an interview demand, followed by requests for copies of all pages of passports (prior to interview).
-We submitted those, along with a short note / letter of explanation that the /relevant/ passport stamps - to be able to account for the days - were on such-and-such pages.
-The interview went fine, less than ten minutes, officer was nice and basically just asked to see copies of some documents on-screen (I think to establish identity).
-There were a few questions about eg what does spouse do, work, how often travel, where travelled to recently (since submitting I think?), one or two questions about the travel history or a specific trip (I forget), a few general who-are-you types of questions eg when immigrated, where live, with what family members, etc. All innocuous stuff.
-Officer told us the physical presence was fine and would get cleared in a few days in the system (that is what happened). Only the physical presence was cleared at that time, not the other fields.
-I had the /impression/ - officer did not say this - that this was a 'gut check' type of interview, mainly determining that my spouse actually resides in Canada and just travels a lot. It did not seem to me that the officer had reviewed the travel records and stamps in detail before the interview - no idea whether they ever did.

[File is currently stuck, it seems, in security backlog, although still within the currently-posted processing times - disappointing but I don't think related.]

Good luck, hope this helps. I don't have a lot of suggestions on how to proceed except that I'd suggest a 'buffer' of days in Canada beyond the 1095 days is better than not having one (and all things equal, a larger buffer is better than a smaller one, but diminishing returns probably beyond a buffer of maybe 30 days - only a guess).

 

[ccaallvviinn]

So:
-We did application for my spouse with a lot of travel (entry/exit to USA mostly, all by plane). We had only one missing exit. However, because we applied with a relatively small 'buffer' over the 1095 days (I forget exactly, perhaps only ten days extra or so).
-Technically this one missing exit could have pushed the days in country below the 1095.
-We did have passport stamps demonstrating the exit (actually arrival at the other end) but did not submit copies of the passports or those stamps.
-I recall we did include a short letter of explanation that one exit was missing (and obviously so i.e. two entries in a row chronologically), and the copy of the entry/exit records.

What happened:
-all went fine, approx two-three months after applying got an interview demand, followed by requests for copies of all pages of passports (prior to interview).
-We submitted those, along with a short note / letter of explanation that the /relevant/ passport stamps - to be able to account for the days - were on such-and-such pages.
-The interview went fine, less than ten minutes, officer was nice and basically just asked to see copies of some documents on-screen (I think to establish identity).
-There were a few questions about eg what does spouse do, work, how often travel, where travelled to recently (since submitting I think?), one or two questions about the travel history or a specific trip (I forget), a few general who-are-you types of questions eg when immigrated, where live, with what family members, etc. All innocuous stuff.
-Officer told us the physical presence was fine and would get cleared in a few days in the system (that is what happened). Only the physical presence was cleared at that time, not the other fields.
-I had the /impression/ - officer did not say this - that this was a 'gut check' type of interview, mainly determining that my spouse actually resides in Canada and just travels a lot. It did not seem to me that the officer had reviewed the travel records and stamps in detail before the interview - no idea whether they ever did.

[File is currently stuck, it seems, in security backlog, although still within the currently-posted processing times - disappointing but I don't think related.]

Good luck, hope this helps. I don't have a lot of suggestions on how to proceed except that I'd suggest a 'buffer' of days in Canada beyond the 1095 days is better than not having one (and all things equal, a larger buffer is better than a smaller one, but diminishing returns probably beyond a buffer of maybe 30 days - only a guess).

Thank you for sharing your personal experience!

My main concern is the fact that there is significant discrepancy - about 100 entry / exit travel records - between the CBSA FOIA report and my personal travel journal. I am 100% confident about the integrity of my personal travel journal, as I carefully documented every single travel when it happened on that day (The CBSA FOIA report is also showing as a absolute subset of my personal travel journal).

All said, I am not sure what this means to me for my case.

Any other perspectives / suggestions?

 

[armoured]

Thank you for sharing your personal experience!

My main concern is the fact that there is significant discrepancy - about 100 entry / exit travel records - between the CBSA FOIA report and my personal travel journal. I am 100% confident about the integrity of my personal travel journal, as I carefully documented every single travel when it happened on that day (The CBSA FOIA report is also showing as a absolute subset of my personal travel journal).

All said, I am not sure what this means to me for my case.

Any other perspectives / suggestions?

I understood what your concern is - and it's understandable. Side question - I assume most of your crossings were by land?

At any rate I overall draw two conclusions:
-their records are not perfect and they know it.
-since your records coincide with theirs EXCEPT for missing records on their end, your credibilty will actually be good.
-My /impression/ is that where the credibility of the applicant is good and everything else is in order and the applicant appears to be living in Canada (a side aspect of this being that the applicant would probably continue to meet the standard after the date of application and possibly on a continual basis), they're inclined to consider the physical presence test 'met.'

They might require some an interview for this. Or it's possible they might go further and request some additional support documents from you.

I don't see that there's that much you can do about this /at this time./ Just apply and see what happens. (Short of applying a month later or something if that will give you a noticeably larger buffer).

Just my opinion, hope this helps.

 

[elonmusk5]

Can't you provide them the US side of records as well? I mean I-94 travel history for additional proof? https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov/search/history-search

Not sure if US side too holds complete records considering high activity.

 

[ccaallvviinn]

I understood what your concern is - and it's understandable. Side question - I assume most of your crossings were by land?

At any rate I overall draw two conclusions:
-their records are not perfect and they know it.
-since your records coincide with theirs EXCEPT for missing records on their end, your credibilty will actually be good.
-My /impression/ is that where the credibility of the applicant is good and everything else is in order and the applicant appears to be living in Canada (a side aspect of this being that the applicant would probably continue to meet the standard after the date of application and possibly on a continual basis), they're inclined to consider the physical presence test 'met.'

They might require some an interview for this. Or it's possible they might go further and request some additional support documents from you.

I don't see that there's that much you can do about this /at this time./ Just apply and see what happens. (Short of applying a month later or something if that will give you a noticeably larger buffer).

Just my opinion, hope this helps.

Thank you again for sharing more!

Yes, 99% of my crossings were by land between BC and WA. Actually 90% of them are just single-day trips, as I live and sleep in Canada and just regularly commuting for the day job, when needed, in WA, USA.

 

[elonmusk5]

Even I had a lot of day trips to cover up 1095 days. The only thing could be the timezone. A couple of times when I crossed the border around 10 PM it came up as next day entry. May be they were using Eastern time for standardization.

If I were to do day trips, I would always try to make sure I enter Canada before 9PM Pacific time.

The good thing about entry and exit is that even if you were present inside Canada for 1 hour during the 24 hours of the day, you get counted for 1 full day. Again, timezone could be a thing to consider especially for folks on the West coast.

 

[ccaallvviinn]

Even I had a lot of day trips to cover up 1095 days. The only thing could be the timezone. A couple of times when I crossed the border around 10 PM it came up as next day entry. May be they were using Eastern time for standardization.

If I were to do day trips, I would always try to make sure I enter Canada before 9PM Pacific time.

The good thing about entry and exit is that even if you were present inside Canada for 1 hour during the 24 hours of the day, you get counted for 1 full day. Again, timezone could be a thing to consider especially for folks on the West coast.

My understanding is that we should use the local time when crossing a border to count / document the date for travel journal.

In my CBSA FOIA report, all is in EST. I think that is just standardization for display.