How to provide PCC from different countries at the same time

[Punxsutawney]

Dear all,
I would be grateful to you if you could help me and clarify the issue of police clearance certificates (PCC).

I have the following problem. As far as I understood the PCC is treated valid for 3 months only. I need to provide the PCC from several countries. At least in two of them the procedure of issuing the clearance lasts between 1 and 6 months from the date of request.

How to have them all valid at the same time when applying?

Has any one of you already faced the same problem?

 

[rjessome]

Dear all,
I would be grateful to you if you could help me and clarify the issue of police clearance certificates (PCC).

I have the following problem. As far as I understood the PCC is treated valid for 3 months only. I need to provide the PCC from several countries. At least in two of them the procedure of issuing the clearance lasts between 1 and 6 months from the date of request.

How to have them all valid at the same time when applying?

Has any one of you already faced the same problem?

PCCs cannot be more than 3 months old when submitted to CIC. You have a couple of choices. You can apply for the ones that take the longest first and then the others around the time you expect to receive the slow ones so that they are all received relatively close to the same time (so same validity) and then apply with all of them. Or, you can apply with as many as you can get and then provide proof that the others have been requested and will be sent to the visa post as soon as they are received.

 

[Punxsutawney]

Dear rjessome,
thank you very much for your prompt reply. It sounds very reasonable and I will certainly try to combine two ways you suggest.


I am not sure which country will take more time, so I will apply for all the PCC's. As soon as I collect some I will apply with what I have and provide proof that the others have been requested and will be sent to the visa office as soon as they are received.

Your idea is great, thanx again, but now I have one more question. Do you know how this will affect the аpplication process?

 

[rjessome]

Dear rjessome,
thank you very much for your prompt reply. It sounds very reasonable and I will certainly try to combine two ways you suggest.


I am not sure which country will take more time, so I will apply for all the PCC's. As soon as I collect some I will apply with what I have and provide proof that the others have been requested and will be sent to the visa office as soon as they are received.

Your idea is great, thanx again, but now I have one more question. Do you know how this will affect the аpplication process?

Affect in what way? Not supplying them all at once or that you have lived in several countries? Not supplying them all at once will mean that you have outstanding information to supply upon their request. The way to keep them happy is keep paper trails of EVERYTHING that you can show to CIC if you are having difficulty with one or two countries. They want these PCCs and will make you work very hard to get them so be prepared to show your work. As soon as you get them, send them using a trackable mail/courier method.

Living in several different countries can present challenges regarding CIC being able to obtain security checks because it depends on how responsive and cooperative the other countries are with CSIS. Some are great and normally pretty fast (USA, UK, Morocco, Australia, etc.) and some are not (Saudia Arabia, Iran, etc.). Some are also very unstable with no real infrastructure in place anymore (Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Zimbabwe, etc.). Those challenges often make the process longer. But it's difficult (practically impossible) to predict with 100% accuracy.

BTW, I'm using the above countries as EXAMPLES only. I'm not making a statement about any country nor am I saying that obtaining security clearance will ALWAYS be easier or more difficult for any particular country. As soon as I say that, someone will talk about their experience with a US security check taking forever or how fast it was for Iran!

 

[Punxsutawney]

You helped me a lot, thank you very much!

 

[waitingintz]

@Punx

We had the same issue... and are STILL trying to work our way around it. You can usually get a time estimate on how long it should take. We had one police check expire but the police were accommodating enough to just re-issue the letter rather than re-doing the whole check. Our last clearance is still outstanding and seems to have disappeared. Unfortunately it ends up being the ones you don't expect a problem with that go horribly wrong (Zimbabwe check took 2 weeks, SA check has already taken 3 months and we still don't have it though they finished it 6 weeks ago and told us it's clear) so working out the timing can be pretty difficult.

Just remember that once the application is submitted, you have to wait for your AOR (with barcodes) before you can submit additional documents so there could be a 1 - 3 month gap when you can't submit. Also, once the documents are requested you'll generally be given 90 days to submit so if some checks say up to 6 months be sure to request them early!

Hope your's works out better than ours!

 

[Punxsutawney]

Thank you for your effort and very useful information! I was kind of relieved when I read. Being afraid of complications, thought of all the bad things that might happen. I see now that complications are usual in this process, It seems that everyone experience it.

I hope that you will finish everything as soon as possible, good luck!