I'm preparing my Canadian citizenship application and need clarification on how to record my immigration status history in the Physical Presence section.
Here's my situation:
- Initial Work Permit: January 2021(issued) - January 2023(expired)
- Maintained Status Period: January 2023 - April 2023
- Extended Work Permit(with the same employer): April 2023 - April 2026
- Permanent Residence (eCoPR): August 2025
My questions are:
1. How many records of Temporary Foreign Worker I should submit: one or two.
a. One: Should I create one continuous record covering the entire period from January 2021 to August 2025 (including extension date)?
b: Two: 1 record of Temporary Foreign Worker issued on Jan 2021 and expired in Jan 2023 and another one issued on Apr 2021 and expired with the last date in Aug 2025.
2. How should I properly document the "maintained status" period (January 2023 - April 2023) in the application?
3. For my wife, the situation is more complicated since her work permit is extended twice. So in her case, does she require 1 or 2 or 3 records of Temporary Foreign Worker?
I will not attempt to specifically answer your questions as such given how complicated it is, requiring navigating the physical presence calculation based on the specific details in your particular cases(s).
I will caution, nonetheless, that it would be a good idea to apply with a substantial buffer over and above the number of days credit claimed for any periods of implied, extended, or maintained status.
For example: if the physical presence calculation includes a period of extended status (period of implied or maintained status) for March 1, 2023 to May 19, 2023 (40 days physical presence credit based on 80 days in Canada with temporary resident status), wait to apply based on having 1165 days credit in the physical presence calculation, OR LONGER. That is, apply with an additional 40 day buffer over and above a typically sufficient buffer of 30 days; stated another way, that is 30 days buffer as is prudent for most applicants plus another 40 days to cover the credit for the period with implied status.
If you do that, if you apply with a buffer to cover the implied status period, how you report days with status in the physical presence calculation should not matter much so long as you are honest and not deceptive.
Explanation:
Periods in Canada with implied status should count but it is far from clear how IRCC approaches such periods in some cases. It appears that in some cases (just
SOME cases, not all, and at this stage which or otherwise how many is unclear), at least in the initial completeness screening step, IRCC does not recognize temporary resident status that is based on implied, extended, or maintained status. Explaining why this happens (or what appears to be why) is a bit complicated (I have gone into some depth about this in previous posts) but the gist of it is that absent a formal grant of status denoted in GCMS, no credit is given for periods of temporary resident status that is not verified by GCMS.
Again, this appears to only affect some applicants and may only be a problem in the completeness screening stage. In these cases, where there is no credit given for periods during which the applicant had what has usually been described as "
implied" status, if not counting these days results in being short of meeting the physical presence requirement, the application is returned as incomplete.
Waiting to apply only AFTER the applicant meets the physical presence requirement without counting implied or maintained status days will, of course, avoid having the application returned as incomplete. The applicant can and should still include, in their physical presence calculation, all those days that the applicant is confident they did in fact have temporary resident status. Again, IRCC should give credit for such days.
Otherwise Documenting Status or Contesting the Count:
As noted, periods of maintained or implied status should count. Applicants can push to have their application processed and approved even if IRCC initially returns the application as incomplete because credit for a period of implied status was not counted. For the vast majority of prospective applicants, however, this would end up taking much, much longer (maybe a year longer) than it would take by waiting to apply without relying on credit for that period. So I don't try to explain how to best insist on getting credit in these situations, other than to note that is about meeting the applicant's burden of proof (since IRCC does not readily allow the credit given the absence of proof for it in GCMS).
I do not fully understand some aspects of your query here, but it appears you might be asking how to submit additional information or documentation in order to get credit for periods of maintained status. I am not sure, for example, what you mean by how many "
records of Temporary Foreign Worker" you should submit in contrast to how to report status in the physical presence calculation. If, however, you are asking what additional documents or explanation to include with the application in order to be confident you will get proper credit, it is worth noting that just including additional information or documentation that is not specifically requested as part of the application process is itself taking the application out of routine processing, making it what IRCC now appears to be describing as a "
complex" application. How much that will add to the processing time is difficult to forecast, but I would suggest that it is likely to be longer than waiting to apply without relying on credit for the period of implied/maintained status.
