when can i apply for citizenship??

[maria a]

Hey there,

I have lived in canada for the past 13 years and i became a PR on april 2011. Since ive became an PR ive been out of country for about 2 years... on the website it says that i have to be in canada for 3 years within four years. Does the three year have to be from the day i became a PR???

 

[Msafiri]

You need 1095 days (3 years) of physical presence in the 4 years prior to the application. You can get a credit of a half day for each day of physical presence up to 1 year before becoming a PR but require a minimum of 2 years of PR time. This usually works for say a student or someone on a work permit i.e they use 2 years of Non PR time = 1 year + 2 years of PR time i.e. total of 3 years.

Because you've been out of Canada for the 2 years since PR acquisition you can't apply for Citizenship and as your timeline has moved you can't use the NPR time. You will have to make up the 2 years of absence plus the additional year required . You need to be careful not to breach your PR residence obligation (RO) which only counts PR time. This RO is that you have 730 days of physical presence in the 5 year period to your landing anniversary and every 5 year rolling period thereafter.

In summary you should now be worrying about your PR not Citizenship. The current residence requirements for Citizenship are acknowledged as rather generous at a short 3 years and its bound to change sooner rather than later. Get your physical presence days ASAP is the message.

 

[scylla]

Agreed with Msafiri. Since you have now been away from Canada for three years, any time you spent in Canada previously can no longer be counted towards citizenship. Once you return to Canada, you will have to live in Canada for another three years (within a four year period) before you will qualify to apply for citizenship. So if you returned to Canada right now, the earliest you could possibly qualify for citizenship is December 2016.

And as Msafiri said, you need to make sure you spend enough time in Canada to meet the PR residency requirement of 2 years out of 5.

 

[Leon]

I have lived in canada for the past 13 years and i became a PR on april 2011. Since ive became an PR ive been out of country for about 2 years... on the website it says that i have to be in canada for 3 years within four years. Does the three year have to be from the day i became a PR???

Msafiri has already answered your question but I'd like to add that it has to be within the past 4 years so even if time before PR were counted in full which it isn't, it would still be impossible for you to have 3 years in Canada within the past 4 if you were outside Canada for 2 out of those past 4 years.

Depending on when you spent time outside Canada and when you returned, you could possibly count some of the 7 months you spent in Canada so far towards your citizenship. If you spent 7 months in Canada right after you landed and then left for 2 years and just returned, you will have to spend a full 3 years in Canada before you can apply for citizenship because the 7 months you had stayed after your landing would not fall within the 4 year period any more by the time you are ready to apply. If you spent 2 years outside right after landing and then came back in April and spent 7 months from April until now, you would be able to count them towards your citizenship and apply for it after another 2 yrs. 5 months. Just as long as when you apply for citizenship, you can look back at the past 4 years and say that you have 1095 days in Canada.

Scylla warned you about the PR requirements and she is right too. If you have already been outside for 2 years, you have another year you could stay outside and then you risk losing your PR.