Luolan

Hello All,

I just stumbled across this wonderful website while trying to get some answers regarding my permanent residence application (I just got married to a Canadian citizen and he's sponsoring my application). I've been trying to get through to someone at CIC for two days now, but the line is always busy - I hope someone here can help me!

So, my question:

The CIC website says that you need to provide a police certificate for any country in which you've lived for more than six consecutive months, but the Appendix A Document Checklist states that you need a police certificate for each country in which you have resided for six months or more.

Does anybody know which is correct?

To illustrate my problem:

In 2007/8 I studied in China for a year. I spent 5 months there, then went home for 2 months, then returned for another 5.

In 2009/10 I studied in France for 5 months. Then I went home for 6 months, then I returned to France for another 2 months.

So while I wasn't resident in either of these countries for 6 consecutive months, I was there for more than 6.

Any help with this conundrum would be greatly appreciated!

Certainly, I'll keep trying the CIC phoneline and post their answer in case anyone else here is curious (though I may go mad first).

Thanks again!

Luolan

I finally got hold of someone at CIC, but the answer wasn't overly helpful.

I was told that while technically you are only required to provide police certificates for countries in which you have lived in for six consecutive months, in reality the discretion lies with the person assessing your PR application.

So even if you have not lived somewhere for six months consecutively, if you have lived there for more than six months in total, you could potentially be asked to provide a police certificate.

Has anyone else had this problem? And what did you do about it?

Jim Humphries

In this case it is better to be safe than sorry.

Luolan

That's true in most cases I would say, but a Chinese police certificate is a tricky one to get hold of

helcat12

I think the reason that you are asked if your stay is 6 months or more is because if you are there 6 months or more then usually you will have had to apply for some status other than that of visitor.

I would suggest that if you have been abroad for more than 6 months with a status other than a visitor, even if there was a gap and each individual stay was less than 6 months, then you should try to get a Police check.

I am no expert but just trying to apply some logic to the situation.