Don’t let your citizenship application be abandoned
Citizenship and Immigration Canada is abandoning certain citizenship applications
The bad news: as of September 2013, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is closing – abandoning – so-called “dormant” citizenship applications. For the purposes citizenship applications, “dormant” means that you have missed your citizenship test of interview with a citizenship judge and have not responded to a “final notice” sent to you giving you a certain length of time to contact IRCC to give reasons for missing your test or interview. If you have failed to submit a residence questionnaire that was sent to you, your application will also be abandoned.
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If you are in this situation, you need to contact CIC as soon as possible with a legitimate reason as to why you missed your test or interview. Such reasons include:
- “being away to care for a dying parent;
- inability to appear as a result of health constraints following an illness or accident; or
- waiting for the arrival of documents requested from a third-party” (residence questionnaire cases only).
If you do not provide such a reason to CIC in the time allowed your application will be abandoned.
The good news: if you have followed all citizenship application procedures, your application may indeed be processed faster than the standard 25 months, due to other applications being abandoned.
