The final bits of paperwork

About a month ago, I sent in Alex’s Canadian Citizenship paperwork – finally.  It was postponed for so many reasons since November (the earliest we could apply): H1N1, Christmas, moving, address changes etc., – but it’s done now.  I keep checking the mail for the confirmation letter to know that it was received, but  nothing. 

So I looked up the wait times online:

 Step 1 : The Case Processing Centre (CPC) in Sydney reviews our application to make sure it meets the minimum processing requirements and that the appropriate fee payment is included. Once received and if everything is in order, an acknowledgement letter will be sent.   This step can take 5 months.

 Step 2: The CPC completes a review of our application to make sure you meet all processing requirements and have included the required documents.  Once this done, we can check the citizenship application status online.  This step can take yet another month, so up to 6 months from appliacation sent. 

Step 3:  If our application is complete, the CPC will send it to the CIC office nearest to our home for further processing. The CIC office completes the steps necessary for a citizenship judge to make a decision on our application.  This step will be completed in approximately 9 to 12 months from the time our application was initially received in step 1.

 Step 4:  If we meet all the requirements for citizenship, they will notify us by mail of the time and place of your citizenship ceremony.   This step will be completed in approximately 13 to 16 months from the time our application was received in step 1.  

In other words it might take yet another 4 months to hear anything.  So I won’t be rushing out to check the mail daily any more 🙂

On the citizenship note, we applied for Alex through the naturalization process, rather than the normal citizenship route.  We did this because in April 2009, the law changed to limit citizenship by descent to one generation born outside Canada. So in other words, under thew new rules, if Alex moves outside of Canada, to say, Chicago, to marry Olive, and they have a child (wouldn’t he or she be cute?!), then that child would not automatically have Canadian Citizenship like any other child would.  So, by applying through the naturalization process, we don’t have to worry about that.  So until citizenship is received, Alex will continue using his Korean passport – like for our trip to BOSTON this summer!!