Down­town Build­ings Reflecting

So here I was, this morn­ing, try­ing to remem­ber which province joined the Con­fed­er­a­tion last (in case you want to know, it’s New­found­land in 1949).

I stud­ied for the exam the pre­vi­ous day, using the book­let the CIC sent me, A Look At Canada. I also took some free online prac­tice tests, such as Say I Love Canada. I guess I knew quite a lot about Canada already, but I’m one of those peo­ple who can’t show up at an exam with­out actu­ally prepar­ing it before­hand. I’d be way to ner­vous. Study­ing and learn­ing make me feel con­fi­dent — yes, I know, I’m bor­ing.

I was a bit stressed out about the admin­is­tra­tive part of the test though. To apply for per­ma­nent res­i­dence, you need – among other require­ments – to have at least 1095 days of phys­i­cal pres­ence in Canada at the time of your appli­ca­tion. Cal­cu­lat­ing days of pres­ence is a pain in the ass, since you need to sub­tract days you were out­side Canada. Remem­ber­ing the exact dates is not easy, espe­cially over a four years period. Plus, pass­ports are usu­ally stamped when you come back to Canada, not when you leave. I gave a bit of room in my appli­ca­tion to make sure I had enough days.

But I had read that before the cit­i­zen­ship test, pass­ports stamps are checked care­fully by immi­gra­tion offi­cers and that if you seem to have too many stamps, you may be asked to have an inter­view with a judge and/ or fill up a res­i­dency ques­tion­naire to show that you are indeed liv­ing in Canada. I think offi­cials are also get­ting tougher on peo­ple who want to get Cana­dian cit­i­zen­ship but do not plan to stay and live in Canada.

And even though I did noth­ing wrong, I felt bad because my pass­port has so many stamps. The few trips we took to France to see my fam­ily can eas­ily be explained. But French pass­ports are valid for 10 years and I got mine in 2003, so I also have a lot of Cen­tral Amer­ica stamps (from our trav­els before I came to live here). Plus the trip to China last sum­mer and of course, the Cen­tral and South Amer­ica trip this win­ter, with a lot of Argen­tinean and Chilean stamps because we kept on going back and forth in South­ern Patag­o­nia. Throw in a few U.S stamps on top of that and I was afraid I might be misinterpreted.

I could explain and jus­tify every­thing but it seemed like a has­sle. Hence my nervousness.

The test was tech­ni­cally sched­uled at 11:00 am but I arrived ahead of time. There were a lot of peo­ple in the wait­ing room already and nobody showed up at the last minute. I guess we were all a bit nervous.

I had to bring my pass­port, per­ma­nent res­i­dent card, my orig­i­nal land­ing immi­grant doc­u­ment (IMM5292), two pieces if ID and the notice to appear to the test. One by one, we gave the doc­u­ments to an offi­cer. I was sur­prised to see that so many peo­ple didn’t bring the right doc­u­ments or were miss­ing some IDs, but the offi­cer seemed to be used to it.

Back to the wait­ing room, we were called one by one for a short inter­view. I was asked where I worked, for how long etc.. I assume all the offi­cers were bilin­gual but the inter­view was in Eng­lish, which I did not mind.

I heard some other appli­cants who strug­gled with their lan­guage skilled and for some, fur­ther ques­tions were asked. Where were the kids going to school, do you vol­un­teer some­where, what do you study etc.

My pass­port stamps or absences were not checked in front of me (but I’m sure the offi­cer at a look at my pass­port before call­ing me) and no ques­tions were asked.

After the inter­view, we all pro­ceeded in the room and were given a clip­board and a pen­cil. Fur­ther instruc­tions were given in both offi­cial lan­guages. The test was also avail­able in French but nobody asked for it. I had stud­ied the book in Eng­lish and once again, I did not care which lan­guage I used.

There were 20 mul­ti­ple choices ques­tions, the pass mark being 12/20. How­ever, it was com­pul­sory to answer ques­tions 16 and 17 right (both deal­ing with the elec­tion process) as well as the last 3 ques­tions (all deal­ing with the gov­ern­ment structure).

The test itself is not really dif­fi­cult but some ques­tions are tricky and it is nec­es­sary to learn the book­let. A gen­eral knowl­edge of Canada isn’t enough for ques­tions such as “when did Nunavut become a ter­ri­tory?” or “which provinces joined to form the Con­fed­er­a­tion in 1867?”.

Once the test fin­ish, we just handed back the answer sheet and left.

If appli­cants pass the test and meet cit­i­zen­ship require­ments, the next and final step is the cit­i­zen­ship cer­e­mony. We do not get the test results, basi­cally, if you are invited to the cer­e­mony, it’s all good.

Wish me luck! Should be another few months before the cer­e­mony if every­thing goes well…

Related arti­cles:

1. Cit­i­zen­ship Cer­e­mony In Ottawa
2. The Pros and Cons to Cana­dian Citizenship
3. The “Win An Adspot” Contest
4. Night­mar­ish Bureaucracy
5. 10 Com­mon Immi­gra­tion Ques­tions (8÷10)