CIC Closing Applications Of Unresponsive Applicants

07 Sep 2013

Citizenship applications of unresponsive applicants are being closed by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) in an effort to speed up application processing and reduce its backlog.

Postmedia News lists some factors in a new article that could be used to regulate which applications are dormant according to which:

Individuals who fail to attend multiple scheduled citizenship interviews or tests, CIC will shut their files. Applications submitted on or after April 17, 2009 will also be considered dormant and closed if the applicants fail to provide proof of residency even after receiving two notices to do so from the government.

Andrea Khanjin, spokeswoman of CIC, told Postmedia News that 54,000 citizenship applicants failed to show up for their citizenship test in just the last 3 years and that CIC estimates around 12,000 files will be closed under the new procedures.

Khanjin said that the application processing of citizenship will favor those who make an effort to comply with the process requirements over those who do not.

She said that individuals who take their citizenship seriously will not have to wait in line behind those that do not bother showing up to their citizenship test, interview, or who do not respond to a residence questionnaire. She insisted that the process of citizenship application has been bogged down for too long by people that do not take Canadian citizenship seriously.

Citizenship application processing times have increased from 12 to 15 months in 2008 to 23 months in April of this year. This is leading to more funding being allotted by the federal government for the processing of citizenship application and, now, an effort to reduce the backlog of 350,000 applications by closing dormant files.

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