Regarding Background Checks: Clearances
Overall, generally, most applicants are not likely to encounter any more than minimal delays due to background clearances. Some will, most will not.
There are three formal clearances (background checks) required for grant citizenship applicants.
These are: GCMS; RCMP; and CSIS
They are essentially, respectively:
GCMS: immigration (confirmation of status and admissibility)
RCMP: criminal background, which can be more robust than just the name-record criminal history check, which probably means it can involve queries beyond arrest and disposition records, such as into whether any law enforcement body is conducting an investigation or the individual is a suspect or has known connections to those known to be involved in criminality (the name-record criminal history check is done periodically throughout the process, and is similar to one often conducted during any secondary examination at a POE, and it is mostly a query run against an arrest and dispositions database based on individual's name and date-of-birth)
CSIS: security background (while obviously the scope of this is not public information, it is readily recognized that it at least involves queries into intelligence sourced databases, and other government security databases, which might reveal activity or ties related to organized crime, terrorist organizations, suspect military history)
These clearances are all requested by CPC-Sydney upon the application being placed "in process." The RCMP and CSIS requests are done by referral to, obviously, the RCMP and CSIS. (Thus, the RCMP and CSIS clearances are not done by CIC, but by referral to the respective government body.)
Previously, for sure, and probably still the case, the fact that clearances are outstanding does not preclude the application moving to the next step in the process until the test/interview step. It appears clear, though, that any outstanding clearance will delay scheduling the test/interview; note that other participants have recently reported receiving letters specifically indicating their scheduling for the test/interview "may be delayed if security, criminal and immigration background checks are not complete."
In this regard, however, there may be a difference between whether the original clearance, in response to the referral from CPC-Sydney, is complete, in contrast to an expired clearance which is in need of an update.
For sure, clearances will be need to be current, and thus those expired need to be updated, before the oath will be scheduled.
Updating Clearances
Where the required clearances have been obtained, and are part of the file, the process for updating expired clearances should not involve much of a delay to further processing unless there has been something which triggers a more extensive check since the original one. The referrals for updated clearances are done in batches, up to one hundred applicants in a single referral, and the process appears to be largely perfunctory.
The problem for some applicants, as alluded to by EasyRider, is that it is very difficult to ascertain whether the original CSIS (security) clearance has been obtained. When CIC refers to possible delays if "clearances . . . are not complete" they do not distinguish between an original clearance still being outstanding (not obtained) versus the need to update one that has expired.
Most applicants have little reason to anticipate the background checks will cause much of a delay, at least not those whose cases are approaching a year old or older. Even if the clearances are expired, again the updating process appears to be (for most, not all) somewhat perfunctory, particularly if nothing has changed (no problematic POE encounters, no criminal investigation or charges, no travel to areas of the world tending to raise security issues). Applicants are aware what has been happening in their life and thus most should easily discern if there is much of a chance that an admissibility, criminal, or security concern might be lurking when the respective agency does the background update. (Applicants who have recently traveled to Yemen, for example, might anticipate there could be some delay in updating their CSIS clearance; the applicant who has a former roommate or business associate who has ended up on a no-fly list, anticipate a delay; and so on.)
Some applicants will suffer delays related to the RCMP or CSIS background checks. And, again, it is difficult to know if the original CSIS clearance has been completed or not, and it appears that for some this can be outstanding for quite some time, as in years. This is an area that CIC is most secretive about and CSIS is even more secretive, but my sense is that the delays, if there is one (again, this only affects some applicants, probably not a large number), are often related to CSIS making a referral to an overseas office for further inquiry, and the delays derived from that . . . whether a referral to a non-Canadian government body is involved, and thus there is no control on compelling a timely response, is not clear but seems to be a likely suspect.
The main take-away, though, is that for the large majority of applicants, particularly those for whom there was no delay involved in obtaining the security clearance in their original PR application process, by the time they are a year into the process all the clearances should be initially complete, so only an update of expired clearances would need to be made before proceeding to the test or oath, and those are routinely done in batch-processing, so usually (which is not always) this is not something which delays things much at all. (Although, I suppose by the time a year and a half has slipped into the past, another two months or so may seem like a significant delay.)
Moguce je da su otisli na godisnji, pa su mozda zato i pozurili svima da daju MR odjednom, pre pocetka leta.
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