Citizenship Refusals

Requirements for citizenship are provided under s. 5(1) of the Citizenship Act and include the following main factors:

  1. The applicant must be over the age of eighteen
  2. The applicant must be a permanent resident, and within the four years immediately preceding the date of his or her application must have resided in Canada for at least three years
  3. The applicant must also have an adequate knowledge of English or French and of the responsibilities and privileges of Canadian citizenship.

These requirements are anticipated to change in 2015, as the Citizenship Act was amended by Parliament in June 2014. For more information on filing a citizenship application and upcoming changes, please click here.

CITIZENSHIP REFUSAL – NEXT STEPS

If your application for Canadian citizenship is refused, this decision may be appealed to the Federal Court of Canada. The first step in the appeal process involves filing a Notice of Application to the Federal Court within 30 days of receipt of the decision from Citizenship. This timeline is very important.

For more information on the Federal Court process, please click here.

Depending upon why your citizenship application was refused, a new application for citizenship may be your best option. This can occur when you were not actually in Canada for three years, depending on the legal test applied by the Citizenship Judge. We can review the decision and advise on the strength of a Federal Court challenge.

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Important Immigration Court Decisions


What Our Clients Are Saying
James Christie
Lisa Fletcher
I am thankful that I was able to use the services of Bellissimo Law Group. Hannah, my immigration attorney, walked me through every step and answered every question I had. The process was made so much easier with her help and we achieved success! I am now a Canadian citizen! Thank you, Hannah and the team at Bellissimo.
Abeer Malik
My mother’s super visa was initially rejected when I applied on my own. However, with the help of lawyer Lijing Cao and immigration consultant Shuai Dong, her visa was successfully approved. They did an amazing job the entire process was seamless, and their communication was always prompt and professional. I highly recommend them 100%!
ARAFAT MUNSHI
Really helped me clarify a lot of things.
Nickeisha Delisser
I am deeply grateful to Bellissimo Immigration Law Group PC for assisting me during one of the most challenging periods in my life. When all seemed lost and there was a very high possibility that I might have to leave Canada, they took on my case with such care, professionalism and expertise. They guided me through the federal appeal process with confidence and compassion and secured approval for my permanent status in Canada.
As I have utilised other legal services before Bellissimo, I can assure you, where others fall short, they deliver.
AK
Very helpful and knowledgeable people. You do have to stay on top of things but overall I found them very supportive and involved in my case.
kala Mulqueeny
Mario Bellissimo and Keely Anderson are outstanding professionals. I couldn’t recommend them more and would give 6 stars if I could. My experience with them demonstrated to me why they are so consistently and highly ranked by their peers. I am a New York Attorney and Australian lawyer myself so can be harder to please with legal related services than perhaps others, but this firm was exceptional.

I was assisting a close friend with a Canadian visa application . From our first call with each of them they drilled down into the details of her case and gave more than the allocated time to truly understand the situation prior to providing advice. It was a complicated case and not unreasonably, they indicated the odds of success / failure of a successful visa application were even. But they assured us they would try their darndest to help ! Their experience was obvious and they imbued confidence in their knowledge of Visa law and procedures as well as how it practically operated within the IRCC.

We had previously contacted three other immigration agents all of whom indicated that without misrepresentating the situation, the odds of my friend getting a visa were very low. A fourth lawyer we had spoken to had recommended an honest pathway to applying, but was very hazy on strategy. We did not feel comfortable with any of them.

Bellísimo recommended we provide the IRCC with full disclosure and an explanation - which is how we proceeded. We then proceeded to comprehensively document the situation and received an extensive supporting legal advice to the IRCC from Bellísimo, which distilled the extensive evidence we were able to gather.

Although we understood there were no guarantees as to success, with Bellísimo lawyers’ guidance we felt rest assured that we ultimately submitted the best possible application and were honest in doing so.

Whilst initially I noted a discrepancy between the fees that the immigration agents charged and those that Bellísimo charged, there is no question that as lawyers, their fees were reasonable and the quality of the work they did was infinitely superior to those of the immigration agents. I definitively believe we got value for money and their fees were reasonable for the work and effort provided.

Ultimately the application was successful. We were thrilled.

We feel indebted to Keely and Mario for their assistance and unreservedly recommend them individually and their firm for outstanding immigration law advice.