Citizenship Application Query - Advice please!

Hi all,

My partner (Australian) citizen has applied in July 07 for his citizenship by naturalisation. As you all know the processing time of 30 months doesn't help anyone in anyway!
I have two issues which I hope you mght be able to help me with. From reading posts on this site, I think my partner will be refused citizenship initally becuase of the 12 month continuous residence rule - due to delays with work permits and the GNIB telling him NOT to get his stamp until he had his permit, there is a lapse of almost 3 weeks. (I notice the dept. only started telling people about this recently too!).
Anyway, would you guys suggest contacting the dept. now to see if he should re-apply next year rather than wait 3 years to be told, or is there a chance they might actually be lenient??? (anyone any experience of this???)

Secondly, we were very hopeful to go travelling for a year. If we put in an application, do we actually have to be in the country for it to be processed??? I understand about commitment to living here... but surely the whole point of applying the first place is that you intend to return/stay here? Is travel during processing allowed? I ask this, knowing that work permits will expire etc. I haven't seen anything which doesn't allow this? At the end of the day, if you're family was in one corner of the world and they were sick and you went to be with them for a year, can they really turn around and say that you were not committed to living in the state??

To be honest, I'm beginning to wonder if we should even bother... but so frustrated that we are meeting their requirements, but the dept. can't even have the decency to process an application within a REASONABLE amount of time?

Guys, any help at all would be much appreciated!

Thanks

This is from another old post:

http://www.immigrationboards.com/postin ... st&p=93226

I've learned the hard way the difference in calculating the "Reckonable Residency" for the two application processes.

All depends on the stamps you have in the passport, be careful to send them the best xerox copy you can make of your passport and work permits.


For Naturalization:

The period is calculated in months (60 months), on any stamp you have in the passport from a immigration official (in the airport or GNIB, even under a visitor visa, but not a student visa).
Every month counts as full month, even if you have only few days in that month, covered by the stamp.
You need 48 months in the last eight years (non continuous) and another last 12 months continuous. In total 60 months with the last 12 months continuous.
The last 12 months are calculated backwards from the date (from the month) they've acknowledged the application (they will count the months, again not the days).
Few days missing from a month doesn't equal to a month missing.
What it means is that, a few days missing in a month will still add the full month to your reckonable residence no problem, but the missing days will brake your continuous residence.
It is important that in the last year, not to have a break in residence, you need 12 months continuous residence with no gap between one stamp and the another (the second stamp for example has to begin exactly when the last one stopped)

My wife got refused for missing a period of a month and a half in her last 12 months, last year.
Initially I didn't apply for her naturalization due to the same reason, weeks and weeks of gaps between stamps due to delayed work permits and when I did, it was too late, she had a gap anyway.

You can send your application as it is and they will answer back in max. two months, you might be lucky.
Anyway you have nothing to lose if you apply and get refused.

Mendo

P.S With the waiting times for naturalization increasing, I think that for someone applying in 2008 or late 2008, is going to take at least 5 years to get it (at the moment the naturalization process is fast approaching the 3 year waiting time ).
If I am lucky and I get my Irish citizenship this year, I might have to consider going to UK for my wife, instead of taking the Irish route for her.
At least there, my wife has real chances to get the citizenship after the initial five years, in within a couple of weeks.
I hate to know that we will have to wait in Ireland, God know how, for her application.
Unfortunately it would mean to sell the house here and find a job in UK and then relocate there, a process that scares me a little bit.

Regards,

Mendo
________
Lamborghini Cheetah

Hi Mendo,

thanks for your reply... its so sad to hear so many people going through the same thing, be it citizenship or residency or asylum. I really wonder do they care what they are putting people through at all sometimes, especially considering when its a civil servant pen pusher (apologies to civil servants.. but some of you do yourselves no favours).

It's almost 5 and a half months so I'm wondering have they missed the gap in the 12 months residency or are willing to overlook it. We live in hope! I agree with you completely re the UK... it's weird, I have more rights as an Irish and EU citizen to a private life with dignity in the UK than I do in the country of my own birth.

Now that is sad...