Police Clearance Certificates for Express Entry Invitation To Apply Application

After filing a profile and getting an impressive CRS score, you are likely to receive an ITA. Candidates who receive an ITA are given 90 days to gather all their documents and complete their application for permanent residence. One of the documents that you will be required to submit is a police clearance certificate. If you have family members who are listed in your application, even if they’re not accompanying you, you’ll need to submit police clearance certificate for them too. This clearance certificate is not only for your home country but you also have to submit one for every country you’ve been to for at least 6 months from the age of 18.

What’s a police clearance certificate?

This document is considered critical in your immigration application because it provides some level of proof that the applicant hasn’t been involved in any form of criminal activity. It helps the immigration officials to sieve out candidates with a criminal record from their pool of candidates. In other countries, it may be popularly known as a certificate of good conduct or judicial record extract. It is the same document required by the Canadian immigration authorities even though it has different names in other territories or countries.

Getting a valid police clearance certificate

It is important to ensure that the police clearance certificate submitted to the immigration authority is valid. The IRCC will consider this document valid only if it was issued within 6 months from when the application for permanent residence was submitted. This means that even if your police clearance certificate is considered valid for one year after being issued in your home country, it may still be deemed invalid by the IRCC. Hiring a representative in the form of an Express Entry lawyer Canada will help you to ensure the certificate you submit is valid. For instance, your lawyer may advise you to wait until you receive an ITA in order to apply for a police clearance certificate. The IRCC can even grant an extension if you have already applied for the police clearance certificate but it takes longer than the 90 days required to submit your application for permanent residence. You just have to prove that you’ve already applied for the certificate.

When does a police clearance certificate apply?

If you have been to several countries for a period of 6 or more months since turning 18 then you will be required to show a police clearance certificate for each country. It doesn’t matter whether you were in the country for small periods of time, so long as the total amount of time you spent is more than 6 months, you will be required to submit a police clearance certificate from that country. Other factors such as making sure the document is translated to English or French must also be considered.

Where to get this document

The police clearance certificate is provided by different authorities depending on the country or region it’s being issued. It’s usually given by the local police or government. You may be required to provide information such as your photographs, fingerprints, and dates when you were in a particular country as well as pay a processing fee to get this certificate. Your immigration lawyer Canada will advise on how to go about getting this document in different countries.