Minister of National Security and Labour Dr Errol Cort said persons who applied for citizenship years ago but have not received word on their application likely have gaps in their required seven year residency that has affected their submission.
Dr Cort said the stipulation in the law that requires seven- year residency for citizenship to be continuous is causing problems for the Immigration Department and Passport Office.
“The challenge is as follows: the law requires that the applications, those who are applying in terms of residency, years of residing in the country, that is a minimum of seven years, those individuals would have to of been lawfully residing in the country for that period. Now a number of folks seem not be aware that if you leave the country during that period and you come back you break your seven year cycle,” Dr Cort said.
“If you leave the country or if you remain in the country but you don’t go into immigration to update your status and allow your time to lapse and then you go in and you pay and you get a further stamp there is a breakage in your time,” Dr Cort added.
The minister of national security said recent legal advice given to the Immigration Department suggests that even a short – term vacation qualifies as a gap that could break the seven- year residency required.
“The department was operating on the basis where they would give you a six month leeway over that period where you may have travelled, that was how they were operating, they have been legally advised more recently where the law operates in a more rigid level,” Dr Cort said.
“We have, I am advised, almost 500 applications or so where you have this break in the time, so those persons going back to maybe ‘06 and ‘07 who have not heard anything, some of them may fall into that category,” Dr Cort added.
The minister of national security said the Immigration Department began informing persons that their applications had been denied because of these gaps, but halted the process so they could first identify the gaps to the applicants.
“The department started to send out letters to individuals saying you don’t qualify and I believe at least 75 letters went out but they have now held off because they need to put themselves in the position to be able to answer further questions,” Dr Cort said.
“When you send somebody a letter saying you don’t qualify because there are gaps the first response is ‘I am not aware of any gaps,’ so you need to be able to say with a degree of specificity ‘listen, you were out of the country between this and this period’,” Dr Cort added.
Meanwhile, Dr Cort said the Cabinet is currently reviewing whether short term vacations should disqualify a persons from citizenship based on residency.
“For example, in the seven year period you went somewhere out of the country for a vacation for a month, should that disqualify you? And that is a challenge that we are currently dealing with,” Dr Cort said.
“This whole issue of being out of the country for short periods should that go against you in terms of your application, and that is an issue that the Cabinet is currently looking at,” Dr Cort added.
(Source http://www.antiguaobserver.com/?p=67774)
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