kelapstick

I recently (five months ago) applied for NEXUS, and received a notification (via email) that I was denied by the CBSA, with a letter to follow. Twenty days later I received my letter, which said I was denied because I had not been living continuously in Canada or the United States for three years (this is correct). However I had read that the three year residency requirement had been lifted (as shown here). I was told I had 30 days of the notification to appeal the denial (in writing) to CBSA. I did so, mailing a letter with the explanation, and a copy of the CBSA website explaining that the requirement had been lifted in 2012.

Has anyone else (recently) had this issue of denial because of non-residence for three years?

seawolf

It does not appear the residency requirement was ever lifted as NEXUS eligibility (6.1 (a) in Presentation of Persons still refers to 6(f). 6(f) is the residency requirement. It appears that only FAST and CDRP programs have no residency requirement.

kelapstick

That is interesting, so the Canadian NEXUS eligibility requirements are linked back to the CANPASS requirements.

So what it looks like is they announced the repeal in 2012, but never removed the requirement from the Presentation of Persons (2003) Regulations (last amended in 2008). I will see how this plays out.

kelapstick

So, per above, I wrote to CBSA with a copy of their website saying the requirement had been lifted. About a month later with a little bit of time to kill at YHZ, I dropped into the NEXUS office and chatted with CBSA about it, they said the couldn't really do anything on their end (which I am willing to accept at face value) but did take the time to look into my application.

A few days later (today) I received a letter from CBSA saying that my appeal was successful, and being a Canadian citizen I was exempt from the requirement to live in Canada or the US for three years prior to application, and I was accepted into the program (conditional acceptance presumably as I haven't spoken with CBP yet) ^

They also said that it would take time to reactivate my file in Ottawa (the letter came from Montreal). We will see how long that takes. The letter was dated 19 November and it arrived 18 December. Either way, I am happy the appeal worked. I also emailed my MP about the Presentation of Persons act requiring updating to match the update NEXUS requirements.

clearly

A mistake appears to have been made. While the regulations appear not to be updated, the CBSA issues Customs Notices when they want to make a change immediately. The idea of a Customs Notice is to say the change is made effective immediately, and we'll get around to making the actual regulations later because they take years to get onto the Governor-General's desk.

You can see the notice here:
http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/publicati...2-020-eng.html

kelapstick

Interesting, I had not seen the customs notice proposing the change to the presentation of persons act, just the news release that it had been implemented (linked above). I am sure it was just an honest mistake by the person reviewing it, although I was surprised that after nearly exactly two years the reviewer was not aware of the change. Thanks for the link.

kelapstick

And here we are in March, and I just received conditional approval, with interview set up in April. Not quite a year, but close

Yoshi212

For a government that is pretty impressive, sadly. Be sure to bring that paperwork with you to the interview in case it arises again.