Eligibility

To be eligible for the NEXUS, you must be a citizen or permanent resident of Canada or the United States.

Effective June 30, 2012, Canadian and American citizens living outside of Canada or the United States or who have recently returned to either country and have not previously been able to meet the three-year residency requirement are now eligible to apply.

In addition, certain permanent residents are also exempted from the three-year residency requirement. For further information on any of the above, please consult Customs Notices 12-020 and 10-025 to see if these exemptions apply to you.

You may not qualify if one of the following applies:

you are inadmissible to Canada or the United States under applicable immigration laws;
you intentionally provide false or incomplete information on your application;
you have been convicted of a serious criminal offence in any country for which you have not received a pardon (for U.S. background checks you may be questioned about your full criminal history, including arrests and pardons, which may exclude you from NEXUS);
you have a recorded violation of customs, immigration or agriculture law; or
you fail to meet other requirements of NEXUS.
Both Canada and the United States must approve your application for you to become a member of NEXUS. If you do not meet all of the requirements, your application wnied.

7. Paragraph 6(f) says that, during the three-year period preceding the day on which the application was received, an applicant to the NEXUS program must have resided in Canada or the United States, or—if the person is a citizen of Canada or the United States serving at a Canadian or American diplomatic mission or consular post in a foreign country—in that foreign country.