Posted on May 18 2015
On January 12, 2014, I previously reported that Citizenship and Immigration Canada (“CIC”) had published a Notice of Intent in the Canada Gazette. This Notice of Intent indicated CIC’s intention to introduce an Electronic Travel Authorization (“eTA”) Program in Canada.
The eTA program is a result of the Canada-United States Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness Action Plan (the “Action Plan”). The Action Plan requires Canada and the United States to establish a common approach to screening visa-exempt foreign nationals, in order to identify threats before they arrive in the North American perimeter. The eTA Program will be similar to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (“ESTA”) Program, which currently applies to foreign nationals who enter the United States under the Visa Waiver Program.
On April 1, 2015, CIC published regulations (the “eTA Regulations”) in the Canada Gazette. These eTA Regulations will come into force at 12:00 p.m. Eastern time, on August 1, 2015.
At that time, the online application will be available and eTA processing will begin. However, in order to minimize impacts on the traveling public, travelers will be exempted from the eTA requirement until March 15, 2016. In other words, CIC will begin accepting online eTA applications on August 1, 2015, but travelers will not actually be barred from entering Canada until March 15, 2016.
The normal procedure to apply for an eTA will be through the online application form. However, persons with physical or mental disabilities will be allowed to submit an application by another means that is made available for that purpose, such as a paper application form.
As the eTA Program is only intended to apply to visa-exempt applicants, a foreign national who holds a temporary resident visa is not required to also obtain an eTA. Further, in order to reduce the duplication of information to be provided by visa-exempt foreign nationals, the eTA Regulations consider a visa-exempt foreign national’s application for a work permit or a study permit to constitute an application for an eTA. As a result, visa-exempt applicants who apply for a work permit or study permit will not need to obtain an eTA.
Applicants will pay a $7.00 CAD processing fee electronically in connection with their online eTA application. In circumstances where another application process is used, the fee will be paid when they submit their application. Visa-exempt foreign national’s who are applying for a work permit or study permit will be exempted from this fee.
An eTA will be valid for five years from the day on which it is issued or until the applicant’s passport or travel document expires, whichever comes first. The eTA Regulations also provide an officer with the ability to cancel an eTA that was issued to a foreign national if the officer determines that the foreign national is inadmissible or if the foreign national became subject to a declaration made by the Minister under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
According to the new R7.1(3), the following individuals will be exempt from the requirement to obtain an eTA before applying for admission to Canada:
This final list of eTA exemptions differs from the proposed list initially contained in the Notice of Intent as follows:
To response to stakeholder requests to leverage the eTA to liberalize visa requirements, the eTA Regulations also eliminate the requirement that nationals from Lithuania or Poland obtain a temporary resident visa if they do not hold a machine-readable passport that contains a contactless integrated circuit chip. As a result, Lithuania and Poland have now been added to the list of visa-exempt countries that appear in R190(1)(a); they will instead be subject to eTA requirements.
The eTA Regulations also eliminate R190(3)(e), which provided a visa-exemption to foreign nationals seeking to enter Canada from the United States for a U.S. immigrant visa interview, if they could establish that they would be re-admitted to the United States.
For more news and updates, assistance with your visa needs or for a Free Assessment of your profile for Immigration or Work Visa’s just visit www.y-axis.com
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