Calculating residency for citizenship purposes

[Guest diegohandofgod]

Hi all

 

I have a dilemma with my residency qualification for a citizenship application, as I'm cutting it extremely fine.

 

I've been told on (what I believe is) good authority that time counted as residency in Australia is the number of NIGHTS spent here. However, this approach doesn't tally with the immigration website's residency calculator, which seems to allow both a departure AND and an arrival date in your residency. For instance, if I arrive in Australia following an overseas trip at lunchtime on 10 Jan and leave again at lunchtime on 15 Jan, I'm resident during that period for only 5 nights (i.e. all nights excl the 15th). The online calculator will count 6 nights. I had to laugh when both the online calculator AND an assistant at the citizenship desk in Brisbane had disclaimers in everything they advise…. even to the point where the assistant freely admitted that the official department's own in-house residency calculation tool "wasn't as reliable as the online one"! Are these people serious??

 

Does anybody have access to a clear definition please, before I have to trudge in again to the citizenship office?

 

Thanks

Andy

[Guest diegohandofgod]

For anyone who reads this thread and ever has a similar question about whether residency implies no. of nights spent in Australia or no. of days, this may help...

 

I collared 2 senior citizenship officials today in the main Brisbane office, and have been categorically advised that you are resident in Australia for every day or part of a day that you are present on Australian soil, including arrival and departure days. Therefore if you pass through the immigration point at 11pm today, then today counts towards residency - that's the example they gave me.

 

I also asked for the whereabouts of a definition of "days resident" in the citizenship legislation, and was told that there is none, but that the policy team assessing applications consistently apply the practice mentioned above. That means I'm not as tight on time as I thought I was. Woo and hoo.