450 ‘Canadians’ find out they’re not
January 25, 2007
Little-known 1977 law requires some born abroad to reregister as citizens
January 25, 2007
Thulasi Srikanthan
Staff Reporter
A little-known legal loophole has left hundreds of Canadians without their citizenship.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada yesterday identified 450 recent cases where people have come to apply for a new passport or renewal of an expired one and found out their citizenship is not valid.
The numbers affected by this loophole have gone up since the rush for passports began as a result of new U.S. regulations that took effect Tuesday.
“More and more cases have been popping up,” said ministry spokesperson Marina Wilson.
The Citizenship Act of 1977 requires Canadians born abroad after Feb. 14, 1977, to reregister to prove an “attachment” to their country before they turn 28.
The first generation to risk losing their citizenship would have turned 28 on Feb. 15, 2005, but many had no idea they had ceased to be Canadian until the current rush for passports.
Wilson said the rule has affected people across the country, including Toronto.
She added Citizenship and Immigration officials are reviewing the cases on an individual basis.
Included in the group trying to get their citizenship back is a large number of Mennonites, a Christian faith group that goes back to the 16th century.
In the 1920s, thousands of Mennonites migrated to Mexico to escape education laws in Manitoba that would have forced them to assimilate.
Many were married in church ceremonies in Mexico that weren’t legally recognized.
In the 1980s, there was a wave of emigration back to Canada by the children and grandchildren of those unions.
Canadian laws still on the books base citizenship on being a product of wedlock and don’t recognize the marriages in Mexico as legal.
That means hundreds of Mennonites – including some who have lived in Canada since they were small children – are being told they aren’t Canadian.
“They are looking at those old documents. There was no civil marriage certificate, now they are deciding retroactively you should have never had (citizenship) because your parents should never have had it because of the family history,” said Mary Boniferro, a settlement worker based in central Ontario with the Mennonite Central Committee.
Most of the Mennonites who have been stripped of their citizenship currently live in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Source: The Toronto Star
2 Responses to “450 ‘Canadians’ find out they’re not”
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January 25, 2007 at 2:01 pm
So if I’m reading this right…. I am not a Canadian citizen since I was born abroad after February 14, 1977… and turned 28 after February 15, 2006….
Except, I’m not reading it right. It’s just very poorly written. I AM a Canadian citizen. And I WAS born abroad… only they’re referring to children of Canadian citizens born abroad who assumed that as children of Canadians, that they too are citizens.
Grr.
February 20, 2007 at 5:39 pm
‘Lost’ Canadians get citizenship
Finley uses discretionary power to help Mennonites, war and border babies
ALEX DOBROTA
From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail
OTTAWA — Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley said yesterday that she is using her discretionary powers to grant citizenship to so-called lost Canadians — Mennonites, war babies or border babies caught in the black hole of arcane legislation.
“I just signed the documents for 33 of these anomalies, cases to be granted citizenship,” Ms. Finley told reporters.
Her department is also fast-tracking the files of 450 other Canadians who recently discovered they were not citizens because an obscure provision of the Citizenship Act requires them to confirm their status before a fixed deadline, the minister said.
More: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070220.wximmigration20/BNStory/National/home