The Record, January 26, 2007

Playing the waiting game with citizenship

by Mirko Petricevic

Millbank -- If all goes well, immigration officials will cement Anna Bueckert's status as a Canadian citizen this year.

The 28-year-old Millbank-area woman -- who was born in Mexico but received her certificate of Canadian citizenship two decades ago -- sent her application to the government and paid her $100 fee.

That was nearly 18 months ago. But she's not worried.

Despite being born in Mexico, she believes she has been a Canadian citizen all her life, partly because her grandparents were born in Canada.

According to Canada's Citizenship Act of 1977, people born outside of Canada to Canadian parents, who were also born outside of Canada, must apply to retain their citizenship before they turn 28.

Many applicants have already received their citizenship.

Others haven't been so lucky.

More than 400 recent passport applicants were informed that they are not Canadian citizens.

The consequences can be devastating.

Johan Teichroeb, a Windsor-area man who was born in Mexico and came to Canada as an infant, believed he was a Canadian.

Teichroeb said officials recently ruled that his Canadian great-grandparents weren't legally married -- because they had a religious ceremony and not a civil marriage -- so they couldn't pass Canadian citizenship on to their descendants.

Teichroeb said he couldn't renew his passport, so he lost his trucking job and had to sell his home.

"How absurd can it get?" asked Andrew Telegdi, the MP for the Kitchener-Waterloo riding and vice-chair of the federal committee on citizenship and immigration. "If it wasn't for how serious it was, it would really be funny."

War brides and at least one son of a Canadian soldier abroad have also been denied Canadian citizenship they believe they've had for years.

Telegdi is urging Canadians to download a petition from his website (www.telegdi.org) and to pressure Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Citizenship Minister Diane Finley to update the Citizenship Act.

In a statement yesterday, Finley moved to allay the fears of those who have suddenly found out they are no longer Canadian citizens. "These cases deserve immediate attention and so I am making these individual cases a priority,'' she said. "I will use the powers available to me . . . to resolve these cases as quickly as possible.

"While these cases are being reviewed, these individuals can rest assured that they can remain in Canada."

In the 1920s, thousands of Old Colony Mennonites migrated from Manitoba and Saskatchewan to Central America. Since the 1950s, they've been returning to Canada. It's estimated up to 50,000 are living in Ontario.

Despite efforts to inform them of the requirements to retain Canadian citizenship, some still aren't aware of the laws, said Mary Boniferro, settlement worker with the Mennonite Central Committee in Aylmer.

Bueckert said she received a certificate of Canadian citizenship when she was about eight. Along with the document, she received a letter which stated -- in English and French -- that she must apply to retain her Canadian citizenship before turning 28.

Bueckert said she came to Canada as a teenager during summers to help harvest tobacco in the Simcoe area. When she married her husband in 1999, they decided to settle in Canada.

In order to avoid hassles while travelling back to Mexico to visit family, she applied to retain her citizenship.

But some Old Colony Mennonites don't intend to fill out the paperwork, she said. Some have just kept putting it off. Some are embarrassed they don't speak English very well, so they avoid contact with government officials.

But many just refuse to believe that applying to retain citizenship is a requirement, she said. Instead, they say the applications are a money-grab by the government and refuse to pay the fees, she said.

"I don't know why people don't believe it, though."

Bueckert isn't hopeful for those who don't take the opportunity to retain their Canadian citizenship. "I don't think they'll ever get it."