Refugees, Vol.147, No. 3, 2007, pages 16-17

A few slip-ups in the framing of a citizenship law can have extraordinary repercussions

by Nini Gurung and Eric Paulsen

Canadians began discovering they were in fact technically not Canadians because they were the children of Canadian soldiers who married overseas. Or because they themselves were born abroad (including adults whose mothers had popped across the border to an American hospital to give birth because it was closer than the nearest Canadian hospital – for many years a common and accepted practice). Or because at some point their father had moved to the us to work and had taken out us citizenship, not realizing that this action affected his entire family.

According to the law as it stood between 1947 and 1977, Canadians born abroad who were not residing in Canada on their 24th birthday, were obliged to fill out a form saying they wished to keep their citizenship. Unfortunately it seems some were never informed of this or various other requirements.

One woman described the last scenario to a Parliamentary Standing Committee: “I am Barbara Porteous. I am a Canadian. Canada says no, you are a 70-year-old woman without a country. On February 2 last year, I applied for a replacement citizenship card to facilitate applying for a passport. On 31 July, I received a letter from Citizenship and Immigration that stated: ‘You ceased to be a citizen June 14, 1960, the day following your 24th birthday, as you were not residing in Canada on that date, nor had you applied to retain your citizenship prior to that date.’”

Perhaps the strangest category of all includes those who discover they are not citizens because their grandfathers or great grandfathers were born out of wedlock. This seems to have hit the descendants of a Canadian Mennonite community in Mexico particularly badly (the authorities in Mexico at that time refused to recognize their marriages).

The Canadian authorities, taken aback by the plethora of problems that have suddenly emerged, have tabled a citizenship bill for the autumn of 2007. In May, Canada’s Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Diane Finley highlighted the key areas that will be covered by the new legislation: anyone born or naturalized in Canada on or after January 1, 1947 will have citizenship even if they had lost it under a provision of the 1947 Canadian Citizenship Act, she said. And anyone born outside the country to a Canadian parent – whether married or not – after 1947, will also be citizens – so long as they are the first generation born abroad.

But malfunctioning laws are often not so easily untangled. Each case has to be examined in depth and that takes time. And new laws take time to draft – otherwise they may just make a bad situation worse. Law-makers need to be very alert. If it can happen in Canada, it can happen anywhere.