Immigration Forum / Canada / November 2004

   > But I can assure you that if you were born in Canada,
   > and under 18, and if your parents immigrated to another
   > country (with the possible exception of the UK) before
   > 1977, then you are no longer Canadian.

Under Canada's pre-1977 citizenship law, merely immigrating to
another country was =not= a sufficient basis for either parent
or child to lose Canadian citizenship.  Actual naturalization
(i.e., acquisition of a foreign citizenship) was required in
order for Canadian citizenship to be lost.

AFAIK, there was no distinction in this regard in the pre-1977
Canadian law between the UK and any other country.

It might also be worth noting that, under US law at this time,
an alien child of immigrant parents became a US citizen upon
the naturalization of both of the parents.  This was automatic;
it was not necessary for the parents to apply explicitly for
their child to become a US citizen (though, as Bosco's case
illustrated, there might not have been any official record of
the child's US citizenship at the time).

Rich Wales            richw@richw.org            http://www.richw.org
*NOTE:  I've lived in both Canada and the US and have dual citizenship.
*DISCLAIMER:  I am not a lawyer, professional immigration consultant,
or consular officer.  My comments are for discussion purposes only and
are not intended to be relied upon as legal or professional advice.

If they didn't become US citizens themselves, then there was no
naturalization upon which to include the child's.  The way the original
law was written, if a couple were married and the father naturalized
elsewhere, both the spouse and the father's children also took on that
nationality and lost their Canadian citizenship provided that this was
consistent with the new country's policies.  The purpose of all this was
to prevent dual citizenship.

You might be correct in the scenario where the father never was
Canadian.  You may also be correct that acquiring another citizenship
inside Canada was treated differently than outside.  Since I have never
been able to find the text of the original law, I have never been able
to sort out all the exceptions.  I do know that it is the position of
Canada that I lost my Canadian citizenship because I was born in Canada
and my father (a naturalized Canadian) subsequently naturalized
elsewhere.  My sister, however, who was born later in the US before my
parents were naturalized (but after they emigrated to the US), could
have claimed Canadian citizenship up until last August 16th.  The
1947-1977 law is an obsolete patchwork of non-intuitive anachronisms.  
Most of this was fixed retroactively by the 1977 law.  Some was not.

For example, consider a husband and wife, both natural born Canadians,
with Canadian kids.  If the husband immigrated to the US and
subsequently took citizenship there, then the wife and children all
"ceased to be Canadian" if the event ocurred after 1947 and before
1977.  The wife and kids  may never have left Canada nor even have known
that they no longer had the legal right to remain in Canada.  The
children might have had children of their own who were Canadian, but
still had no right to be there themselves.

After 1977, women who were spouses of husbands, but did not naturalize
were granted their citizenship back retroactively.  But not minor
children, even though the children never had a hearing nor made a choice
(in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the
United Nations policy on the rights of the child).

Imagine being born black in the US 1947, and being unable to eat at a
"whites only" lunch counter.  Now, say the law changes in 1958, and it
is ruled that if you are black, you may sit there if you were born after
1958.  But since you were born under the "old law", if you were born
before 1958 you still may not sit at that lunch counter.  This is how
many of us feel about being deprived of our citizenship by a fluke of an
antiquated law, which could be rectified by the stroke of the pen (and
was in other analagous cases).

I have gone through the immigration process to be able to return to
Canada.  In fairness to CIC, since May of 2003 they made it much easier
to qualify than had I not been born in Canada.  Nevetheless, I still had
to ask permission, meet various admissibility requirements, and pay PR
fees to return to the land of my birth and most of my extended family.  
It is not a very secure feeling to realize that all it might take is for
one of your dependents to have a criminal record (thankfully, mine
don't) to render you inadmissible.

Hopefully, Parliament will pass the bill before them and fix this mess
(the Senate passed it unanimously back before Parliament dissolved last
May and put it back to square 1).