Becoming Canadian

My grandmother and her mother were both born in Canada. As a child, my grandmother moved with her parents to the United States, and her parents became naturalized American citizens. My mother was born on American soil as an American citizen. Same with me. I am an American citizen, born and raised in the States; that is to say I am two generations away from Canadian citizenship.

In late 2023, a court case heard by the Ontario Superior Court made it super easy for basically anyone with a provable family lineage to any Canadian citizen (or pre-Canadian confederation resident in the area) to become a Canadian citizen themselves.

The case, Bjorkquist et al. v. Attorney General of Canada, ruled in favor of Bjorkquist et al. It struck down Canada's second-generation cutoff for entitlement to Canadian citizenship for "lost canadians." There were concerns about the constitutionality of the limit creating situations like children born stateless outside of Canada to Canadian parents. You never want to create stateless children.

Before this ruling, my mother, for example, could have contacted the Canadian government to request Canadian citizenship because of her Canadian mother, but I would not have been able to. By removing the generational limit for "lost Canadians," this ruling opened my girlfriend and I up to the prospect of Canadian citizenship since we both had Canadian ancestors at some point in our lives; and with political tensions flaring up in the United States, we knew exactly what we had to do - apply.

I give her full credit for discovering this, because without her research and diligence we would not have been able to do it. My Canadian link was easy to prove; I only had to show the proof that my mother, an American, was my Canadian grandmother's child. An easy second-generation link. My girlfriend, however, had to trace her Canadian lineage back to 1700s French settlers in what is now Quebec. We called her huge stack of Canadian government papers, old birth and baptismal certificates, and other proofs of her family's history "the tome." It must have been something like 30+ pages, some of which she had to request from provincial government archives by snail mail.

We sent our proofs of Canadian lineage to Canada's Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the department of the Canadian Government responsible for immigration-related matters, in late May. A few things happened in between then and now including background checks and more back-and-forth communication with the Canadian government; as far as our timelines are going now, we will become sworn-in Canadian citizens, with full protections under the Canadian constitution and with guaranteed rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, tomorrow on October 9th. It is absolutely nuts. We have never lived in Canada and we're becoming full citizens. What the fuck, right?

This is something that many people struggle for years to obtain, first having to settle in Canada, obtain work and permanent residence, and go through language and citizenship tests to achieve. We got it by mail, having never lived in Canada in our lives, in just about 5 months' time. I am not taking this for granted; I have done my due diligence to ensure I can pass citizenship tests, learn how Canadian civics work, and understand the plight of the First Nations and Indigenous groups there. I want to do my best to be a Canadian, because I cannot believe that it has essentially just been handed to us, but I am so grateful that it has.

I don't know when we'll move to Canada; who will move first, or if we'll both move together, how easy it will be to find work where we want to live; but we're gonna do it. And I'm gonna miss the shit out of Pittsburgh as well. I tell people, though, hey, we're only gonna be 5 hours north, get your passports! Come visit!

I am not tracking the current status of the legislation well, but it sounds like the bill to create new, sensible laws for generational limits that do not create stateless children has advanced to the Canadian Senate. It has a few issues, though, mostly created by the Conservative MPs, and I don't think the Bloc Quebecois likes it too much either, so it'll probably stall a bit. I encourage anyone with Canadian ancestors, even pre-confederation, to look into it. Request rush processing if you're in danger from a Canadian perspective; a person of color in the United States, gay or transgender, tell them you are requesting rush processing. Mail in your tome, see what happens. It worked for us.