@Eva_Luna , I really don’t know. Our government is like any other, I guess; the one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing, and things can get crossed and take time to settle out.
My opinion, and it is only my opinion, is that when the dust settles, you will be Canadian. Note that I am not speaking as a lawyer here, but only as a citizen. There’s something to your matter that isn’t cut-and-dried, and if the authorities deny you citizenship under some rule or other, then they had better have a damn good reason. Yours seems to me to be a matter that needs extra scrutiny, to further define exactly what the statute says.
And if you turn out to be, in fact, Canadian; well then, it’s Dopefest time, to welcome our newest citizen!
Seriously, Eva_Luna I wish you luck in becoming Canadian. I think you will, and I would be surprised to hear otherwise. Fingers crossed and all best wishes in your quest!
If they don’t honour your heritage Canadianness, just apply like a normal non Canadian. I mean, you’re literally everything they’re looking for; educated, employable, connections to Canada through relatives, and you’re a woman! If you have someone to stay with or a housing situation already set up you’d be the easiest ‘Yes!’ they have to say all week! (Unless you have criminal record, shady past etc!)
I think if you’d gone that route, you’d be a Canadian by now! Just saying, if your heritage path dries up, you should still apply!
Yeah, that’s my gut feeling, too. I am trying not to get my hopes up, though, in case things don’t go that way. I would hope they already did the extra scrutiny on my first application, though! The denial letter basically said it appeared that Dad was Canadian because of the 2015 changes in the law, so that would mean the only thing preventing me from being Canadian was the first-generation cutoff. I definitely put that in my cover letter for the second application and included a copy of the prior decision
Other than that, the last time I looked at the points system, it seemed like the only way I was likely to meet the cutoff was to have a Canadian job offer. (I’m over 50, so no points there.) The most likely thing that would prompt me to move to Canada would be 45 becoming 47, and if that’s the case, I am definitely not going to work in my field (although there seem to be plenty of Canadian law firms that also practice U.S. immigration law), so I don’t know that that’s a viable plan, especially with the job market in Canada apparently being as slow as it is at the moment.
Anyway, we shall see…hopefully sooner rather than later! It’s currently T minus 8 days to the Bjorkquist deadline.
I — and my children — may be among them (I didn’t find the article definitive, perhaps because the legislation hasn’t been finalized). My paternal grandmother was born in Quebec*, and for unknown reasons ended up in Anaconda, MT where my father was born. So I’m more than a little curious how this shakes out.
(I could potentially end up with triple citizenship, since I already have Irish citizenship through her husband.)
I doubt that I’d try to emigrate, since I’m 76 and have this odd quirk that rebels against the idea of receiving benefits from a society to which I haven’t contributed. My daughters, on the other hand, might find the idea intriguing.
* In spite of being born well before 1947, I kinda doubt she ever considered herself a British subject.
Dagnabbit, the government did file an extension request, and there’s a video hearing on their motion tomorrow! And here I was having a lovely fantasy that I would wake up to an email that my application had been approved.
Here’s hoping the judge says “you folks had 6 months to get your act together and didn’t even introduce a bill until 3 weeks ago. You snooze, you lose!”
AAAAAAHHHH seriously? You beat me to it - an extension while Parliament is in recess? What exactly does anyone think is going to happen between now and August? The prior bill went absolutely nowhere in 2+ years.
I want my backup plan before the U.S. election in November, dammit!
Reading the order granting the extension right now - the judge does chew out the Government pretty thoroughly. I am not optimistic that anything useful will be hammered out between now and August in Parliament, though, or even between now and December.
I imagine all pending applications will remain in limbo between now and whenever this mess is resolved? So for now, I remain Schroedinger’s Canadian.
I imagine that part of the issue is that the Trudeau government is a minority government, so they needed to line up support in Parliament before they introduced the bill.
Yeah, I imagine there is all kinds of stuff going on behind the scenes. I just hope they actually manage to pass something, well, at all given how contentious immigration issues are.
:: bump :: Well, this stinks. I was kind of hoping for an answer before the U.S. Presidential election. It kind of boggles me that a scenario is even possible where, in essence, the Canadian government has acknowledged that the existing law is unconstitutional, and they still get an entire year (or even more) to do anything substantive about it other than update their website acknowledging that the current law is unconstitutional.
It’s a minority government. If it were a majority government, I’m not sure they would get so much time.
The purpose of suspended declarations of unconstitutionality is to give a government sufficient time to come up with a detailed statutory change, rather then do it by the seat of their pants without due consultation with affected groups, and to allow them to plan the parliamentary cycle.
I’ve heard it said that a new bill in Parliament normally has the same gestation period as an elephant.
Anyone care to make predictions about what comes next in the current political environment? This isn’t even the first bill in the past couple of years that would have solved the constitutionality issue.
One person I’ve been corresponding with said that from a political standpoint, given what a hot-button issue anything immigration-related is, it would be easier for the political parties to pretend to try to pass new legislation, but really just let the first-generation limit expire when the judge’s decision takes effect. That way, they could say “it wasn’t our fault, the judge loosened the rules!” I have no idea how realistic it is, but it sounds logical in a political sort of way.
Well I learned something new: in Canadian conditional law, an unconstitutional piece of legislation must be replaced. In the US we just go back to the last version of the statute which did not include the unconstitutional provision. If the legislature wants to make a new law it can but it doesn’t have to.
I think it’s the same in Canada; I actually dialed into the Zoom hearings in which the judge extended the deadline for the suspension of invalidity, and she definitely said that she needed to issue a decision that day in order for the first-generation limit on transmission of citizenship by descent for children born to a Canadian parent outside Canada not to simply expire at midnight. The reason she granted the extension was for the Government to be able to pass new legislation, so as not to end up with one default legal regime at midnight, and another whenever any new legislation came into force, possibly a very short time later.
