While it seems the way to become a citizen of the United States is to walk across the southern border, wait until President Obama gets around to signing an executive order granting amnesty, and then wait some more, Canada made another legislative change to tighten the process of becoming a Canadian citizen. While these changes are relatively minor, they are part of a larger process to make Canadian citizenship meaningful.
Bill C-24, called the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, was given Royal Assent on June 19 and many of the bill's provisions became effective on Aug. 1.
The major change in the new law deals with the residency requirements a permanent resident must meet in order to legally apply for citizenship. Under the former legislation, a person must have been resident in Canada for three of the four years before an application for citizenship could be made.
Despite the residency requirement, the term, "residency" was never defined under the previous law and Citizenship judges and the courts were left to decide what constitutes residency. Now residency is defined as a physical presence in Canada.
In order to be eligible for citizenship in Canada a person must be physically present in the country for a total of four of the six years preceding the making of the application. Prior to the changes, applicants such as refugee claimants who were illegally in the country before they were granted permanent residency status from within Canada could receive a credit of half a day for each day they were present in Canada illegally. This has been abolished and the physical presence requirement only begins to run after the person becomes a lawful resident.
Conservative government crack down on those who have obtained Canadian citizenship by fraudulent means
Not only must a person be resident for four out of the preceding six years but they must also be physically present in Canada for at least 183 days in each year. That number is significant because anyone who is in Canada for that number of days in a year is required to file and pay Canadian income tax. Applicants will now be required to provide copies of their Notice of Assessment from the Canadian Revenue Agency.
In addition to these changes, the Conservative government is following through on its promise to crack down on those who have obtained Canadian citizenship by fraudulent means. Stripping of a person of his or her Canadian citizenship is a cumbersome legal proceeding and has pretty well only been used to strip citizenship of aging Nazis who entered Canada after World War II. Citizenship was revoked not because they had been members of the Nazi Party but because of misleading statements made when they first entered the country.
Recently, a mother, father, and their two daughters were stripped of the Canadian citizenship they obtained in 2008 and 2009. Originally from Lebanon, the family was found by the Federal Court of Canada to have lied on their application forms. Although they claimed to have spent most of the four preceding years in Canada, it was determined they spent most of that time in the United Arab Emirates. The daughters went so far as to post their resumes on LinkedIn, showing their true residence.
In an unusual move, the Federal Court ordered the family to pay the government's legal costs of more than $60,000.
Prime Minister Steven Harper promised to crack down on citizenship since he and his party first took power in 2006, the same year war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. It was estimated there were about 40,000 Canadian citizens in Lebanon at the time of the conflict. While some were living in Canada and visiting or doing business in Lebanon, the majority were living there permanently. Canadians were outraged when these citizens demanded the Canadian government rescue them from the war zone.
More changes are expected in the future. It is even rumoured the government is considering the idea of the ability to strip dual citizens of their citizenship even if the person obtained Canadian citizenship by birth.
