Immigration department clarifies rules for citizenship under Bill C-3, amid review
Following criticisms of failing to clarify citizenship rules under Bill C-3, the Liberals claim its rules do not automatically grant citizenship to those solely with ancestors who lived in Canada.
After hearing concerns from an immigration lawyer about a lack of clarity in the Liberal’s Bill C-3 on who qualifies for citizenship and what documents are valid to prove citizenship for applicants, a spokesperson for the IRCC told Juno News “distant Canadian ancestry alone does not make someone automatically eligible.”
In a news release shared by the immigration department, a spokesperson clarified that the immigration department is reviewing a total of 6,500 applications for citizenship by decent received through Bill C-3 after 100 citizenship certificates were recalled due to “potentially insufficient supporting documentation.”
“This immediately initiated a subsequent review to confirm whether, in the identified cases, the documentation provided was sufficient to establish entitlement to Canadian citizenship by descent. In some cases, this included documentation from open sources,” the news release reads. “As this subsequent review took place, citizenship certificates for those identified cases were temporarily suspended while eligibility for citizenship by descent was verified.”
After reviewing the 6,500 cases, 100 identified cases of potentially insufficient documentation was found. Since then the IRCC “automatically reinstated 33 citizenship certificates after confirming “that the applicant met the legal requirement for citizenship,” according to the department.
