Liberals and Bloc stop effort to remove automatic birthright citizenship from citizenship bill
Conservatives tried and failed to remove birthright citizenship from the Liberals’ Bill C-3, which will extend citizenship to over an estimated 100,000 people.
Conservatives tried and failed to remove birthright citizenship from the Liberals’ Bill C-3, which will extend citizenship to over an estimated 100,000 people.
Conservatives attempted to amend Bill C-3, which Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner has labelled a “chain migration” bill, in a bid to reduce the number of new Canadians it would add and to protect Canadian culture and values.
Bill C-3 would extend citizenship rights to anyone born abroad who has at least one parent who is a Canadian citizen. Currently, citizenship is granted to anyone who was born abroad but has at least one parent who was born in Canada.
Conservatives attempted to pass an amendment which would have made it so the prospective new citizen would have to be born while at least one of their parents was a citizen, held permanent residency status, or was otherwise admitted as an asylum claimant.
Bill C-3 has passed its second reading and is currently being considered by a committee before it enters the third reading in the House of Commons.
According to a post from Rempel Garner on X, Conservatives expected the bill to pass with NDP support, so they proposed the amendment, though it was voted down.
Despite the motion failing, Rempel Garner signalled that Conservatives would continue to fight to have birthright citizenship—the policy that grants anyone born in Canada automatic citizenship—ended in Canada.
She said Conservatives will fight to end the Liberals’ “post-national immigration policies.” She claimed that the Liberals’ “unrestricted” birthright citizenship policy has “profoundly altered Canada’s immigration system and “the landscape around it.”
“For a decade, the Liberals have operationalized the philosophy of post-nationalism, asserting that there is no shared Canadian identity, while simultaneously bringing newcomers in at a rate where integrating them into Canada’s social and economic fabric has become challenging,” Rempel Garner said in the post. “The result of this unholy coupling of misguided Liberal philosophy and poor management has been the breaking of Canada’s long-held immigration consensus, and confusion over the responsibilities associated with Canadian citizenship.”
Rempel Garner said the Liberals’ post-national practices have sent a signal that tells Canadians and newcomers that there is no reason for Canadians to defend Canadian values such as freedom of expression, conscience and religion, and the equality of women and men.
“These practices have also virtually eliminated the expectation that anyone seeking to become a Canadian needs to abandon any violent, extreme or hateful prejudices they may once have held and to contribute to the nation,” Rempel Garner said in the post. “Said differently, the Liberals have, through their post-nationalism and mass immigration policies, brought into question the intrinsic value of Canadian citizenship.”
Rempel Garner noted that those holding temporary visas now comprise a historic seven per cent of Canada’s population. In addition, as of August of last year, there were an estimated 300,000 to 600,000 illegal immigrants living in Canada and another 300,000 waiting in Canada for their asylum claims to be reviewed.
Just last month, the Canada Border Services Agency refused to release data on how many temporary migrants have left the country after their visas expired.
Conservatives argue that each of these illegal immigrants and individuals who might have “bogus asylum claims” could abuse Canada’s “jus soli” policy, which automatically grants citizenship to anyone born on Canadian soil, by having babies in the country to give them citizenship.
“This is because while having a child on Canadian soil theoretically grants no immediate stay rights to parents who are temporary residents, in practice, court rulings, a deeply broken asylum system, protracted appeals, and sluggish deportations functionally often allow them to remain,” Rempel Garner wrote, noting videos on social media proposing just that.
She also noted that since the Liberals took office, birth tourism, the practice of coming to Canada just to have a baby to give them Canadian citizenship, has increased by 590 per cent.
“After a decade of Liberal mass immigration policies that let too many people in too fast, tinkering around the edges of a broken system won’t cut it,” Rempel Garner said. “Restrictions must be placed on jus solis citizenship, levels must be lowered, and the overall system must be boldly reformed.”