Filipiniana News – March
2014
RHYME & REASON
Serious
Implications of Recent Proposed Citizenship Changes
The recently proposed changes to Canada's
citizenship laws were summarized in this column last month. In government pronouncements, people are made
to believe that these proposed changes are meant to strengthen the value of
Canadian citizenship. However, a closer look at the proposed changes to
Canada's citizenship laws reveal significant implications not just for
prospective citizenship applicants but also for Canadian citizens who hold
another foreign citizenship. It is
therefore extremely important that people in our community take time to learn
more about these proposed changes and to let our collective and individual
views be heard. For instance, we may
want to contact our respective members of Parliament to explain how your
specific personal circumstances will be negatively impacted by these
changes.
In this regard, I am reproducing below the
position paper of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL) which
clearly and comprehensively articulates how these proposed changes will make
citizenship "harder to get and easier to take away":
"The federal government is trying to
pass a law that will increase barriers to obtaining citizenship and take away
rights from countless Canadians holding dual citizenship. On February 6, 2014 the federal government
introduced Bill C-24, which is aimed at dismantling key aspects of Canadian
citizenship as we know it. The law will
make citizenship more difficult to get for everyone – and will potentially make
it impossible for some of our most vulnerable permanent resident grandparents
and low-income immigrants, to become Canadians.
And, more than ever before, the law will make citizenship easier to revoke
— by replacing an in-person hearing before an independent judge with a review
by an anonymous government bureaucrat who never sees or hears the
citizen.
The law will divide Canadians into
two classes of citizens: first class Canadians who hold no other citizenship,
whose citizenship is protected forever; and second class Canadians – dual
citizens, who can have their right to live in Canada taken away from them by
the federal government. Even those born
in Canada are at risk of losing citizenship. In some cases, Canadians may not
even be aware that they possess another citizenship. Someone born in
Canada who has a spouse, parent, or grandparent from another country could be a
citizen of that country without ever having applied for it. The proposed
law would put them at risk of losing Canadian citizenship if the Minister
asserts that they possess, could possess, or could obtain another citizenship.
The burden would be on the Canadian citizen to prove otherwise to
the Minister’s satisfaction.
Citizenship will be harder to get
The proposed
changes to the Citizenship Act will
create unfair barriers to citizenship and make citizenship inaccessible to
many. The proposed law will:
1. Extend
the costly language testing process from applicants aged 18-55 to now
include those aged 14-64. Now children and grandparents must pass difficult
language tests or risk never becoming citizens;
2. Grant government officials authority to
deny citizenship on sheer speculation that an applicant does not intend to
reside in Canada in the future;
3. Dramatically increase the cost of applying
for citizenship by tripling the application fee, which will be added to the
new cost imposed on applicants a year ago when the government privatized
language testing. As a result, the price
of applying for citizenship will now cost 4 times more than it did in 2006;
4. Extend the formal residency requirement
during which an applicant must live as a permanent resident in Canada from 3 to
4 years. This represents a hardship,
since processing times for citizenship are extremely long. Applicants today wait 4-6 years to become
citizens due to government delay and inefficiency and may have to wait even
longer under the new system.
5. Make
it harder for students, workers and refugees to become citizens by denying
them the ability to count any of their time in Canada prior to becoming
permanent residents when applying for citizenship;
6. Remove a right of appeal to the Federal Court for refused citizenship applicants
– continuing a theme of greater bureaucratic control over citizenship
decision-making and less judicial oversight over the process.
Citizenship will be
easier to take away
The proposed
changes to the Citizenship Act will
create second-class citizens with fewer rights than other Canadians, whose
citizenship will be more insecure. The new law will:
1. Replace the
right to an oral hearing before an independent judge in most revocation
proceedings, with a written review by a bureaucrat acting under the direction
of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.
2. Put all
naturalized citizens under the implicit threat of having their citizenship
revoked, by making it possible for government officials to strip someone of
citizenship if they believe that person never intended to live in Canada. This
could happen if a naturalized Canadian decides to study, accept a job, or even
move in with a romantic partner outside of Canada. In contrast, Canadian
citizens by birth never have to worry that time spend away from Canada might
put their citizenship status at risk;
3. Allow officials to take away a person’s
citizenship based on criminal convictions that occur outside of Canada,
regardless of whether the regime or judicial system under which the person was
convicted is undemocratic or lacks the rule of law;
4. Bring
back the ancient punishment of exile or banishment – abandoned centuries ago –
by allowing government officials to strip citizenship from dual citizens based on certain convictions in
Canada even though the citizen will already have been properly punished by the
Canadian criminal justice system. This
will include Canadians who were born in Canada."
For
those who may want to share other perspectives, please feel free to contact me
to convey your views and/or specific circumstances. Ours being a community of mostly dual
citizens, there is a great possibility that many of us will be impacted by
these changes. It behooves us therefore,
to take a proactive approach by taking part in discussions involving Bill C-24
before it is too late.
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