Working site on citizenship and multiculturalism issues.
2014/01/31 1 Comment
Interesting that the UK revokes citizenship even when this would leave someone stateless, contrary to the UN Conventions on statelessness. Will be interesting to see if Canada (and Australia) follow suit with respect to statelessness, as well as giving the Minister discretion with limited due process.
Filed under Citizenship Tagged with statelessness, UK
Andrew blogs and tweets public policy issues, particularly the relationship between the political and bureaucratic levels, citizenship and multiculturalism. His latest book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias, recounts his experience as a senior public servant in this area.
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Multicultural Meanderings
Good morning, Andrew:
I just wanted to point out that Canada has already left some individuals stateless in their practice of stripping citizenship. Don Chapman, leader of the Lost Canadians, has worked with various people in this situation during the many years of his own quest for Canadian citizenship.
Most of the children of War Brides like myself were born in Europe(usually Britain) so had the British citizenship whether they knew it or not. At the time I lost my Canadian citizenship in 2003, I called the British Embassy and was surprised to get the answer that I did indeed have that: “You can never lose your British citizenship unless you committed treason: if you did, you would be notified and there would be a big court case!” I was told. Much simpler here, where I only found out because my brother (by then retired from the Canadian Navy) went to get a Canadian passport and was told we were no longer citizens.
But many of the other 10 groups of Lost Canadians, had no other citizenship. For instance, many Mennonite people lost their Canadian citizenship around the same time we did because their grandparents or great-grandparents were considered not legally married in Mexico before emigrating to Canada (only recognized RC marriages). We then had second and third generation people in Canada suddenly finding they had no citizenship.
Most of the groups (i.e. the children born on Canadian bases overseas) who had theirs stripped got it back in the amendments of 2009, I understand some 750,000 of them. But, as you know, there are some left.
Then, there are all the veterans no longer with us, perhaps lyingin the War Cemeteries overseas. The government is adamant that not a one of them was a Canadian citizen. (They use that as a reason for denying their families citizenship) If not that, and they were born in Canada, what were they?
I hope this all does indeed get fixed in the coming changes to legislation but it needs to be done so this can never happen to another group of people. And my own experience causes me to believe it is not a good idea to give an individual politician, even the Minister, the power to either grant citizenship or strip it away.
Thanks for your work and information,
Marion Vermeersch
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 12:05:57 +0000 To: vermeerschmarion@hotmail.com