The Citizenship of Elon Musk and his Brood

Recently, petition e-5353 (Citizenship and immigration) was launched, advocating revocation of Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship. The petition struck a chord with many Canadians (over 300,000 signatures as of February 26). 

While there are no legal grounds for revoking his citizenship under current legislation or under the previous revocation provisions of the Harper government, Musk and his families provide an interesting illustration of how citizenship by descent works in practice for three countries: Canada, USA and South Africa.

Musk was born in South Africa, obtained Canadian citizenship through descent by his Canadian mother, and become an American citizen after living and working in the USA. Three of the mothers of his children are Canadian-born, the most recent mother is US-born. All of his children were born in the USA.

The previous first generation cut-off for Canadian citizenship meant than none of Musk’s children would have been Canadian citizens were it not for the fact that the first three mothers were born in Canada and thus able to transmit their citizenship. However their children (second generation) would not be able to do so. 

The proposed revision of the Citizenship Act in Bill C-71, likely to be revived in some form, would allow these children to obtain Canadian citizenship provided they met the residency requirement of 1,095 days in Canada, within a time limit of five years or without a time limit as C-71 proposed.. 

It is likely that all of his children would have been entitled to South African citizenship, provided that Musk did not renounce his South African citizenship and registered the birth with South African authorities. However, there is no indication that Musk has registered their births in South Africa.  

With respect to American citizenship, some media commentary has made a linkage between Musk’s offspring and the Trump administration’s executive order to curtail birthright citizenship, just as some have highlighted that Musk may have worked illegally for a brief period in the USA (Musk has denied). However, it is hard to see how Trump’s executive order, even in the unlikely event courts rule in its favour, would impact on Musk’s offspring given his American citizenship.