Birth tourism brings Russian baby boom to Miami – NBC News

2018/01/11 Leave a comment

As in the case of similar debates in Canada, the conversation largely occurs based on anecdotal evidence rather than hard data (see my analysis of the push by the Conservative government against birthright citizenship and the relatively small numbers involved What happened to Kenney’s cracking down on birth tourism? Feds couldn’t do it alone).

The estimated annual numbers – 36,000 according to The Center for Immigration Studies which wants stricter limits on immigration – is small compared to the overall number of births of about four million (2015), or about 0.9 percent:

Lured by the charm of little Havana or the glamour of South Beach, some 15 million tourists visit Miami every year.

But for a growing number of Russian women, the draw isn’t sunny beaches or pulsing nightclubs. It’s U.S. citizenship for their newborn children.

In Moscow, it’s a status symbol to have a Miami-born baby, and social media is full of Russian women boasting of their little americantsy.

“It’s really common,” said Ekaterina Kuznetsova, 29. “When I was taking the plane to come here, it was not only me. It was four or five women flying here.”

Ekaterina was one of dozens of Russian birth tourists NBC News spoke to over the past four months about a round-trip journey that costs tens of thousands of dollars and takes them away from home for weeks or months.

Why do they come?

“American passport is a big plus for the baby. Why not?” Olesia Reshetova, 31, told NBC News.

“And the doctors, the level of education,” Kuznetsova added.

The weather doesn’t hurt, either.

“It’s a very comfortable place for staying in wintertime,” Oleysa Suhareva said.

It’s not just the Russians who are coming. Chinese moms-to-be have been flocking to Southern California to give birth for years.

What they are doing is completely legal, as long as they don’t lie on any immigration or insurance paperwork. In fact, it’s protected by the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says anyone born on American soil is automatically a citizen.

The child gets a lifelong right to live and work and collect benefits in the U.S. And when they turn 21 they can sponsor their parents’ application for an American green card.

As president, Donald Trump has indicated he is opposed to so-called chain migration, which gives U.S. citizens the right to sponsor relatives, because of recent terror attacks. And as a candidate, he called for an end to birthright citizenship, declaring it in one of his first policy papers the “biggest magnet for illegal immigration.”

“You have to get rid of it,” he said on “Meet the Press” on NBC. “They’re having a baby and all of a sudden — nobody knows — the baby is here. You have no choice.”

In a twist, as the Daily Beast first reported, condo buildings that bear the Trump name are the most popular for the out-of-town obstetric patients, although the units are subleased from the individual owners and it’s not clear if building management is aware.

There is no indication that Trump or the Trump Organization is profiting directly from birth tourism; the company and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Roman Bokeria, the state director of the Florida Association of Realtors told NBC News that Trump- branded buildings in the Sunny Isles Beach area north of Miami are particularly popular with the Russian birth tourists and Russian immigrants.

“Sunny Isles beach has a nickname — Little Russia — because people who are moving from Russian-speaking countries to America, they want … a familiar environment.”

“They go across the street, they have Russian market, Russian doctor, Russian lawyer,” he added. “It’s very comfortable for them.”

Reshetova came to Miami to have her first child, hiring an agency to help arrange her trip. The services — which can include finding apartments and doctors and obtaining visas — don’t come cheap. She expects to pay close to $50,000, and some packages run as high as $100,000. Bokeria says some landlords ask for six months rent up front.

One firm, Miami Mama, says it brings about 100 Russian and Russian-speaking clients to the U.S. per year, 30 percent of them repeat clients. The owners are Irina and Konstantin Lubnevskiy, who bought Miami Mama after using the firm to have two American children themselves.

The couple says they counsel clients to be completely transparent with U.S. immigration officials that they’re expecting.

“We tell every client, ‘You have the documents, you have to tell the truth. This is America. They like the truth here,'” Konstantin said.

“I would like the American people to understand they don’t have to worry,” he added. “Those who come here want to become part of the American people.”

But Miami Mami has drawn scrutiny from law enforcement. In June, it was raided by the FBI, and an employee was convicted of making false statements on passport applications. The owners say they knew nothing about it, fired the worker and their business license was renewed.

Federal prosecutors declined to comment on the case, and the FBI said it could not discuss “an active investigation.”

There is no official data on birth tourism in the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies, which wants stricter limits on immigration, estimates there are 36,000 babies born in the U.S. to foreign nationals a year, though the numbers could be substantially lower. Florida says births in the state by all foreign nationals who live outside the United States have jumped 200 percent since 2000.

Customs and Border Protection says there are no laws governing whether pregnant foreign nationals can enter the country or give birth here.

“However, if a pregnant woman or anyone else uses fraud or deception to obtain a visa or gain admission to the United States, that would constitute a criminal act,” the agency said.

When federal agents raided California “maternity hotels” catering to Chinese clients in 2015, authorities said in court papers that some of the families falsely claimed they were indigent and got reduced hospital rates.

In Miami, the Jackson Health System said 72 percent of international maternity patients — who represented 8 percent of all patients giving birth last year — pay with insurance or through a pre-arranged package.

via Birth tourism brings Russian baby boom to Miami – NBC News

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , , ,

ICYMI: Here Is A List Of Everyone Who Got A Maltese Passport Last Year – Lovin Malta

2018/01/10 Leave a comment

Great example of false transparency – providing all information in a manner not susceptible to analysis:

The government has finally released a list of every single person who bought a Maltese passport in 2016.

It includes their names and surnames – more than enough to do some background checking to see whether there is anything we should know about them (see below for more details).

There’s only one problem – the names are buried in a list of the 2,182 people who became naturalised Maltese citizens in 2016.

Instead of printing them in separate lists, both citizenship buyers as well as citizenship earners have been combined in one large list.

There are no markers by their names, or any other way to figure out that those specific people had bought their Maltese citizenship through the Individual Investment Programme.

The Malta Government Gazette published the list, and when the Times of Malta asked for a breakdown of the passport buyers names, they were rejected.

As you’d expect, the list contains a lot of foreign surnames, including Russian, Asian, and Middle Eastern surnames.

The government, for its part, has maintained that these new citizens are now Maltese citizens equal to any other, and publishing their names in a separate list or marking them out could be discriminatory.

It has also said that publishing their names could jeopardise the success of the scheme since most of the buyers preferred to keep their personal information discrete.

While exact numbers on how many people have actually bought their Maltese passport have never been released, there seems to be 1,101 main applicants according to the government-appointed regulator’s most recent report, released in June.

This comes after a delegation of MEPs that visited Malta last month on a rule of law fact-finding mission asked the Prime Minister for full list of Maltese passport-buyers, only to be rejected on the grounds that giving them that list would be illegal

It’s also worth noting that by December 2017, there was €360 million in the National Development and Social Fund, where a majority of the IIP’s profits go.

A Maltese passport can be bought for about €650,000 alongside a five-year investment into Maltese property or bond.

Want to be an investigative journalist for a day?
The government has printed the 2,182 names of naturalised citizens for 2016. If you’ve got some spare time and want to be a part of our investigation, here’s how you can help

  • Go to the latest issue of the Government Gazzette

  • Go to page 14,018

  • Select some names and Google them

  • Email us at hello@lovinmalta.com if you think you might have found someone worth looking into

  • Google some of these names, and if you find something you think is interesting, contact us at hello@lovinmalta.com.

via Here Is A List Of Everyone Who Got A Maltese Passport Last Year – Lovin Malta

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The Trump administration pushes for a change that could derail the census – The Washington Post

2018/01/09 Leave a comment

Hard for a Canadian to understand what the fuss is about as citizenship has been a regular question on the Canadian Census for some time (although I do appreciate concerns about it being a last minute addition without testing):

PERHAPS NO institution is more important to the functioning of American democracy than the census, the once-a-decade count of the U.S. population that determines congressional representation — and where billions in federal dollars will be spent. Yet both the GOP-led Congress and the Trump administration have hobbled the 2020 Census effort, which is entering its crucial final stages. Lawmakers have underfunded the Census Bureau, the White House has mismanaged the agency, and now the Justice Department is pushing for a change that could skew the count in Republicans’ favor.

Investigative reporting organization ProPublica disclosed last week that a Justice Department official formally asked the Census Bureau to add a question to the 2020 Census. Adding any question at this stage would be dicey, given that the bureau often runs extensive field tests before fiddling with its forms, ensuring that last-minute changes do not throw off its counting efforts. Worse, the Justice Department requested that the bureau inquire about people’s citizenship status. This threatens to sabotage the 2020 count.

Asking about citizenship status would drive down response rates. Since its inception, the census has not only counted voters; it has taken a precise snapshot of everyone in the country. This helps government agencies to direct scarce dollars, and businesses to guide investment decisions. It is also crucial for doling out congressional representation. As the Supreme Court recently underscored, the Constitution requires that congressional seats be apportioned to states according to their total populations, not only their voting populations. Asking about citizenship status would deter undocumented people — or even legal immigrants who fear how far the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreigners will extend — from returning census forms. Many states — particularly blue states — could end up shortchanged.

The bureau’s charge to count everyone does not change when fewer people fill out their census forms. In that circumstance, the federal government would have to send out census takers to knock on doors and talk to neighbors. Costs would rise substantially, even for a potentially less accurate count. Congress’s shortsighted underfunding of the bureau has, perversely, already resulted in cost overruns, as investments in new techniques and technology were not made. Adding another challenge for the bureau to overcome could require lawmakers to pony up even more last-minute cash to save the count.

The Justice Department argues that it would be helpful in voting-rights cases to have reliable and accurate information on the voting-eligible population that extends far down into states and localities, collected simultaneously with other census statistics. Yet the department has relied on other, separately gathered census information about the voting-eligible population over the past decade. More exact data collected along with the rest of the decennial census would no doubt be helpful to Justice Department lawyers, but that interest is not as substantial as the threat that asking about citizenship status poses to the integrity of the count.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross should refuse to add a citizenship status question to the 2020 Census. If he does not, Congress should reject the change.

via The Trump administration pushes for a change that could derail the census – The Washington Post

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ICYMI – Canadian citizenship applications surge after government relaxes language, residency rules

2018/01/08 Leave a comment

Always amusing to see how IRCC releases short-term data quickly in response to media requests while regular data releases, apart from the monthly operational data, takes an inordinate amount of time (i.e., the quarterly Citizenship Applications Overview dates from June 2017).

Over the course of 2018, the one-time impact of the change in residency requirements and the ongoing impact of the reduced requirements for knowledge and language assessment will be quantified versus the ongoing impact of the steep level of citizenship fees (two weeks data, while relevant, is not long enough):

There was a spike in applications for Canadian citizenship after the government relaxed the rules around residency requirements and language proficiency this fall.

Figures from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship provided to CBC News show there was an average of 3,653 applications a week in the six months before changed were brought in Oct. 11.

The number shot up to 17,500 applications the week after the new requirements kicked in. There were 12,530 applications submitted the week after that, but data for subsequent weeks is not yet available.

Citizenship applications

“Reducing the physical presence requirement gives more flexibility to applicants to meet the requirements for citizenship and encourages more immigrants to take the path to citizenship,” said Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship spokeswoman Nancy Caron. “This helps individuals who have already begun building lives in Canada achieve citizenship faster.”

In recent years, there has been an average of 200,000 citizenship applications submitted each year.

Fluctuations in application rates are expected after rule changes, so the department put resources in place to handle “surge capacity” and keep processing times below the 12-month service standard, Caron said.

Andrew Griffith, a former senior immigration official, author and fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said it’s too early to tell if the jump in numbers represents a blip or part of a longer-term trend. But he believes an increased rate of citizenship fosters social cohesion and eases community tensions as immigrants have a deeper connection to the country and to Canadian society.

‘Integration journey’

“We want people to become citizens because we believe that’s part of the integration journey,” he said. “That helps them feel part of Canada and ultimately should improve all the economic, social and political outcomes of the country.”

The new rules include:

  • The required length of physical presence in Canada is reduced to three out of five years, from four out of six years.
  • A portion of time spent in Canada before permanent resident status will count toward residency requirements, which will give credit to temporary workers and students.
  • The age range for language and knowledge requirements is reduced to 18 to 54 years old, from the previous requirement of 14 to 64.

But Griffith said high fees remain a barrier for some to apply for citizenship, especially those in the family reunification or refugee categories with stretched finances.

Processing fee hikes

The processing fee jumped to $630 in 2014-2015, which includes a $100 “right of citizenship” fee. That is still much lower than the fees in the U.K., the U.S. and the Netherlands, but is higher than New Zealand, Germany, Australia and France.

Griffith said reducing costs would reflect the fact that promoting citizenship provides not just personal benefit, but a benefit to the greater Canadian society when people can fully participate, including in the political process.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, who marked the changes taking effect at an event in October, said they will make the path to join the “Canadian family” easier and more flexible.

“As a country that’s committed to the settlement and integration of newcomers successfully so they can restart their lives and make contributions to our society, we have to ensure the path to citizenship for permanent residents,” he said at the time.

People can be deemed ineligible for Canadian citizenship if they have a criminal record or are facing charges in or outside Canada, or if they have had citizenship refused or revoked in past.

via Canadian citizenship applications surge after government relaxes language, residency rules – Politics – CBC News

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Petition calling for more representation of Indigenous people in citizenship guide headed to House of Commons

2017/12/22 Leave a comment

Pretty clear that there will be from public comments at both the political and official levels (see Pathways to Prosperity 2017: Building Bridges between Indigenous and Immigrant Communities):

….Indigenous people from B.C. say changes critical

For Wet’suwet’en and African-American youth Taleetha Tait, changes to the guide are critical.

“It allows our experiences to be acknowledged and not to be judged,” Tait said.

“I feel better about new people coming to Canada and learning the truth and not hiding the wrongs, so there is less ignorance,” she added.

Information about Indigenous people in the citizenship guide is placed in the “Canada’s History” and the “Who We Are” sections.

The first describes the hunting and gathering practices and traditional diets of Indigenous people. For example, it says “West Coast natives preserved fish by drying and smoking.” It also adds “warfare was common among Aboriginal groups as they competed for land, resources and prestige.”

The Indigenous section under “Who We Are”  starts with “the ancestors of Aboriginal peoples are believed to have migrated from Asia many thousands of years ago.” It uses the word “Indian” and “Aboriginal” to describe Indigenous people and says residential school ended in the 1980s.

Ry Moran, the director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, says the guide is not giving newcomers the tools needed to participate in important conversations Canadians are currently having.

“It’s a very good example of a document that presents very poor information on Indigenous people and absolutely needs to be rewritten,” Moran said.

“It repeats the general narrative that there were Indigenous Peoples, there was a brief period of relationship and then goes into the predominant settler narrative. It doesn’t talk about the difficult relationship or serve newcomers well,” he added.

Changes a long time coming says new Canadian

There are two Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls to action pushing the federal government to revise the information kit for newcomers, the citizenship test and the oath to reflect an accurate portrayal of Indigenous people.

They call on the Government of Canada to change the Oath of Citizenship to observe treaties with Indigenous Peoples.

The guide currently says Aboriginal and treaty rights are in the Canadian Constitution, but there is nothing about treaties in the oath.

Kue K’nyawmupoe came to Canada as a Burmese refugee and is now a Canadian citizen. She says she is relieved the new citizenship guide and exam will be updated and wished she had learned more about Indigenous people when she first arrived.

“That is a very good change that has needed to happen for a very long time, and it would be very useful for Canadians  to recognize the first people of Canada, to be more inclusive,” K’nyawmupoe said.

Filed under Aboriginal, Citizenship, Discover Canada Tagged with

The cynical roots of Rempel’s female genital mutilation crusade – iPolitics

2017/12/22 Leave a comment

Martin Patriquin on Michelle Rempel’s raising the issue of FGM and its inclusion or not in the revision of the Discover Canada citizenship guide:

The procedure by which a woman’s clitoris is surgically removed is usually performed without anesthesia and in unsanitary conditions. Unnecessary, retrograde and associated with a host of physical ailments, the surgery also can saddle a woman with a lifetime of psychological issues.

The very purpose of the surgery — to deprive a woman of sexual pleasure — is religiosity at its worst. Only a monster would support such a thing.

A monster — or the Liberal government, according to the blinkered thinking of Conservative MP Michelle Rempel. She seems to believe that the 23rd prime minister of Canada, along with its 20th immigration minister, are in favour of the practice.

Why? Because the Liberal government (she suggests) plans to remove from the pending new citizenship guide a reference to female genital mutilation, which is listed among other “barbaric cultural practices,” including honour killings and forced marriage.

“Those guilty of these crimes are severely punished under Canada’s criminal laws,” the current guide helpfully points out.

In fact, ‘plans to remove’ is too strong a statement, as the Liberals have yet to release the new citizenship guide, which newcomers use to study for the citizenship test. Nor have the Liberals said that the reference would be excised from the guide, despite the leak of a draft copy this summer that didn’t include it. Whenever he is asked about it, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen typically spouts the words “consultation” and “stakeholders” ad absurdum.

Rempel, who serves as the party’s shadow minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, sees something altogether nefarious in all this bureaucratese. And should the Liberals indeed remove the mention of female genital mutilation, it will be a “tacit message to people that perhaps the Canadian government is OK with it,” Rempel recently said during a radio interview.

open quote 761b1bRempel’s line of questioning strongly suggested Hussen was a cypher, using his position to foist the practice of ritual mutilation on an unsuspecting Canadian public.

So, there you have it. Canada’s current government is in favour of the forced, ritual removal of a part of a woman’s anatomy, according to the Official Opposition. To be clear, Rempel says she doesn’t know why the Liberal government would be gung ho on such a thing. But that hasn’t stopped her from speculating — on the record.

During a recent parliamentary committee hearing, Rempel lobbed loaded questions at Hussen, the apparent goal of which was to suggest the Prime Minister’s Office had asked for the reference to be removed. After Hussen said the PMO hadn’t instructed him to do anything, Rempel aimed for the jugular — or rather, below the belt. “What is your personal view?” Rempel asked Hussen, before the committee chair mercifully cut her off.

Hussen hails from Somalia, where the rate of female genital mutilation is the highest in the world, according to UNICEF. He is a refugee who fled war and strife to become a Canadian citizen and eventually a federal cabinet minister. Rempel’s line of questioning strongly suggested he was a cypher, using his position to foist the practice of ritual mutilation on an unsuspecting Canadian public.

The reference to female genital mutilation in the citizenship guide is similarly loaded. Telling potential citizens that cutting off another person’s body parts is illegal and will be punished is … redundant. Worse still, the inference is clear, and is aimed squarely at a certain subset of would-be Canadian citizens: Muslims.

Not coincidentally, female genital mutilation is carried out in roughly 30 countries, nearly all of them in Africa and nearly all predominantly Muslim. The inclusion of the phrase in the 2011 citizenship guide, much like the Conservative’s “barbaric cultural practices hotline” gambit during the 2015 election, is the stuff of cynical wedge politics meant to leverage revulsion against an identifiable religious group.

It conveniently ignores the fact that immigrants and refugees often flee their countries of origin specifically because of such practices. And it vastly overstates the scope of the problem in Canada.

As in Europe, instances of genital mutilation in this country remain isolated tragedies, and often come to light as a result of arrests. Moreover, the rate of female genital mutilation among those 30 countries has decreased by 30 per cent since 1985, according to UNICEF.

Meanwhile, other types of crimes in Canada are far more common. There were 1,409 police reported hate crimes in 2016 — an increase of 20 per cent since 2013. The homicide rate has also increased by 20 per cent in that time period. There were over 220,000 assaults across the country in 2016, and roughly 159,000 instances of breaking and entering.

One wonders why Rempel isn’t pushing the federal government to remind potential citizens that murder, assault, thievery and race-based aggression are illegal in this country and will be punished. Because it’s obvious, perhaps?

via The cynical roots of Rempel’s female genital mutilation crusade – iPolitics

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i24NEWS – Austria pledges to grant citizenship to Holocaust victim descendants

2017/12/21 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see whether there is much take up by descendants:

The newly minted Austrian government will grant citizenship to the descendants of Holocaust victims, Haaretz reported Tuesday.The decision comes in the wake of a diplomatic spat between Israel and Vienna as Austria’s new coalition between the conservatives and the far-right Freedom Party was sworn in on Monday, rekindling an alliance from the early 2000s which prompted unease around Europe.

The Freedom Party, led by Heinz-Christian Strache, has a past stained by frequent anti-Semitic incidents and instances of Nazi propaganda, which is why a harsh Israeli response was widely expected

According to a statement released by the Israeli government, “Israel will continue to work with civil servants of the Ministries headed by members of the Freedom Party”, but will also “continue to struggle against Anti-semitism” and “for the commemoration of the Holocaust.”

Some Israeli media have interpreted the statement as a “boycott” of the Freedom Party Ministers at the political level, since it says that “working relations” will continue with “civil servants”.

Others have emphasized that working relations will go on, reading the statement as a weak reaction. The reaction is certainly milder than in 2000, when the Freedom Party first joined a coalition government and Israeli authorities withdrew the Ambassador from Vienna.

Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache has traveled to Israel a number of times, and developed ties with representatives of the Israeli right. In one of his last trips, however, late Israeli President Shimon Peres had refused to meet him.

via i24NEWS – Austria pledges to grant citizenship to Holocaust victim descendants

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Hungary Citizenship Plan Reaches 1 Million Mark in Orban Boost – Bloomberg

2017/12/20 Leave a comment

Electoral strategy:

Hungary’s program to extend citizenship to ethnic kin who are nationals of other countries reached the 1 million mark, boosting Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s already strong chances for re-election next year.

The millionth citizenship under the program, one of the first laws approved by parliament after Orban returned to power in 2010, was awarded to a 36-year-old ethnic Hungarian farmer in Serbia, President Janos Ader said at a ceremony in Budapest over the weekend that Orban also attended.

Ethnic Hungarians living abroad, most of them in areas of neighboring countries that were cut off from Hungary after World War I, overwhelmingly backed Orban in the 2014 parliamentary elections, when more than 95 percent of almost 130,000 of those votes were for the premier’s Fidesz party. Fidesz has a wide lead in all opinion polls over a fragmented opposition ahead of elections next year, where Orban is looking to further consolidate the first “illiberal state” in the European Union, modeled on Russia and Turkey. Orban has said he expects elections to take place in April.

Unlike hundreds of thousands of Hungarians who’ve moved West, ethnic kin living abroad who’ve received citizenship can cast ballots by mail, a recurring criticism for opposition parties who say the rule is discriminatory. At the same time, ethnic kin living abroad get only one vote — for party list — versus two votes for others who also get to pick the candidate for their electoral district to represent them in parliament.

In 2014, 8.2 million Hungarians were eligible to vote, including almost 194,000 ethnic Hungarians living abroad, according to the website of the National Election Office.

via Hungary Citizenship Plan Reaches 1 Million Mark in Orban Boost – Bloomberg

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‘I have no country’: After more than 60 years in Canada, B.C. woman discovers she doesn’t have citizenship

2017/12/18 Leave a comment

There are always some people who fall through the cracks and where the issue (and solution) apparently lies with respect to the administrative processes of IRCC rather than the need for a legislative fix (C-37 and C-24 fixed the legislative gaps for “lost Canadians”):

Irene Gyselinck arrived in Canada as a refugee from Germany on Aug. 25, 1951, with her mother and brother. She was just a one-year-old, and has never known any other home since.

But after more than 60 years in Canada, Gyselinck discovered she’s not actually Canadian.

Gyselinck, 67, grew up in Manitoba and now lives in Deep Cove, B.C. Over the course of her life, she has worked as a welder, car detailer, and artist, among other things. She also married, had two children and was widowed.

She always had a social insurance number, health insurance and paid her taxes.

The realization that she’s not a Canadian citizen has sent her life into a tailspin, leaving her unable to acquire valid identification and at risk of losing her health insurance.

“I always felt like I was part of the system,” she said. “Now, I feel I’ve been here for 66 years and I don’t count.”

The discovery

Gyselinck discovered her status when she tried to enter the U.S. in March 2012 without a passport. Prior to 2009, Canadians entering the U.S. by car were not required to have a passport, and Gyselinck travelled there many times, using her driver’s license as ID.

But this time, Homeland officials turned her back, urging her to get proper travel documents. They said she had no proof she had a right to re-enter Canada, and would need to apply for a temporary visa to return home.

After several hours of confusion, she was eventually escorted back into Canada.

“It really, really confused me and scared me,” said Gyselinck, who immediately applied for a record of her citizenship. Since then, she’s been in a back-and-forth battle with Immigration Canada, trying to obtain documents proving her status as a permanent resident.

To her shock, she discovered she never became a citizen.

The only person who might know how that happened is her 95-year-old mother. But she has debilitating dementia and alzheimers, and is unable to explain how or why her daughter, unlike other family members, slipped through the cracks. Gyselinck does not know why her mother did not fill out the paper work for her to become a Canadian citizen.

Immigration Canada would not comment on how many of these cases exist.

Gyselink does not have German citizenship, either, which makes her effectively stateless.

She says her lack of citizenship likely went undetected for so long because she never applied for a passport or voted, as she preferred to remain politically unengaged.

She said her older brother, who was also born in Germany, was issued a passport when he joined the Royal Canadian Navy at 18. Gyselinck said she now realizes that had she applied for citizenship before the age of 21, she might have avoided the situation she now finds herself in.

“I realized I have no country,” she said. “I’m an undocumented immigrant.”

Panic sets in

In March 2013, Gyselinck’s husband suddenly died. Shortly afterwards, she applied for the survivor benefit allowance, but because of her lack of documentation, found that she wasn’t eligible.

“I didn’t even have time to grieve,” she said.

Gyselinck took steps to apply for a permanent residency card, with the goal of eventually becoming a Canadian citizen. But she soon discovered that her situation was so uncommon, she faced roadblocks at nearly every step in the process.

In June 2013, she sent an application to Immigration Canada to receive a replacement copy of her record of landing at Halifax’s Pier 21, but it was returned and marked “incomplete.”

A few months later she re-applied, and this time received no response at all.

After two years of back and forth, she eventually received confirmation from Immigration Canada that she is a permanent resident. However, she still lacked the proper identification that would allow her to apply for citizenship.

In March 2017, Gyselinck received a letter from the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) stating that under a new system, her B.C. health card and driver’s license would be issued together. Because one of her ID cards included her middle initial and the other didn’t, she was asked to come to an ICBC office to update the IDs to avoid problems with her health insurance.​

Gyselinck headed to the office to fix what she thought would be a minor clerical issue. But ICBC told her that without a record of landing, passport or permanent resident card, she couldn’t renew her cards under the new system — or her health insurance.

With a major surgery scheduled in February, panic set in. ​

Gyselinck said the back and forth with Immigration Canada has been emotionally devastating, and that she now suffers severe insomnia.

“It’s totally consumed me, the anxiety and stress has caused me to go onto medication,” she said, adding that she’s retired and cannot afford an immigration lawyer.

“It’s really affected me emotionally, it’s isolated me. I’m always in panic mode, so people just don’t want to talk to me.”

‘Very betrayed’

Immigration Canada confirmed to CBC News that Gyselinck arrived in Canada in 1951 and, according to their records, is not a citizen.

They said children who arrive in Canada at a young age must apply for citizenship along with their parents.

A spokesperson for Immigration Canada initially responded to CBC’s request for information by directing Gyselinck to apply for a permanent residency card.

After CBC asked specific questions about the hurdles Gyselinck faced in trying to apply, Immigration Canada assigned a case worker to the file.

The B.C. health ministry has now told Gyselinck that her health number will remain active until February so she can undergo her surgery.

Immigration lawyer Richard Kurland said cases like Gyselinck’s are not as uncommon as they might seem — especially in cases from decades ago. Immigrant parents might not have applied for citizenship for their children because they didn’t understand the process, or couldn’t afford to.

“The person has worked so hard to get a solution and they’re only at the permanent residence confirmation decision,” he said. He added that Gyselinck “should be allowed to immediately apply for citizenship, because she obviously qualifies.”

Gyselinck said her experience has left her feeling “very betrayed.”

“I’ve always been proud to be Canadian, so to speak, because I thought I was. And I still consider myself a Canadian after all this.”

via ‘I have no country’: After more than 60 years in Canada, B.C. woman discovers she doesn’t have citizenship – British Columbia – CBC News

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Cost of British citizenship for children is now 22 times more expensive than Germany | The Independent

2017/12/15 Leave a comment

I had not done the comparison of fees for children so the data in this article is revealing. The last time I checked, UK was also the most expensive for adults:

The Government is under pressure over the “astronomical” rise in the cost of British citizenship for children, which is now 22 times more expensive than in Germany.

Costs to register a child’s citizenship application have soared by 153 per cent in the last seven years, from £386 in 2010 to £973 today.

Scores of youngsters descended on Westminster on Wednesday morning with Citizens UK in protest against the fee, which sees many children unable to become British citizens despite having a legal right.

The fee is considerably higher than in other European countries, with the figure standing at 80 euros in Belgium, 55 euros in France and just 51 euros in Germany.

Each application costs the Home Office £386, meaning the department makes a £586 profit per child registered. With 40,537 applications made in the year to September 2017, the Home Office is expected to make almost £24m this year from children registering for citizenship.

The soaring costs mean a family with three children who have come from abroad and settled in the UK for 10 years, accessing citizenship for all members, including those born here, would have paid out more than £15,000 to be “naturalised” as British citizens, taking into account all migration fees.

Many of these families suffer in-work poverty due to their low wages, so are unable to afford the cost of citizenship, which can prevent children from fully participating in the life of their community, experts warn.

There are an estimated 120,000 “undocumented” children across the UK, more than half of whom are legally entitled to a UK passport. Many are unaware of their status until they apply to university, try to open a bank account or need a passport for foreign travel, according to Citizens UK.

Anne-Marie Canning, director of social mobility and student success at King’s College London, said this can lead to problems when youngsters wish to go into higher education, with many facing difficulties due to not having the correct documents to access student loans.

“There are a large number of students in Greater London who are unable to access university because they are locked out of the student loans system due to paperwork,” she said.

Revd Mother Ellen Eames and school children singing carols outside the Home Office. Hundreds delivered Christmas cards to Secretary of State Amber Rudd asking her to cut the cost of British Citizenship (James Asfa @ Citizens UK)
“We’ve heard stories of parents having to pick which of their children’s paperwork they process so they can access student finance, as they cannot afford to do it for all of their children. We and other universities in London and across the UK are concerned about this issue and have made scholarships available for these learners.

“If the Home Office reduced their fees it would enable more children and talented young people to secure their papers and access higher education like other students.”

Citizens UK leader Fiona Carrick Davis said: “Over the past few years Citizenship fees have risen astronomically and far exceed those of other European countries.

“Many of these children were born in the UK or have spent much of their lives in the UK and have a legal right to citizenship. This is their home, they are British in all respects except they don’t have Citizenship.

via Cost of British citizenship for children is now 22 times more expensive than Germany | The Independent

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