The Evolution of Citizenship: Policy, Program and Operations

2016/10/17 Leave a comment

There are comparatively few articles on the history of Canadian citizenship, particularly with respect to the administrative and operational aspects.

This article, being published in installments by the Canadian Immigration Historical Society (CIHS), aim to fill that gap and provide useful historical context to some of today’s policy and public debates.

I would like to thank the CIHS for their encouragement and support, particularly Valerie de Montigny, whose critical review and careful editing helped enormously.

The first instalment: Bulletin 78 – September 2016

Given that this history may provide context for some of the upcoming debates over the amendments to the Citizenship Act in Bill C-6, currently before the Senate, the full article can be found at the following link:

The Evolution of Citizenship: Policy, Program and Operations

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Farzana Hassan: It’s unjust to revoke the citizenship of refugees’ children

2016/10/15 Leave a comment

Good piece by Farzana Hassan on the streamlined revocation process, without right to a hearing or equivalent procedural protections. Welcome contrast to much of the other commentary in the Sun:

Monsef’s mother filed an application stating her children were born in Afghanistan, but it turns out the MP was born just across the border in Iran, during her mother’s several crossings to avoid persecution and harassment from the Taliban.

Did her mother lie about this? No one can be sure. Language could have been a barrier, or she may have been too distraught. After all, they were faced with the constant threat of harassment, even death.

It was the Harper government that revised the legislation to allow citizenship revocation without a hearing, but it is the Trudeau government that has been enforcing it quite aggressively, stripping people of Canadian citizenship at the rate of approximately thirteen individuals per month.

Such policing seems a little ironic considering Trudeau’s soft approach to revoking the citizenship of terrorists, people who should have professed binding loyalty to the people and soil of Canada. But they lied about their intention. The very basis of their entry into Canada was a false premise.

By contrast, should we be tolerant of the offspring of parents who may have committed errors on their application for a host of forgivable reasons? It may even be naive to expect poor and illiterate refugee status applicants trying to escape Taliban brutality to even understand the concept of citizenship. The law should show some flexibility towards such migrants, and more towards their hapless children.

Some migrants falsely filing their own application deserve to have their citizenship revoked. But by no means should their children be made to suffer.

Trudeau is silent on this controversy over a government insider. And Monsef too is hardly forthright enough. But the law is still unjust when it affects the children of refugees.

In order to rectify any past injustices and to bring some fairness to the debate, we are required to ask if mistakes of the past will be rectified. That is, once the MP’s case has brought the absurdity of the law into the limelight, will people already stripped of their citizenship and deported be allowed to have their citizenship status restored?

To quote Josh Peterson, executive director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, “When we get a parking ticket, we have a right to a court hearing…and yet for citizens to lose their entitlement to membership in Canada based on allegations of something they may or may not have said 20 years ago, they have no hearing? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

Paterson is part of a group that launched a constitutional challenge to the law. Trudeau’s response to the Maryam Monsef case should have a huge bearing on this challenge. Let us hope a touch of humanity will soften this tough legislation.

Source: Farzana Hassan: It’s unjust to revoke the citizenship of refugees’ children | Ha

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ICYMI: I’m being stripped of my citizenship – along with 65 million other Britons | David Shariatmadari, The Guardian

2016/10/15 Leave a comment

Interesting take on the impact of Brexit, precisely of those more mobile citizens:

But the issue of EU citizenship isn’t quite closed – or rather, it needn’t be.

The EU citizen was created in 1993. It is a person who, across the union, cannot be discriminated against on the basis of nationality; can move and reside freely; can vote for and stand as a candidate in European parliament and municipal elections; and is entitled to consular protection outside the EU by European diplomats. More than that, citizenship established a identity, separate from nationality, shared between individuals in the union. A common bond of the kind that Theresa May otherwise admires. In the 23 years since, cultural, political, academic and social exchange has become the norm. What might have initially seemed like a paper exercise has become durable and meaningful to millions. Eurosceptics hate it, no doubt. That doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

Neither was it an arrangement entered into lightly. It was the result of a treaty, signed, incidentally, by a Conservative government. A treaty is an international promise, and a promise to one’s own people. There was no suggestion at the time that the rights granted would be taken away again. Mass stripping of citizenship had previously only occurred when an alternative citizenship was created, and often following war: for example, when Algeria won independence from France, and Algerian nationality came into being.

As Kochenov points out, Europe has had a flexible attitude towards citizenship in the past. It has had to, as a result of the massive changes in the territories governed by EU members. That means there is some hope that something of the “spirit” of 1993 could be salvaged. Or there was, until very recently.

The only way these rights could be maintained for British people would be for the UK to agree some kind of “associate nationality” with the union of which it is no longer a member. With political will, that could be achieved. However, it would require reciprocal benefits, most likely equivalent rights for EU nationals in Britain. In apparently opting for “hard Brexit”, without freedom of movement, May has made any such deal extremely unlikely.

Many of the arguments over how to conduct Brexit are made in transactional terms. Can we swap security cooperation for financial passporting rights? The right of EU nationals to stay put for lower trade tariffs? A customs union for, I don’t know, making Boris Johnson governor of St Helena?

In the meantime, a solemn social contract made between a government and its people a quarter of a century ago is being torn up. Citizenship isn’t a game, to echo one of Theresa May’s most resonant phrases. So don’t pretend to value it while treating it like so much red tape.

Source: I’m being stripped of my citizenship – along with 65 million other Britons | David Shariatmadari | Opinion | The Guardian

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India: Opposition, NGOs slam move to amend Citizenship Act – The Hindu

2016/10/15 Leave a comment

Indian citizenship debates and religious preference:

The Bill has been criticised by the Opposition, which has accused the government of granting citizenship to persecuted minorities from neighbouring countries on “religious lines” and wooing the majority Hindu community.

To change definition

With this amendment, the government plans to change the definition of “illegal migrants” that will enable it to grant citizenship to minorities, mostly Hindus from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, who fled their countries fearing religious persecution. The Bill creates an exception for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and plans to reduce the requirement of 11 years of continuous stay to six years to obtain citizenship by naturalisation.

The Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha in July.

A joint parliamentary panel, which is examining the Bill, heard petitions from several NGOs on Thursday.

 One of the NGOs from Assam demanded that the requirement of 11 years of continuous stay be waived for all Hindus and that they be immediately included in the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The NRC is being updated in Assam to weed out illegal migrants who came to Assam post the 1971 war when Bangladesh was liberated from Pakistan. The cut-off date for the NRC is midnight of March 24, 1971, and all those who migrated to Assam from Bangladesh before this period would get Indian citizenship as per the Assam Accord signed in 1985.

Another NGO from Rajasthan also demanded that Hindus be exempted from the naturalisation process.

At the meeting, parliamentarians said the government was amending the Act to appease the Hindu community as the people who would be benefited the most would be Hindus from neighbouring countries.

Source: Opposition, NGOs slam move to amend Citizenship Act – The Hindu

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USA: Why did DHS mistakenly grant 858 immigrants citizenship? – Lawstreet

2016/10/14 Leave a comment

Analysis of DHS’ mistaken granting of citizenship, identifying the main failure as lack of coordinated, consistent and digitized fingerprinting for identification purposes:

Immigration is consistently ranked as one of the top concerns for American voters every election year. After the failed Gang of Eight immigration reform bill, the attempt at reaching consensus on immigration has fizzled. Both sides of the debate have become more partisan in nature, making it very difficult to strike a deal and get a bill passed through Congress. Donald Trump started off his presidential race with a pitch accusing Mexican immigrants of bringing drugs into the country, whereas Democrats are pointing out that illegal immigration amounts to millions of individuals just overstaying their visas.

No matter the root cause of a broken immigration system, one thing that can always streamline the process of admitting new immigrants is by having a uniform background check system that is archived online for easy access. Currently, ICE checks fingerprints through two systems: the FBI’s Integrated Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) and the DHS Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT). Although an agency may have different reasons for checking a fingerprint file, the archive has to be universal so as to make a search as efficient as possible.

Immigrants make up 13 percent of the total U.S. population as of 2014, according to the Migration Policy Institute, and that percentage only continues to grow. Critics point out that if the issue with immigration is that there are too many people who are here illegally, and that is due to overstayed visas, it may be an administrative issue on the federal government’s end that needs to be resolved. One example is a gap in digitized information that the government needs to archive so that it is easier to catch immigrants that may be of higher concern for the country.

Additionally, calls for border security may be issued in spite of not knowing that our federal government has an administrative issue to resolve. For example, one common misconception is the idea that Mexican immigrants are overflowing our southern border. The Pew Research Center found that since 2014, Mexican immigrants are returning back to Mexico more than actually immigrating to the U.S.

Proponents of immigration point out that immigrants are a huge economic boon for the U. S. as well, and fixing our information gap can be a good way to streamline capturing immigrants with criminal records as opposed to rounding up hard-working families looking to achieve their American Dream. Of the more than 11 million unauthorized immigrants currently in the U.S., ICE has deported almost 178,000. ICE has also issued one million ‘detainer requests’ that ask local officials to detain and then transfer suspects to DHS custody. It is evident that our immigration officials are hard at work identifying individuals who are unauthorized to be in the U.S. and that our border is not as porous as some might believe.

CONCLUSION

The DHS was audited by its Inspector General, a routine check and balance on a federal agency tasked with enforcing the laws passed by Congress. John Roth, the Inspector General, has done a very good job identifying where DHS is lacking in terms of its ability to enforce our country’s immigration laws. If our executive agencies finish archiving fingerprint and other identification files, and streamline ways to access this information, we might have a shot at fixing our immigration system.

Source: Why did DHS mistakenly grant 858 immigrants citizenship?

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Born In The U.S., Raised In China: ‘Satellite Babies’ Have A Hard Time Coming Home : NPR

2016/10/14 Leave a comment

Another take on “anchor babies” from the perspective of the children and their families:

“Anytime you eat at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, it’s likely that somebody in that restaurant has a child who is in China at the moment,” says Cindy Liu, a psychologist at Harvard University. She points out that no one knows exactly how many Chinese immigrant families send their babies to be raised by family in China.

That’s partly why she helped start a research project focusing on Chinese immigrants in the Boston area who are raising what some psychologists call “satellite babies.” Like satellites in space, these children leave from and return to the same spot.

You can find similar arrangements among immigrant communities from South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, researchers say. The satellite babies of Chinese immigrants usually come back to the U.S. in time for school.

When Satellite Babies Go To School

For their study, Liu and her colleagues interviewed adults who were once satellite babies to try to track the long-term impacts of the experience. Researchers say there are benefits from spending your early years in another country, away from your birth parents. Many satellite babies are exposed to their immigrant parents’ mother tongues and often develop strong ties with their grandparents and other extended relatives.

While Liu says that separation between satellite babies and their biological parents does not necessarily harm their relationship, some teachers and principals in New York City, where researchers also see this phenomenon, say these children can sometimes show subtle signs of trauma.

“They’re always looking around to see who’s there with them,” says Principal Elizabeth Culkin of P.S. 176 in Brooklyn. “And they always need that sense of knowing where they are and who’s there to protect them.”

Five-year-old Vivien Huang reads a book in her kindergarten classroom. After being raised in China, her teacher says she’s eagerly learning English from picture books.

Jennifer Hsu/WNYC

Members of Culkin’s staff say sometimes these children may act out by pushing or shoving other students to get attention. There are, of course, language difficulties, and some children show signs of attachment disorders.

Source: Born In The U.S., Raised In China: ‘Satellite Babies’ Have A Hard Time Coming Home : NPR Ed : NPR

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Citizenship applications plummet as fees soar

2016/10/13 Leave a comment

 citizenship-data-slides-2015-009My article in IRPP on the drop in citizenship applications following the steep increase of adult citizenship processing fees to $530 and the related Toronto Star article:

The impact of citizenship fees on naturalization 

Citizenship applications plummet as fees soar: The number of immigrants applying for citizenship has dropped significantly for the second year in a row after fees went up from $100 to $530.

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For the Wealthy, Citizenship at a Premium | Boston Review

2016/10/13 Leave a comment

Good in-depth article on investment citizenship:

In Southern Europe, citizenship-by-investment programs are intrinsically tied to property markets that were badly hurt by the 2008 crisis. The bursting of Spain’s real estate bubble left millions of empty homes, plummeting values, and entire ghost cities of half-finished villas. After such bad press, Mediterranean countries have struggled to lure back second homeowners who were essential to the economy (almost 20 percent of the housing stock in Mediterranean Europe is second homes, compared to just 3 percent in Northern Europe). In all of these markets, property developers have been frightened by the growing polarization between Northern and Southern Europe and have urged national governments to respond by courting global elites in place of traditional buyers from Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. The Brexit vote has only exacerbated this trend by taking UK buyers off the market and complicating the residency status of current British homeowners. Despite the challenges, some in the real estate industry are excited by citizenship-by-investment. Before 2008, they felt that EU-based property markets limited their business to merely well-off European clients; the innovation of citizenship-by-investment allows them to go after the truly global elites.

Those with a crisp new Maltese passport will probably not be getting to know the island very well. Initial residency is easy to fudge. After the wait period is over, newly Maltese citizens can work in Stockholm, enroll their children in heavily subsidized Dutch universities, or use Germany’s universal healthcare system. The selling of citizenship appears to many as a Southern European scheme to profit from the employment opportunities and stability of their Northern neighbors by selling access to stronger job markets and welfare states through their own immigration ministries. Michael Briguglio, a professor at the University of Malta and a former Green Party local councilor, called the country a “hub,” adding that the IIP is meant to attract “certain business people from China, Russia, and certain Arab countries to give them an open door to Europe. It’s a global form of patronage.” This issue is particularly sensitive in Malta, which is intensely Catholic; divorce was legalized only in 2011, and natives have a long history of viewing their island as a Christian entrepôt amidst Muslim trade routes. While the IIP vets criminal records and financial holdings, there seems to be little fear that citizenship-buyers will pose a safety threat. The pressing European worry of radicalization thus seems to apply only to poor migrants, ignoring a long history of economically comfortable and cosmopolitan participants in terrorist organizations.

For small countries, using passports as an asset to be exchanged for cash seems reasonable given a dearth of economic options.

As Southern Europe continues to have tense relations with wealthier EU nations over austerity, many politicians have been forced to cast a wider net to find allies and investors. Cyprus has drawn a large Russian population. China has invested in infrastructure and real estate in Greece and Spain. Portugal even saw the acquisition of a large national bank by its former colony, Angola. Compared to privatizing national industries or providing staging grounds for non-EU companies, selling passports is easy because it is geared toward mobility. It also reinforces the logic that small countries must constantly innovate in order to stay relevant to business opportunities and protect themselves from economic hardship. As Lino Bianco, a Maltese professor and the ambassador to Bulgaria, put it: “Maltese are survivors by circumstances. They turn failures into successes.” Using passports as an asset to be exchanged for cash seems reasonable given a dearth of economic options and a long history of trading, migration, and outside rule by regional powers. Unlike in larger countries, Maltese citizenship has always been negotiable and responsive to wider power struggles on the European continent. The most important thing for the Maltese was to get the best deal possible.

What differentiates citizenship-investors from those who go through a naturalization process is sweat equity. Citizenship-for-sale programs cynically reject the notion of national community, even at a time of rising xenophobia in Europe. Investors can experience citizenship—and all its attendant bonds, prejudices, and heart-stirring emotions—through a bank transfer and a paper booklet while the vast majority of those struggling to migrate must cross deserts, pack into dinghies, live in the shadows, struggle to maintain hope in detention centers, face deportation, study languages and history, and maybe, just maybe—only after many years—stand proudly among their friends and families with their hand on their heart.

Source: For the Wealthy, Citizenship at a Premium | Boston Review

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New passport processing system exposed to security gaps, audit finds

2016/10/13 Leave a comment

Another example, on a smaller scale than Shared Services Canada and the Phoenix pay system problems, of just how difficult it is for government to execute successfully IT projects:

The audit, which was completed in February 2016 and quietly posted to the departmental website a few months later, said IRCC leveraged expertise from industry and other federal departments and established several oversight mechanisms to track key project areas. But identified risks were not consistently monitored and addressed, the report said.

It also found there was no evidence that the information technology security plan was being followed, and that key security measures were missing, including a preliminary threat- and risk-assessment.

One year ago, the department suspended its use of a new system to process passport applications after CBC News reported on widespread glitches with the program.

The department said it was “pausing” the processing of passports through the GCMS in order to incorporate “lessons learned” during the testing phase.

No passports are currently being issued through the GCMS, but the department confirmed that refugee travel documents have been processed through the system since fall 2015.

At least 1,500 Canadian passports had been produced under a flawed new system that opened the door to fraud and tampering, according to documents obtained by CBC/Radio-Canada.

Internal records revealed the processing program was rushed into operation on May 9, despite warnings from senior officials that it was not ready and could present new security risks.

The department insisted that no passports have been issued with security gaps and that at no point had the integrity or security of the passport issuance been compromised.

Since the launch of the new system, officials had been scrambling to fix hundreds of glitches and to seal security gaps. Weeks after the new process was brought on line, there were calls to stop production.

Recommendations ignored

Those recommendations were ignored, and the passports continued to be issued in the first phase of production under the new system, designed to enhance security and integrate with other global programs.

Numerous reports obtained by CBC/Radio Canada showed that during a period of several weeks, it was possible for employees to alter the photo on a passport after it had been approved. There were also numerous reports of discrepancies between information contained in the database and what actually appeared on a passport.

In some cases, information disappeared from the system, making it difficult to verify if the applicant had used questionable guarantors or had made repeated claims of lost or stolen passports in the past.

That information acts as a safeguard to flag potential problems with applications.

Management accepted all six recommendations stemming from the audit, which ranged from medium to high risk. One plank of the “action plan” was to secure spending authorities to advance the project to the next phase.

Source: New passport processing system exposed to security gaps, audit finds – Politics – CBC News

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Government officials were aware of arcane law that stripped Canadians born abroad of citizenship

2016/10/12 Leave a comment

“Lost Canadians, the Mennonite angle:

“The Canadian government was aware and warned repeatedly years before an arcane law began stripping longtime Canadians of their citizenship, says a man who spent decades lobbying for change.

Bill Janzen, the former head of the Mennonite Central Committee’s office in Ottawa, said he and his colleagues met with the federal government throughout the 1980s and 1990s to find a fix to the so-called 28-year rule.

The provision was part of a 1977 law that automatically removed citizenship from people born abroad to Canadian parents who were also born outside the country.

“The government holds a big responsibility for this,” Janzen said. “They’ve created a mess.”

The law applies to people born between Feb. 15, 1977, and April 16, 1981, no matter how quickly after their birth they moved to Canada. It was rescinded in 2009, but the change didn’t apply retroactively.

The only way to prevent the automatic loss of citizenship was to apply to retain it before the age of 28 — a detail legal experts contend the government failed to adequately communicate to those affected.

Janzen said he has heard numerous stories of people going to citizenship officials and being told they had never heard of the law.

“They said, ’Don’t worry about it. Go home and enjoy Canada… Once a Canadian, always a Canadian,’ ” Janzen said, noting that officials often pointed out the absence of any expiry date on their citizenship cards.

“It happened again and again and again.”

Janzen has helped more than 180 people navigate the expensive and time-intensive process of regaining their citizenship over the years, So far, 160 requests have been approved.

Immigration Minister John McCallum could not be reached for comment, but a spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada said in an email the government advised those affected “when possible” of the need to apply before the age of 28 to retain their citizenship.

“As we do not have data on the number of individuals who might have been impacted, we were unable to advise people systematically,” Sonia Lesage wrote, adding that the number of people who remain affected is “very small.”

Lesage said the immigration minister has discretionary authority to grant citizenship in “cases of special and unusual hardship” and she encouraged anyone who thinks they might be affected to contact the department.

…Janzen said cost is a big challenge for many of the people caught by the 28-year rule, some of whom are “desperately poor.”“If your basic legal status is not settled, it’s so paralyzing,” he said. “For some of them, they’ve known there’s a problem and they’ve not known how to solve it (so) they’ve lived under the wire secretly. That’s no way to live.”

While other cases do exist, the issue appears to have had a disproportionate impact on Canada’s Mennonite community.

James Schellenberg of the Mennonite Central Committee described many of those affected as descendants of Mennonites who, by and large, left Canada in the 1920s for Mexico, Paraguay and elsewhere in Central and South America.

Starting in 2003, two years before the first of those who were affected began turning 28, Mennonite officials put advertisements warning of the law in newspapers popular among Mennonites.

Everyone I talked to seemed very confused. They didn’t know what exactly was going on.

Some people inquired at immigration offices but officials told them not to worry, said Marvin Dueck, an Ontario-based immigration lawyer who has worked on about 50 lost-citizenship cases.

“Once a Canadian, always a Canadian. That was a common response,” Dueck said. “And once a government official says that, why should they trust the Mennonite Central Committee?”

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