Melbourne man ‘dumbfounded’ after finding out he lost Australian citizenship 33 years ago

2024/05/11 Leave a comment

Of note. What struck me the most was the speed of the government response, focussing on the essential, rather than process. But like in Canada, it took media interest to provoke a response:

Sometimes wonder Last month the 55-year-old was informed by Home Affairs that he had no Australian citizenship or visa, due to a law that was repealed more than 20 years ago.

When the father-of-two told his employer about the situation, he was initially stood down from work without pay.

“I’m no longer Australian and apparently I haven’t been for the last 33 years,” Mr Keogh told Raf Epstein on ABC Radio Melbourne Mornings.

“It’s not a situation I expected to find myself in. I’m mid-50s, I’ve paid my taxes … I’m very grateful to be Australian.”

Applying for Irish citizenship had unintended consequences

Mr Keogh’s grandparents were Irish and, proud of his ancestry, he decided to register his heritage with the Irish government when he was 22.

He didn’t understand that would automatically be treated as an application for Irish citizenship or, crucially, that he would immediately lose Australian citizenship as a result.

Mr Keogh received Irish citizenship and a passport, which he held alongside Australian identity documents which technically were not valid.

It was never flagged as a problem until he came forward late last year.

When Mr Keogh shared his story on ABC Radio Melbourne today, the office of the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, Andrew Giles, said they were looking into Mr Keogh’s case.

Three hours later his citizenship was restored.

He said he was “absolutely elated” to have his citizenship restored after going to the media, but the problem was not solved.

Source: Melbourne man ‘dumbfounded’ after finding out he lost Australian citizenship 33 years ago

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House passes bill to add citizenship question to U.S. Census

2024/05/10 Leave a comment

While a citizenship question, like we have in Canada, makes sense,  the blatant politicisation and political purpose of the initiative does not given how it would further reinforce the political weight of rural states compared to more urban ones:

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would add a citizenship question to the next U.S. Census in 2030, preventing non-citizens or illegal immigrants from being counted toward the allocation of representatives and federal electors in each state.

The Equal Representation Act passed the House by a vote of 206 to 202, along party lines. It now moves to the Senate.

Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., who introduced the bill in January, called it “commonsense” that only U.S. citizens be counted when it comes to representation. Currently, anyone who participates in the census every 10 years — including non-citizens and undocumented immigrants — is counted for redistricting.

“One of the lesser acknowledged, but equally alarming, side effects of this administration’s failure to secure the southern border is the illegal immigrant population’s influence in America’s electoral process,” Edwards said on the House floor Wednesday.

“Though commonsense dictates that only citizens should be counted for apportionment purposes, illegal aliens have nonetheless recently been counted toward the final tallies that determine how many House seats each state is allocated and the number of electoral votes it will wield in presidential elections,” Edwards added.

The White House has been “strongly opposed” to putting a citizenship question on the census, saying it would be too costly.

“The bill would increase the cost of conducting the census and make it more difficult to obtain accurate data,” the White House’s Office of Management and Budget said in a statement this week.

“It would also violate the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which requires that the number of seats in the House of Representatives ‘be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state,'” the White House added.

“It is unconscionable that illegal immigrants and non-citizens are counted toward congressional district apportionment and our electoral map,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn.

“While people continue to flee Democrat-run cities, desperate Democrats are back-filling the mass exodus with illegal immigrants so that they do not lose their seats in Congress or their electoral votes for the presidency, hence artificially boosting their political power and in turn diluting the power of Americans’ votes.”

Before Wednesday’s vote, Democrats blasted the effort as unconstitutional and a waste of time given its prospects in the Senate.

“This bill is an affront to the great radical Republicans who wrote the original Constitution and the 14the Amendment, which has always made persons, not voters, the basis for reapportionment,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. “This bill would destroy the accuracy of the census, which may have something to do with its real legislative motivation.”

Source: House passes bill to add citizenship question to U.S. Census

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Hours on hold and long queues: Canadians still grappling with poor passport service

2024/05/09 Leave a comment

I had thought that the earlier problems with backlogs had been solved. Largely yes according to the data but it now appears that the problems are wait times for call centres and for in person service. Ongoing accountability issue between IRCC, with policy responsibility, and Service Canada for service delivery. Appears that the accountability issues mentioned in the IRCC evaluation in 2020 have not been addressed:

Canadians routinely wait hours on the phone and in person when dealing with Passport Canada, leaving many travellers infuriated by the quality of the agency’s customer service.

Post-COVID chaos at passport offices prompted the federal government to step up and promise a series of changes to get the documents into travellers’ hands in a timely manner.

Passport Canada claims that after a prolonged period of pandemic-related delays, the agency has returned to its normal “service standard” of getting passports to most people in 10 or 20 business days, depending on where an application is initially filed.

But the agency’s service standard makes no promises about how quickly they will serve people in person or over the phone.

Data and anecdotal reports suggest Passport Canada’s customer service track record is poor.

A CBC News analysis of passport office wait times shows people in urban centres often wait several hours to get face-to-face with a customer service agent at Passport Canada-branded offices.

On a weekday morning in mid-March, for example, Passport Canada’s website estimated the wait time at its west-end Ottawa location at 2 hours and 45 minutes.

In downtown Toronto that month, would-be passport holders faced a three-hour wait to get to the front of the line before noon.

The wait times in late April were much the same: people in Mississauga, Ont. were being told then they’d have to wait about 2 hours and 45 minutes to be served if they were on site at 9:30 a.m. There was a bright spot in Halifax — there the wait was only an hour.

On Monday, prospective passport holders in Brampton, Ont. faced a nearly three-hour wait shortly after that city’s office opened, according to Passport Canada data published online.

At Calgary’s Sunpark Drive location, travellers were told it would be at least three hours before they could speak to somebody after it opened its doors for the day, online data shows.

More than 12 hours on hold

Debbie Braun is a retiree who lives in High River, Alta., less than an hour south of Calgary.

She told CBC News that the prospect of those long in-person wait times led her to skip the drive into the city and send her passport application by mail in February.

And given Passport Canada’s commitment to process the vast majority of mail-in applications “within 20 days,” Braun thought she’d have her hands on a renewed passport well before her Mexican vacation in April.

In the end, it took twice as long. Braun said she got her passport in 40 days — and only after a bureaucratic battle with multiple phone calls and more than 12 hours spent on hold.

It was the same time frame for Braun’s daughter, who filed separately by mail from northern Alberta.

That’s despite Passport Canada’s commitment that 90 per cent of all mail-in applications will be processed within 20 days.

The agency routinely blows past that target.

Government data from 2022-23 reveals Passport Canada only met that 20-day processing target 52 per cent of the time.

Numbers from the past fiscal year haven’t been published online yet. A year ago, Karina Gould, who was the minister in charge of passports at the time, suggested there had been a big improvement.

Andrew Griffith is a former director general at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) who also worked at Service Canada and on passport files during his long tenure in government.

“The wait times are excessive. Nobody leaves happy if they have to wait three hours in person or on the phone,” he told CBC News.

“They either need to staff up or find other ways to reduce the time lag. I think, from a service point of view, it’s really problematic and it’s the kind of thing that undermines the faith of people in government institutions.”

While they’ve promised the option in the past, the government doesn’t yet allow Canadians to apply for a passport online.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller has said “system vulnerabilities” have prevented Ottawa from fulfilling that commitment. “It’s not secure,” he told reporters in February.

People can only fill out the required forms on the computer. Applicants still have to print them out and send them by mail for processing, or submit them in person.

That’s what Braun did — but then she wanted to use the government’s online application status tracker to keep tabs on her progress.

The federal government launched the tracker after the chaos of 2022-23, billing it as a big fix to prevent future passport pileups.

But Braun soon discovered she needed a file number to log in. She said she had to call to get that information because the online file number generator was “useless” and never gave her one after days of failed attempts.

That’s when the trouble started.

‘Who has time for that?’

“That first morning I called, there were 376 calls ahead of me in the queue,” she told CBC News. “I had no choice — I had to sit there and wait.”

Passport Canada had somehow affixed an old mailing address to her file. Braun filled out the right address when she sent it in, she said, and she has a copy of the application to prove it.

Each time she dialled through, she said, she was faced with a wall of other callers in front of her.

Later in February, she was number 352 on the line to speak to an operator.

In March, 377 people were ahead of her on the phone. On another March call, she was caller number 367.

On her last and final call that month, there were more than 500 callers ahead of her on hold, she said.

“I mean, who has time for that? Five hundred calls?” Braun said.

Braun said her average wait time to get an agent on the line was two hours and 40 minutes.

“How can somebody at an office sit on hold for two and a half hours?” she said.

Braun described some of the operators as “quite rude” and argumentative, adding they blamed her for an address error that was really their fault.

“I worked for Greyhound Canada for 35 years and if I would’ve done what Passport Canada does to the people calling in, I would have been fired,” she said. “It just angers me and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, you know?”

She said that while the government has “bragged” about its changes to the passport program, it has nothing to boast about.

“They just tell the people what they want to hear — ‘Oh, we’ve fixed everything’ — and the systems they put in place to improve things aren’t adequate because they don’t think it through,” she said.

40 days to get a passport

No one federal department is responsible for the passport program.

That’s a problem, Griffith said, because nobody wants to take ownership of a vital service that touches so many Canadians personally.

In 2023, after the passport fiasco, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau created a new cabinet position called “citizens’ services,” with a minister responsible for “serving as our government’s champion for service delivery excellence.”

Trudeau’s mandate letter to the minister, Terry Beech, said he should focus on “delivering services where and when Canadians need them” and deal with “service delivery challenges” on passports.

A spokesperson for Beech said he was not available for an interview.

Griffith said Beech’s appointment was political — an attempt to show people the government cares about wait times. But the minister does not seem to have the power to push through any real change, he added.

“I never really thought the ministerial role was a meaningful position,” he said. “I don’t think it needs a minister unless you’re really going to revamp government. You never see Beech, he’s not very active.”

IRCC, which is taking the lead on introducing online passport applications, said in a media statement that it “remains committed” to the concept but didn’t offer a timeline for a rollout.

Employment and Social Development Canada, which is responsible for managing the passport program on behalf of IRCC, told CBC News that it sometimes “experiences increased demand on a seasonal basis as popular travel times approach.”

As for long call centre wait times, the department said time spent on hold “can vary and some clients may experience either longer or shorter hold times.”

The department says it encourages people to use the online status tracker to “get updates on their applications without needing to call or visit Service Canada.”

“Service Canada remains committed to service excellence and improving the experience for clients applying for passports,” the department said.

Braun, meanwhile, said her experience left her with little faith in government’s ability to deliver.

“I followed the rules, I did what I was supposed to do and then you have to go through the nightmare and you get upset,” Braun said.

“It’s a good thing I did the 10-year passport thing because I don’t think I could go through this again in five years.”

Source: Hours on hold and long queues: Canadians still grappling with poor passport service

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Lithuania’s citizenship referendum: what it’s about and what it needs to succeed

2024/05/07 Leave a comment

Of interest, given the considerations at play with respect to Russia and ethnic Russians:

Under the current restrictive rules, Lithuanians who emigrate and become citizens in other countries automatically lose their Lithuanian passports. With the Lithuanian diaspora having ballooned in recent decades, there has been growing pressure to change the constitution. The referendum on “retaining citizenship” is an attempt to do it.

No ordinary referendum

“Citizenship of the Republic of Lithuania is acquired at birth and on other grounds established by law. Except in individual cases provided for by law, no one may be a citizen of the Republic of Lithuania and of another state. The procedure for acquisition and loss of citizenship shall be determined by law,” is the current wording of Article 12 of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania.

It is this article that will be changed if the referendum is successful.

The proposed new wording is: “Citizenship of the Republic of Lithuania is acquired at birth and on other grounds and in accordance with the procedure laid down by a constitutional law. The constitutional law shall also determine the grounds and procedure for losing citizenship of the Republic of Lithuania.”

Since Article 12 is part of the first section of the constitution, “The State of Lithuania”, changing it requires that more than half of all eligible voters – around 1.2 million people – not only come to the polls but also say yes. The last attempt to amend the article in 2019 failed because even though the turnout was 53 percent and the “yes” vote stood at 72 percent, this was not enough (because it represented only under 40 percent of the total electorate).

Why would this time be different? The initiators have argued that the first attempt to simply lift the ban on dual citizenship may have spooked some voters. The restriction was put into place to alleviate fears that Lithuania’s sizeable Russian-speaking community (about 5 percent of the population) could get Russian citizenship. To avoid that, the current proposal includes a reference to a constitutional law.

This law, which has already been drafted, specifies which nationalities would be compatible with Lithuanian citizenship. These “friendly countries” are the members of the European Union, the European Economic Area, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and NATO.

Meanwhile, Lithuanian citizens could not retain their citizenship if they were also nationals of Russia or Belarus, the member-states of the Eurasian Economic Union, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Commonwealth of Independent States, or “any other political, military, economic or other alliances established on the basis of the former USSR”.

Will the constitutional law be passed?

This constitutional law, however, is also a target of the opponents of the amendment. They argue that if the referendum succeeds and Article 12 is amended, there is no guarantee the law will actually be passed in its current form.

A constitutional law is not part of the constitution or a constitutional amendment. It is a completely separate document drafted by the parliament and adopted with a special majority – more than half of all MPs.

The parliament would only vote on the new constitutional law after a successful referendum.

But opponents of the referendum doubt whether the special majority will be easy to achieve or that no one will try to change the law.

The initiators of the referendum, meanwhile, assure that the law will be adopted because all parliamentary parties are in agreement and have no objections to the bill. Recall, they argue, that 111 MPs voted in favour of calling the referendum and none voted against it.

The constitutional law cannot be passed before the referendum because it would simply be deemed in violation of the current constitution. However, to make sure people know what they are voting for, the law has already been registered in the Seimas and is available to all who wish to read it.

Source: Lithuania’s citizenship referendum: what it’s about and what it needs to succeed

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Some cities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. Their turnout is quite low

2024/05/06 Leave a comment

Of note. Not surprised. Those that argue that non-citizen voting will increase municipal vote turnout should look at this case study. Similar to those advocating for no restrictions on voting by Canadian expatriates; while the number of registered voters and votes casts doubled, the numbers were still tiny (55,000 registered) compared to an estimated expatriate adult population of less than three million:

Three cities in Vermont now allow non-U.S. citizen residents to vote in local elections.

Winooski is one of those municipalities. It just held its third local election with noncitizen voting.

“Thirteen hundred and 45 people participated in our annual city and school election,” Winooski Clerk Jenny Willingham said about March’s contests. “Eleven of those ballots cast were from our all-resident voting,” a category that includes green-card holders, refugees and asylum-seekers.

In Vermont and elsewhere, municipalities that allow noncitizen voting in local elections have seen similar low voter registration rates and turnout. Local leaders are trying to parse out why.

That’s as noncitizen voting has emerged as a national flashpoint this election year. Republicans including former President Donald Trump are pushing legislation aimed at stopping noncitizens from voting in federal elections — which is already illegal and, by all accounts, very rare.

Small numbers of ballots cast

In Winooski, getting those 11 noncitizen votes cast in March’s races took a lot of legwork for Willingham. She had the ballots printed in 12 languages and had four interpreters — speaking Burmese, Nepali, Swahili and Somali — working on Election Day.

Burlington, Vermont’s largest city, counted 62 votes by noncitizens, accounting for less than half of 1% of the nearly 15,000 total votes cast.

In Montpelier, the state’s capital, 13 noncitizens voted. There are so few noncitizen registered voters that Clerk John Odum keeps their paperwork in a half-inch blue binder.

This trend extends outside Vermont. Takoma Park, Md., legalized local noncitizen voting 30 years ago. Still, registration and turnout remain relatively low.

There are ongoing grassroots efforts in Vermont to increase voter participation among green-card holders, refugees and asylum-seekers. The League of Women Voters distributes pamphlets and holds info sessions.

The city of Burlington pays outreach workers like Jules Wetchi, an immigrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo, to connect with immigrant communities. Wetchi hosts local radio and TV shows geared at French-speaking new Americans.

“I did what they call civic education to push people to know how they should be engaged to vote, because it’s very important,” Wetchi said. “This is our second country. We are living here — we should be more engaged to the political situation.”

Fear as a barrier to voting

But Wetchi said fear is one of the barriers to the ballot box. People have told him they’re afraid they might get harassed when they vote. Others worry that voting might negatively affect their U.S. citizenship application, even if their city clerk assures them that it won’t.

Some of that fear stems from the national spotlight on this issue, which got brighter last month when Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed a measure that would add citizenship documentation requirements for voters.

Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas, a Democrat, said she understands why some Vermonters are reluctant to have their names on a list of non-U.S. citizens that’s accessible with a public records request.

“We are a nation of immigrants. So it’s wild to imagine how we got to this place where we have to worry about these things,” she said.

Winooski and Montpelier were sued by the state and national Republican parties to try to stop local noncitizen voting. The lawsuits were thrown out, but Copeland Hanzas wondered whether they added to the chilling effect.

“I’m quite certain that there are more folks who would have been eligible to vote in those local elections,” she said.

In Washington, D.C., Republicans in Congress are trying to block a law that allows noncitizens to vote in local D.C. elections. The law went into effect in January. As of April 30, there were 372 noncitizens registered in a city with around 450,000 total registered voters.

D.C. Board of Elections staff members are doing their best to keep their heads down and not let the controversy affect their work, said Executive Director Monica Holman Evans.

“I receive the quote-unquote attacks or the quote-unquote comments, commentary, opinions about it,” she said. “And I’m just very clear that I don’t take an opinion on this or any other legislation that has been passed in the District of Columbia. Our job is to enforce what’s currently in effect.”

Vermont’s local election officials also said they feel the heat from the national spotlight. They know that one slip-up, like a presidential ballot being mailed to a noncitizen, could end up on the national news.

Larger jurisdictions like D.C. have voter databases that can track noncitizen voters. Vermont doesn’t yet; the secretary of state’s office said one is in the works.

In the meantime, clerks use Excel spreadsheets and three-ring binders to track noncitizen voters. Willingham, Winooski’s clerk, keeps her noncitizen voter registrations in a manila folder in a filing cabinet next to her desk.

“I feel like I check and then I recheck just to make sure that everything is correct, that they are only voting in the elections that our charter has declared,” she said.

Despite the low turnout, the mere fact that noncitizen voting is on the books means a lot to many immigrants in Vermont. Wetchi’s mother recently made the move to Vermont from the Democratic Republic of Congo. She speaks only Swahili and a local dialect, but Wetchi said he hopes she can vote one day.

“Because her voice is very important. Her voice can change many things,” he said.

The thing is, Wetchi and his family just moved to the city of South Burlington, which doesn’t have noncitizen voting. His mom can’t vote there. But he can — he’s a full citizen. He’s even thinking about running for office one day.

Source: Some cities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. Their turnout is quite low

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Indonesia May Offer Dual Citizenship to Attract Overseas Workers, Minister Says

2024/05/01 Leave a comment

Of interest (Indonesia permits dual nationality for its emigrants):

Indonesia may offer dual citizenship to people of Indonesian descent to entice more skilled workers into the country, a senior cabinet minister said on Tuesday.

Indonesia does not recognise dual citizenship for adults, according to Indonesian law, as a child with two passports must choose one and renounce the other when they turn 18.

Luhut Pandjaitan, the coordinating minister for maritime affairs and investment, said the government plans to give dual citizenship to former Indonesian citizens living overseas, without offering details.

Luhut was speaking ahead of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who pledged a $1.7 billion investment in Indonesia.

“We also invite diaspora Indonesia and we give them also, soon, dual citizen,” he said. “Which I think will … bring very skilful Indonesians back to Indonesia.”

Nearly 4,000 Indonesians became Singaporean citizens between 2019 to 2022, according to data from the Directorate General of Immigration.

The immigration agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the plans to allow for dual citizenship.

The issue of dual citizenship caused some controversy in 2016 when Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo removed Arcandra Tahar as energy and mining minister after less than a month on the job following reports he held U.S. and Indonesian passports.

Source: Indonesia May Offer Dual Citizenship to Attract Overseas Workers, Minister Says

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CANADIANS ABROAD: Overview of Recent Research and Implications for Public Policy

2024/04/29 Leave a comment

This report, commissioned by Senator Woo, essentially argues for more services and support for Canadian expatriates. While it contains some useful comparisons of provincial health care coverage and non-coverage, as well as provincial election regulations, it is disappointingly light on measures of connection to Canada, whether passport issued to Canadians abroad (no recent public stats apparently) or non-resident taxation (less than 32,000 in 2021).

In terms of the specific recommendations below, my thoughts are as follows:

  • Always good to have better and more comprehensive data, along with academic research. For the latter, important to have range of perspectives, from this stating the case for more services (as the report does) to more critical voices.
  • On the various recommendations for centralized information for “all information relevant to the Canadian diaspora,” this understates the complexity of compiling and maintaining such a data that incorporates federal and provincial information. The argument for the need appears more theoretical than based upon public opinion research.
  • As to the needs for a strategy, hard to argue against that but the challenge, as we seen in so many areas, strategies without serious implementation are more photo ops and virtue signalling than meaningful.
  • With respect to consular service, one needs to start at first principles in terms of the obligations and limits to consular service to manage expectations and costs. In general, Canada has been generous in recent crises in terms of family members and permanent residents, even in cases of long-term expatriates with minimal to no current connection to Canada
  • More nutty are the arguments regarding healthcare coverage, mental health awareness, and the medical care at home and abroad sections, especially given the strains our healthcare system in Canada is facing. Expats planning to return to Canada are responsible for reinstating coverage and the various provincial websites are easy to find and understand. Is it really a Canadian government responsibility to help expats deal with mental health issues among diaspora communities? There is some merit in studying the impact of the return of expats to Canada on healthcare given that they have for the most part not paid Canadian and provincial taxes but the issue of Canadians seeking medical services abroad is a completely separate issue as these are paid by individuals, not taxpayers.
  • On tax policy, unclear what exactly is the issue and what are they trying to advocate. Canadian taxation is based on residence and most expats don’t pay Canadian non-resident taxes although some who maintain property in Canada do pay property tax.
  • Expat voting is a classic case where the policy arguments are divorced from reality. The report makes the specious comparison between overall voting rates between Canadian and non-residents but not the more telling on that only 55,000 non-resident voters registered, a drop in the bucket compared to the overall number of around three million adult expats. The same concerns regarding the cost of maintaining an updating a database on federal and provincial voting regulations apply. And suggesting electronic voting from abroad when we do not have it in Canada, not to mention the potential cost and security risks, even more hard to justify.
  • The last three recommendations – economic development engagement, chambers of commerce, and cultivating the diaspora – already happen to some extent in every embassy that I had worked in. No doubt, could be improved and strengthened.

Overall, the author has an overly optimistic take on the interest and willingness of long-term Canadian expatriates to advance Canadian interests. The vast majority are living their lives in their country of residence, contributing to that country’s economy and society, with relatively few highly engaged in advancing Canadian interests. Those are largely known to embassies and consulates and Canadian interest groups. Again, more could be done but given limited resources and little hard evidence to demonstrate effectiveness, the case is weak.

Source: CANADIANS ABROAD: Overview of Recent Research and Implications for Public Policy

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Golden Visa Programs, Once a Boon, Lose Their Luster

2024/04/23 Leave a comment

Long overdue:

Faced with growing pressure to address its housing crunch, Spain said this month that it would scrap its golden visas, the latest in a wider withdrawal from the program by governments around Europe.

Half a dozen eurozone countries offered the visas at the height of Europe’s debt crisis in 2012 to help plug gaping budget deficits. Countries that needed international bailouts — Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece among them — were especially desperate for cash to repay creditors, and saw a path to bring in investors while reviving their moribund real estate markets.

The golden visa program brought Spain billions of euros in investments. But property prices paid by rich foreigners are well beyond the earning power of locals.

Countries reaped a windfall: Spain alone has issued 14,576 visas linked to wealthy buyers making real estate investments of more than €500,000. But the prices that they can afford are squeezing people like Dr. Barba out of a market that had already been highly inflated by the rise of Airbnb and the draw of Wall Street investors.

“Access to housing needs to be a right instead of a speculative business,” Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, said in a speech this month as he announced the end of the country’s golden visa program. “Major cities are facing highly stressed markets, and it’s almost impossible to find decent housing for those who already live, work and pay their taxes.”

The visas make it easy for people outside the European Union to buy the right to temporary residency, sometimes without having to live in the country. Investors from China, Russia and the Middle East flocked to buy real estate through them.

In recent years, British nationals have followed suit in the wake of Brexit, snapping up homes in Greece, Portugal and Spain, joined by an increasing number of Americans looking to enjoy a lifestyle they can’t afford in major U.S. cities.

But golden visa programs are now being phased out or shut down around Europe as governments seek to undo the damage to the housing market. And after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, E.U. officials urged governments to end them, warning they could be used for money laundering, tax evasion and even organized crime….

Source: Golden Visa Programs, Once a Boon, Lose Their Luster

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Government submits proposal to Parliament on stricter requirements for acquiring Finnish citizenship

2024/04/20 Leave a comment

Of note:

The Government has proposed an amendment to the Citizenship Act that would extend the period of residence required for Finnish citizenship from the current five years to eight years. In addition, only time lived in Finland under a residence permit would be taken into account when calculating the period of residence. The proposal to amend the Citizenship Act was submitted to Parliament in a government session on 18 April.

One of the objectives set in the Government Programme is to tighten the requirements for acquiring Finnish citizenship and encourage immigrants to integrate into Finnish society. The reform will be implemented in stages through three legislative projects.

The first project will extend the required period of residence in Finland, which is one prerequisite for being granted citizenship based on an application. The second and third projects will tighten the requirements related to integrity and livelihood and introduce a citizenship test. The government proposals for the latter projects will be submitted to Parliament in autumn 2024 and spring 2025, respectively.

In line with the proposal now submitted to Parliament, people applying for citizenship would have to reside in Finland for eight years instead of the current five years. This way, the authorities could assess the applicants’ suitability for citizenship over a longer period of time.

The amendments would also concern applicants for international protection, who would no longer have a derogation concerning the period of residence requirement. In other words, once the amendment is in force, it will no longer be possible to derogate from the requirement on grounds of international protection. However, citizenship applications made by beneficiaries of international protection would continue to be considered urgently, with the decision on granting citizenship made no later than one year after the applicant submitted their application.

With the amendment, the residence requirement for children aged 15 or over, spouses of Finnish citizens, stateless persons and applicants meeting the language proficiency requirement would be extended to five years from the current four. The two-year residence requirement for Nordic citizens and spouses of persons working at Finnish missions abroad would remain unchanged.

Changes in determining the period of residence for asylum seekers

With the amendment, only periods of residence with a residence permit would be taken into account when determining an applicant’s period of residence. This means that the time taken to process an asylum application would no longer count towards the period of residence. For beneficiaries of international protection in Finland, the approved period of residence would begin when they are issued a residence permit.

In addition, any stays in Finland without a residence permit would no longer be taken into account, in full or in part, under any circumstances when determining the period of residence. Similarly, the applicant’s age, state of health or other comparable reason would no longer be grounds for approving a period of residence without a residence permit.

The reform would also shorten the periods of absence that could be included in the continuous period of residence. During the entire continuous period of residence, applicants could stay abroad for one year in total, and no more than three months of this period could take place during the year preceding naturalisation. The goal is to ensure that applicants receiving Finnish citizenship are actually living in Finland.

In 2022, altogether 9,509 people were granted citizenship based on an application. The extension of the residence requirement for citizenship would potentially apply to nearly 10,000 people each year.

Source: Government submits proposal to Parliament on stricter requirements for acquiring Finnish citizenship

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“In Demand Yet Unprocessed: Endemic Immigration Backlogs” – Citizenship Government response

2024/04/19 Leave a comment

The section of the government response to CIMM’s study of backlogs, citizenship ceremonies and oath. My understanding, however, is that in practice applicants are assigned the ceremony type automatically (virtual being the default) but can request an in-person if they prefer. Last time I checked based upon public IRCC data, about 90 percent of applicants had virtual ceremonies.

And of course, IRCC’s “seeking to increase the percentage of clients that complete the Oath in-person in 2024-2025” is meaningless unless its open data operational data includes the numbers of new citizens by virtual and in-person ceremonies:

7. That IRCC make clear to all individuals that it is their choice to choose the citizenship ceremonies process best suited to their needs; and that while in-person ceremonies should be the default option, virtual ceremonies should also be allowed; and further, that any self-administered oath of citizenship be subject to robust integrity measures. Agree in Principle

The Government agrees in principle with the recommendation that the Department make it clear to clients that they may choose the citizenship ceremony format best suited to their needs, and that any self-administered oath of citizenship be subject to robust integrity measures. Canada welcomed a record number of 364,166 new citizens in 2022-2023, compared to approximately 248,000 in 2019-2020 (pre-pandemic), enabled in part by the implementation of virtual ceremonies (also called video ceremonies) and related efficiencies.

As of July 2022, IRCC resumed holding in-person ceremonies while maintaining virtual ceremonies, as a stream of service delivery that provides efficiency, timely service, and flexibility to clients as they can accommodate more clients from coast to coast to coast, including those in rural and remote regions. Clients are invited by the Department to either an in-person or virtual ceremony, based on operational considerations, but can request a change of format (e.g. from virtual ceremony to an in-person ceremony or vice-versa) and the Department makes best efforts to accommodate client preference.

Virtual ceremonies have contributed to a significant reduction in grant inventories, while modernization initiatives, such as online electronic applications for most grant of citizenship applications and electronic citizenship certificates, have reduced and continue to reduce processing times with a return to service standards projected for spring 2024.

A number of factors, including volumes of clients served and costs would be impacted if in- person ceremonies were set as the default option. Instead, the Department is seeking to increase the percentage of clients that complete the Oath in-person in 2024-2025 as well as clarify that all individuals have the opportunity to request the citizenship ceremony format that best suits their needs, subject to availability.

In addition, the Department continues work to modernize Canada’s Citizenship Program to improve client service, increase processing efficiencies and enhance program integrity. As the Citizenship Program continues to modernize, the Department will reflect on the feedback received from Canadians, and incorporate this into the assessment of options and decisions on a way forward.

Source: “In Demand Yet Unprocessed: Endemic Immigration Backlogs”

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