How to Get Hassle-Free Canadian Birthright Citizenship

2021/06/26 2 Comments

The latest example I have seen of marketing birth tourism services in Canada:

Getting Canadian citizenship for children brings many benefits. From avoiding international tuition fees when a child gets to university age, to easing immigration concerns, Canadian birthright can be advantageous. The opportunity to live and work in the Canadian economy is also something that could be an ideal solution once children reach adulthood and want to make the most of their skills. Accessing one of the world’s most advanced healthcare systems when needed will also provide sound peace of mind.

Despite the benefits of doing so, many people are put off attempting to get Canadian birthright citizenship for their children for fear of acting illegally, or just because of bureaucratic red tape involved. The reality is that with the right help, it is completely legal to do so, and experts can navigate the process on an individual’s behalf.

“Birthright Citizenship Canada are experts in our field, and we do everything we can to make the process as smooth as possible”, a spokesman for the Concord, ON-based childbirth support organization commented. “By commissioning us to work on your family’s project you will know that everything is taken care of. This includes the paperwork, travel arrangements to and from Canada, and all the legal and medical help that will be required along the way”.

“One of the main aspects that discourages people from seeking to obtain birthright citizenship for their children is the processes involved. Obtaining documents such as temporary residence visas can be a daunting prospect for people not familiar with Canadian procedures. Our team are skilled in such matters, and can allow you to concentrate on enjoying your new arrival.”

The Canadian Citizenship Act made it legal to get citizenship for a baby born in Canada to foreign parents. In fact in simple terms, the act states that citizenship is available to all children born within the country. Even still, the perception of complexity and bureaucracy discourages many people.

“To ease peoples’ concerns about complexity and legalities, we combine everything into ‘birth packages’. These bundle in everything from transport and accommodation arrangements to healthcare and paperwork. Our experts handle multiple files on a daily basis. As a result, they know how to get things done, and where the potential bottlenecks are. Not only that, but they take the time to communicate with the customer at every step of the way.”

Birthright Citizenship Canada’s role involves being the go-between to navigate different stakeholders from the start of the process. Only when the family leaves the country again with a Canadian citizenship passport does the project conclude.

“Our job is all about removing pain points and hassle”, the spokesman continued. “We even do our best to save our customers some money where we possibly can. For example, we advise people to have pre-natal testing carried out prior to traveling to Canada. Doing this in their country of origin is almost always cheaper, and this way it is already organized before touching down in Canada. We also have different packages available depending on peoples’ budgets and requirements.”

About Birthright Citizenship Canada

Birthright Citizenship Canada are experts in childbirth support. The Toronto-based consultants specialize in obtaining citizenship for non-residents’ children born on Canadian territory. By offering packaged services covering legal, medical and administrative requirements, Birthright Citizenship Canada aim to take the stress and hassle out of the process. This allows people to focus on the birth of their child.

Media Contact
Company Name: Birthright Citizenship Canada
Contact Person: Media Relations
Email: Send Email
Phone: +1-647-646-5437
Address:7250 Keele Street, Unit 425
City: Toronto
State: Ontario L4K 1Z8
Country: Canada
Website: https://birthrightcanada.com/

Source: How to Get Hassle-Free Canadian Birthright Citizenship

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Australia: Citizenship application costs set to soar

2021/06/25 Leave a comment

High Canadian fees being used (along with UK and USA) to help justify increase:

Australian citizenship application fees are being jacked up to recoup more of the processing costs.

The standard fee for Australian citizenship by conferral will soar from $285 to $490, an increase of 72 per cent.

People applying for citizenship by descent or under other situations will also pay significantly more.

So will those seeking to renounce, resume or apply for evidence of Australian citizenship.

Immigration Minister Alex Hawke insists the July 1 price hike will better reflect the cost of handling increasingly complex applications, which take longer to process.

Mr Hawke said it was the first change to citizenship application fees since 2016.

“Based on existing fees, the government is only recovering approximately 50 per cent of the costs of processing citizenship applications,” he said on Thursday.

“The cost of citizenship applications remains comparable with other countries.”

Mr Hawke said the cost of citizenship would still be lower than the UK, Canada and US.

The decision is guaranteed to raise eyebrows given the impact of coronavirus border closures, which have driven a wrecking ball through migration into Australia.

Source: Citizenship application costs set to soar

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‘Forgotten Canadians’ are paying a price for delays in processing their citizenship papers. A new study reveals the real cost

2021/06/25 4 Comments

Makes reference to earlier IADB study on economic impact of citizenship delays (Citizenship and the Economic Assimilation of Canadian Immigrants ):

An engineer for one of the world’s largest car manufacturers in Ontario, Syeda Umar says a Canadian passport will be handy for her to travel for work assignments — and crucial for advancing her career.

So as soon as the Pakistani immigrant met all the citizenship requirements, she submitted her application in September 2019.

Now, almost 22 months later, she is still waiting to be scheduled a citizenship exam stalled amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her job as a senior quality engineer requires her to deal with the company’s global supply chain and, at times, she’s expected to spend weeks and months overseas on assignment.

Due to the visa limitation as a Pakistani passport holder, Umar says twice so far her boss has had to ask her colleagues to step in to cover the business trips for her.

“This is starting to affect my job and my career,” says the 33-year-old Woodstock, Ont., resident, who arrived here in 2014 for a postgraduate degree at University of Waterloo and became a permanent resident in 2017.

“I feel extremely frustrated and sad.”

But even more is at stake with any prolonged delay in citizenship acquisition, according to a recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank that examined the relationship between citizenship and Canadian immigrants’ economic assimilation.

Based on data from the Canadian Labour Force Survey between 2013 and 2017 and Permanent Resident Landing File, researchers looked at the wages of naturalized citizens in two cohorts — demarcated by the Conservative government’s citizenship reform implemented in 2015 that raised an applicant’s minimum physical presence in Canada from three to four years.

They found that those affected by the change were less likely to hold a position in the public sector, and more likely to be self-employed and have a job with continuously varying work schedules. These immigrants also tended to work more hours a week and for a lower wage than peers not affected by it.

“Delaying citizenship eligibility by one year adversely affected Canadian residents’ wages,” noted the report. “Access to better jobs explains a citizenship premium of 11 per cent in higher wages among naturalized migrants.”

The research attributes the wage gaps to the role citizenship plays in hiring decisions by employers and raising migrants’ “bargaining power” on the job. Canadian citizenship also opens the door for skilled Canadian immigrants to jobs in the U.S. that had been out of their reach before.

Canadian Citizenship Process Advocates, a grassroots group formed by applicants caught up in the COVID-19-related backlog, said the immigration department should heed the findings of this report and take the impacts of delayed citizenship seriously.

“We are the forgotten Canadians in the pandemic. The citizenship backlog has not been a priority for the government because the idea is they’re already living in Canada and working, so there’s no harm in delaying the citizenship,” said Ahsan Umar, whose group has more than 1,000 members on Facebook.

“Citizenship not only has a material impact on applicants and we also suffer mentally from the stress due to the delay.”

According to the immigration department, the number of citizenship applications in the backlog has ballooned from 208,000 at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 to more than 374,100 as of the end of April of this year. Some 109,750 applicants are waiting for a virtual citizenship test and 17,300 for an online citizenship ceremony. The rest were in the early stage of the process.

Department spokesperson Julie Lafortune said officials have devoted considerable resources to improve processing and made great progress in moving applicants through the system faster.

Despite the many challenges posed by the pandemic lockdowns and disruptions, Canada welcomed 109,744 new Canadian citizens last year. As of April, 67,000 citizenship applicants had been invited to take an online citizenship knowledge test and 63,600 for a virtual citizenship ceremony.

“The pandemic has had a significant impact on Canada’s immigration system, and we understand the frustrations of applicants at this difficult moment,” Lafortune said.

“This means that things will move faster, everyone will be able to apply online, applicants will have to jump through fewer hoops and aspiring Canadians can start contributing faster.”

She said the department now has the capacity to conduct 5,000 online citizenship tests per week, which is in line with the pre-COVID-19 testing rates.

That’s not quick enough to reduce the backlog that continues to build during the pandemic, said Sameeh Al Dajani, who submitted his family’s application in July 2019 and is still waiting to be scheduled a citizenship test.

What frustrates the Ottawa accountant from Jordan most is how a couple of friends who submitted their applications after his actually have been scheduled the exam, one of them is now already a new citizen.

“We certainly need more transparency from the immigration department. We need to know what’s going on there,” Dajani said.

Source: ‘Forgotten Canadians’ are paying a price for delays in processing their citizenship papers. A new study reveals the real cost

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Canada’s oath of citizenship now recognizes First Nations, Inuit and Métis rights

2021/06/23 Leave a comment

The formal announcement and messaging. But still no new citizenship study guide, five years later:

Canada’s Oath of Citizenship is more than words. It is a public declaration of belonging to our country and to our communities. That’s why the government has been hard at work over the past few years updating the Oath to include Indigenous peoples, through Bill C-8. This directly responds to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Call to Action 94.

The recent news of the findings in the area around the Kamloops Residential School is a stark reminder of the importance of this work and the reason why we need continue to deliver on the TRC’s Calls to Action.

The Honourable Marco E. L. Mendicino, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, today announced that Bill C-8 has received Royal Assent and is now law. As of today, Canada’s Oath of Citizenship officially recognizes First Nations, Inuit and Métis, and the obligation that all citizens have to uphold the treaties between the Crown and Indigenous nations.

The new Oath of Citizenship recognizes that Indigenous rights are both enshrined in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, and that they derive from the historic use of this land by Indigenous peoples. As new Canadians recite the Oath, they will make a personal commitment to observe the Aboriginal and treaty rights of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.

Reconciliation is a national project that involves all of us, including our newest citizens. Over the past few years, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has been working to implement several of the TRC’s Calls to Action and educate newcomers about their unique role in reconciliation.

On June 14, we announced that Indigenous people can now reclaim their traditional names on passports and other documents, fulfilling Call to Action 17. In response to Call to Action 93, we have been working hard at updating Canada’s Citizenship Guide to ensure new citizens understand the role of Indigenous peoples in our past, present and future. We look forward to sharing the new guide with Canadians later this year.

New oath:

“I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada, including the Constitution, which recognizes and affirms the Aboriginal and treaty rights of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, and fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen.”

Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2021/06/canadas-oath-of-citizenship-now-recognizes-first-nations-inuit-and-metis-rights.html

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Galon: There’s something other than security behind Israel’s citizenship law

2021/06/22 Leave a comment

Of note:

During the next two weeks, the Knesset is expected to vote on the Citizenship and Entry Into Israel Law (Temporary Provision), which has been renewed . This law violates the basic rights of Arab citizens of Israel to family life and equality, and its purpose – as attorney Dafna Holz-Lechner, who represented Meretz and me in petitions to the High Court of Justice has argued – is to prevent them from living in Israel with their relatives from the territories. But this time there is a political problem: Likud and the parties of its cancerous bloc have announced that they will not vote in favor of the law, and the United Arab List has also said it will oppose it.

One thing is already clear: Despite the argument of the right – which the center, in its cowardice, has adopted over the years – this law does not prevent any “security risks.” Firstly, the Shin Bet security service has already stated that since 2018 no one eligible for family reunification has been involved in terrorism. Second, Justice Edmond Levy, who during a 2006 High Court hearing supported the law solely as an interim measure, opposed it by 2012, and ridiculed the security argument, since, after all, Israel allows Palestinian workers to enter its territory every day. Third, if there were a security risk, Likud would not oppose the law; it’s inconceivable that Likud would seek to endanger state security just to overthrow a government not headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, right?

The law’s purpose has always been to serve as a means of demographic control. The law proves that the word “citizenship” is a meaningless one in Israel, since no one would have dared oppose a law allowing Jewish Israelis to live with settlers from the West Bank, even though there have been settlers involved in terrorism. We still haven’t forgotten that in 2005 they tried to set alight a gas storage facility in Rehovot to foil the disengagement, and Betzalel Smotrich was once arrested on suspicion of attempting a major attack inside Israel. From time to time, settlers attack IDF soldiers, and as for their behavior toward Palestinians – there is no Shabbat without a pogrom – one needn’t elaborate.

If we want Israeli citizenship to have any real meaning and not to be a cover for an apartheid regime (and Human Rights Watch cited this law as one of the reasons it views Israel as such), Arab citizens need to know that they are equal. In many respects, the family reunification provision served as a prelude to the which officially turned Arabs into second-class citizens.

Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked says that opposition to the law by any coalition member is a “violation of the status quo,” and therefore goes against the government’s guidelines. This isn’t true. “Status quo” is not a synonym for “how it was, is how it will always be.” A law that is renewed every year, under the guise of a temporary order, by its nature involves a specific and temporary interest – an exception to the status quo, which is a permanent thing. We do not vote on the status quo anew every year, and this temporary provision – the reason why the law stood the test of the High Court – contradicts basic principles, and is meant to be anything but permanent.

All of us, Jews and Arabs, are residents and citizens of this tortured land. The time has come for us to stop threatening Arab citizens with a second and separation from their families. They are citizens by right and not by grace. As Natan Alterman wrote about expressing such “grace”: “It is not appropriate even for a personal reason.” This abominable law, which stains the Israeli legal code, must be eliminated. Then one could say that this government has effected some kind of change.

Source: There’s something other than security behind Israel’s citizenship law

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Citizenship Modernization Case Study

2021/06/19 Leave a comment

This deck looks at the Canadian citizenship program and the need for modernization in the context of Budget 2021’s allocation of funding to upgrade IRCC’s IT infrastructure. It contrast the current citizenship process with a streamlined process that makes it easier for applicants and more efficient for the government. This was presented at a modernization discussion organized by the Public Policy Forum.

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South Korea citizenship law change proposal sparks anti-China backlash

2021/06/18 Leave a comment

Of note:

South Korea is trying to increase its future working population by making it easier for children of foreign residents to become citizens, but its plans have run into trouble in the face of rising anti-China sentiment.

A measure proposed by the Ministry of Justice — first made public in April — called for easing the pathway to citizenship for children born to long-term foreign residents, by simply notifying the ministry.
But a presidential petition opposing the revision has gathered over 300,000 signatures. The chatroom of an online hearing held to discuss the proposal in May was overwhelmed with expletive-laced complaints by tens of thousands of viewers.
The justice ministry has said it is still taking into account public opinion and the advice of experts before submitting the proposal to the Ministry of Government Legislation.
“Given the strong backlash, I would say the ministry has already lost much of the momentum to push ahead with the proposal,” said Jang Yun-mi, an attorney who specializes in issues related to children.
The controversy highlights the challenges South Korea faces as it seeks to ensure a robust future population in the face of declining birthrates and rapidly aging workers, and the potential policy implications of increasingly negative views of China, its biggest trading partner.
Data from last year suggests only about 3,930 people would be eligible under the rule change, but the fact that 3,725 of them were of Chinese heritage prompted much of the criticism.
South Korean views have been colored by what some see as economic bullying by Beijing, its initial poor handling of the Covid-19 crisis, and the assertion by some Chinese that dearly held aspects of Korean food and culture, such as kimchi and the traditional hanbok dress, have roots in China.
Among immigrant communities, the proposed measures are not seen as worth the backlash, said Kim Yong-phil, editor-in-chief of E Korea World, a local newspaper for Chinese-Koreans.
“Anti-Chinese people could use this issue as a pretext to attack Chinese-Koreans,” he said.

Population decline

Naturalization was rare in South Korea until the early 2000s — just 33 foreigners gained South Korean citizenship in 2000, for example — but rose to nearly 14,000 last year, immigration data show.
Of them, nearly 58% were from China, and 30% from Vietnam. The rest included people from Mongolia, Uzbekistan and Japan, Korea Immigration Service data showed.
The latest proposal is needed to encourage future workers to stay by allowing them to foster a South Korean identity from an early age and stably get assimilated into society, the justice ministry told Reuters in a statement.
Kim Yong-seon, who came from China in 2004 to study and was naturalized in 2014, said the amendment is useful as it provides more options for immigrants, but the more pressing matter is making it easier for adults to become citizens.
“Over the past few years, the requirements for permanent residency and citizenship have only gotten harder,” he said, citing changes that require high amounts of income or assets.
Like the majority of Chinese nationals residing in South Korea, Kim is ethnic Korean — his grandfather migrated to China a century ago.
More than 70% of the 865,000 Chinese nationals residing in South Korea are of Korean descent, according to immigration data.
Negative views of China among South Koreans have hit historic highs recently, with as much as 75% having an unfavorable opinion of them late last year, compared to around 37% in 2015, according to Pew Research.
“Some Chinese people are already committing a ‘cultural fraud’ against the whole world by making unreasonable claims that kimchi and hanbok are also Chinese,” opposition People’s Party chairman Ahn Cheol-soo said.
“If left as is, it will lead to a ‘cultural invasion’ in which they claim that even Korea’s priceless culture is theirs.”

Source: South Korea citizenship law change proposal sparks anti-China backlash

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‘It’s about time’ to update citizenship guide, Assembly of First Nations Alberta chief says

2021/06/14 Leave a comment

Of note:

Assembly of First Nations Alberta regional chief Marlene Poitras hopes newcomers to Canada will learn more about Indigenous history and culture once the federal government updates its citizenship guide.

The 68-page document, Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship, prepares newcomers for the citizenship test. It has not been updated since 2012.

In its 93rd call to action, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called for revising the guide and citizenship test to “reflect a more inclusive history,” including material about treaties and residential schools.

Residential schools are mentioned briefly in the current guide.

“The schools were poorly funded and inflicted hardship on the students; some were physically abused,” one sentence reads.

The Liberal government promised in 2016 that changes to the guide were coming but they have not yet materialized.

“It’s about time — it should have happened a long time ago,” Poitras said Wednesday in an interview with CBC Edmonton’s Radio Active.

Beyond consultations for the guide itself, Poitras said she has recommended that elders participate in the ceremonies for new citizens.

“We have been hard at work over the past few years crafting a new citizenship guide that reflects contemporary Canada,” said Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson Nancy Caron in an emailed statement.

Caron said the process has included “extensive collaboration ” with leaders of Indigenous organizations as well as historians, academics, parliamentarians and groups representing racialized communities, women, francophones, the LGBTQ community and people with disabilities.

The ministry hopes to share the new guide with Canadians later this year, Caron said.

“From what I understand, from talking to some people who know this better than I do, the new guide will have more extensive coverage of Indigenous history,” said Andrew Griffith, former director general of citizenship and multiculturalism for the IRCC.

On Thursday, the Senate passed Bill C-8, which would revise the citizenship oath newcomers take to include mention of treaties with Indigenous peoples.

“While getting the oath changed is really important, it will really be important to see how the next version of the guide — which apparently is fairly advanced — captures these issues,” Griffith said.

Source: ‘It’s about time’ to update citizenship guide, Assembly of First Nations Alberta chief says

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Probe: Cyprus wrongly issued passports despite warnings

2021/06/09 Leave a comment

No surprise. Like the vast majority of these programs, vulnerable to corruption, both in terms of those applying and administering:

The Cyprus government continued for at least four years to unlawfully issue passports to relatives of wealthy investors under an investment-for-citizenship program, despite warnings by the Attorney-General that this could be in breach of the law, the head of an independent commission said on Monday.

Former Supreme Court President Myron Nicolatos said that, of the 6,779 passports issued during the program’s 13-year run, 53% were issued not to the investors themselves but to family members or top company executives.

The Attorney-General’s Office had warned on separate occasions in 2015 and 2016 that the practice might be unlawful because there was no specific law enabling the government to issue such passports.

Of the remainder that were granted to investors, one-third failed to meet all the criteria, Nicolatos said. He was speaking after handing the final, 780-page report of an investigation into the multibillion-euro program to Attorney General George Savvides,

He said 8% didn’t meet the primary condition of investing around 2.5 million euros ($3 billion) into the Cypriot economy, while another 12% failed to meet the bar on owning a permanent residence in Cyprus.

Nicolatos said the four-member commission is recommending that authorities look into revoking citizenship in 85 cases in which the applicants may have committed criminal or other offenses to secure a passport.

He said that revoking the citizenship of investors’ relatives and company executives who weren’t directly at fault could prove “particularly complicated” because of legal clauses enshrined in Cypriot and European Union law.

“It’s obvious that the (program) operated between 2007 and Aug. 17, 2020, with blanks and omissions, without a legal framework and almost without a regulatory framework,” Nicolatos said.

“Also absent were those safety valves, the proper legal guidance as well as adequate supervision regarding existing laws and regulations.”

The program was scrapped last year amid much controversy over an undercover TV report that allegedly showed the parliamentary speaker and a powerful lawmaker claiming that they could skirt the rules to grant citizenships.

They had made the pledge to a reporter posing as a representative of a fictitious Chinese investor who had been convicted of fraud in his country. Both resigned shortly after the report was aired.

The golden passport program ran for 13 years but was ramped up in 2013 following the financial crisis. It generated more than 8 billion euros (almost $10 billion) for the east Mediterranean island nation and proved particularly attractive to foreign investors because obtaining an EU passport allowed them access to the 27-member bloc.

The EU had also taken Cyprus to task over the scheme.

Nicolatos also faulted some lawyers, accountants, banks, real estate brokers and developers who he said “didn’t sufficiently live up to their legal or other obligations” through the application process, while in some instances, supervisory authorities failed to do their job properly.

Politicians and officials may bear “political” responsibility for the debacle and some could face disciplinary action.

Although the program spanned the tenure of three different presidents, the overwhelming majority of citizenships were granted during seven years during which the sitting president, Nicos Anastasiades, held the office.

He called on law enforcement authorities to prosecute alleged law breakers and to mete out punishment to the degree of an individual’s responsibility.

Attorney General Savvides said authorities would examine revoking citizenships, take lawbreakers to court and take disciplinary action in those instances that the report recommends.

In the first such legal action, his office last month took five individuals and four legal entities to court to face 37 charges in connection with the commission’s findings.

A redacted version of the final report — so as not to compromise ongoing legal actions — will be made public in due course, Savvides said.

An interim report released in March also pointed to serious shortcomings in how the Interior Ministry processed applications, including the “complete lack” of a database to properly vet applicants. It said the Finance Ministry was also at fault for “green lighting” certain applications that didn’t fulfil all the criteria due to the size of the investment.

Source: Probe: Cyprus wrongly issued passports despite warnings

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Canadian citizenship oath could help newcomers learn more about Indigenous people

2021/06/05 1 Comment

Suspect the forthcoming guide along with news coverage will be more significant but nevertheless, important:

Sharon Nyangweso says she first heard of Indigenous people in Canada when she was eight years old. Her family had just moved to Canada for her mother’s job at the Kenya High Commission in Ottawa. At one of the gatherings, a guest approached her mom upon learning they just arrived in the city.

What happened next stuck with Nyangweso.

The person told her mom to avoid Rideau Street because Indigenous people were there and “they were always drunk.” This memory unsettles her to this day, because the comment came not from a naturalized Canadian but from someone in her own circle.

“That came from another immigrant,” she said in a telephone interview Thursday. “Not just another immigrant but one that had intimate knowledge of what it meant to be part of a colonized nation.”

Nyangweso said there’s a wide gap when it comes to dissemination of information to immigrants about Indigenous Peoples and cultures in Canada. One that, she said, causes the perpetuation of misconceptions resulting from the country’s history of colonialism.

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which examined the history and legacy of residential schools in Canada, issued 94 recommendations, or calls to action. Numbers 93 and 94 urged the federal government to update the Canadian citizenship guide and test, as well as the oath, to reflect a more inclusive history of Indigenous Peoples and a recognition of their treaties and rights. This way, newcomers and immigrants to Canada would have a more thorough understanding about First Nations, Metis and Inuit, as well as their cultures.

On Thursday, the House of Commons was set to adopt Bill C-8, which would amend the Citizenship Act to update the oath in line with what the TRC recommended.

The new oath would read: “I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada, including the Constitution, which recognizes and affirms the Aboriginal and treaty rights of First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples, and fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen.”

The House of Commons unanimously agreed to fast-track the proposed legislation, on Tuesday.

At a committee meeting Wednesday, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino thanked all members of Parliament for supporting the passage of the bill, saying he looks forward to working with colleagues in the Senate to ensure it becomes law.

His press secretary, Alexander Cohen, said: “Reconciliation is a whole-of-government initiative.”

Cohen also said the Liberal government is still revamping the content of the new citizenship guide to make it more inclusive. The new guide will have 10 chapters and will paint a diverse image of Canada. It will include stories of Black Canadians, LGBTQ Canadians, francophones and Canadians with disabilities. It will also have a chapter on residential school. There’s still no schedule as to when the updated guide will be released.

Matthew Norris, board president of the Urban Native Youth Association in Vancouver, B.C., said recent immigrants to Canada are in a good position to be allies to Indigenous people.

“I think newcomers to Canada have a role to play to understand where the society has come, where to go, and to be voices of support for Indigenous people, as we’re constantly trying to fight for our rights,” said Norris.

Norris said he encourages people and stakeholders to also look at other TRC calls to action, particularly regarding the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Bill C-15, which deals with that, is currently before the Senate.

Stronger calls to recommit to the project of reconciliation have emerged after Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation announced last week that ground-penetrating radar located what are believed to be the remains of 215 children in an unmarked burial site on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.

Over more than a century, some 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were forcibly sent to government-funded, church-operated schools, where many suffered abuse and even death.

“We talk about Indigenous history but it’s also the Indigenous presence,” Norris said. “Residential schools weren’t that long ago. It’s affected our family members. It’s affected younger generations. Intergenerational trauma is continuing to rear its ugly head throughout our lives.”

Nyangweso, who just took her citizenship test recently, said adequate information about Indigenous lands, peoples and cultures will help newcomers and immigrants to better engage in civic processes and become better allies for Indigenous rights.

She added she hopes teaching newcomers about Indigenous people and cultures should not just start and end with the citizenship guide or the oath.

She said good information, that’s accessible outside of the citizenship guide, will equip immigrants and new Canadians to be more respectful inhabitants on Indigenous lands.

Source: Canadian citizenship oath could help newcomers learn more about Indigenous people

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