Criticism of New Citizenship Rules
New rules have had the consequence of denying citizenship to children of Canadian expats, if the parents were also born outside Canada. New Canadian exclusionary citizenship rules limit the scope of those eligible for citizenship. In contrast, some other countries have citizenship laws that favour ancestry as well as birth. For example, Israel's Law of Return confers Israeli citizenship to all those with Jewish ancestry wishing to reside in Israel, for example, in the case of Persian Jews, some of whom have not lived within the bounds of the modern State of Israel for 2,700 years. Also, German Right of return allows persons of German descent living in Eastern Europe from as early as 18th century such as Volga Germans to return to Germany and claim German citizenship. Russia offers citizenship to individuals descended from Russian ancestors who can demonstrate an affinity for Russian culture and, preferably, speak Russian. Concern about Russia's shrinking population prompted the program. (See main article Right of return). A non-exhaustive list of at least 27 countries and a Palestinian National Authority have favourable citizenship rules based on ancestry as well as birth.
New restricted citizenship rules may also exacerbate population ageing in Canada. Canadian parents of children born abroad (and unable to come to Canada) may choose not to return to Canada themselves rather than go through the hassle of obtaining a visitor visaor Permanent Residency for their child. Statistics Canada own population projection study published in December 2005 states that: Canada's population is ageing fast and senior citizens would outnumber children in about a decade, according to new population projections. In all growth scenarios considered for this study, seniors aged 65 and over would become more numerous than children aged less than 15 around the year 2015. This would be an unprecedented situation in Canada.
Another criticism the bill has attracted arises because of the proposed "first generation limit" cut-off described above. Under the bill, a person who is the second or subsequent generation born abroad to a Canadian parent may be stateless if he or she does not acquire citizenship of the state of birth, or through his or her other parent. Canada is a contracting state to the United Nations’ Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.(34) Under article 4 of that Convention, a contracting state is required to grant its nationality to a person not born in the territory of the contracting state, who would otherwise be stateless, if the nationality of one or both of the person’s parents at the time of the person’s birth was that of the contracting state. Such a grant of nationality may be subject to certain stipulated conditions, however. The provision included in Bill C-37 to deal with statelessness is compliant with the Convention, but only minimally so.
Read more about this topic: Canadians Of Convenience, Amendments To Citizenship Act
Famous quotes containing the words criticism of, criticism, citizenship and/or rules:
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“I would wish that the women of our country could embrace ... [the responsibilities] of citizenship as peculiarly their own. If they could apply their higher sense of service and responsibility, their freshness of enthusiasm, their capacity for organization to this problem, it would become, as it should become, an issue of profound patriotism. The whole plane of political life would be lifted.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“There are two great rules in life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that every one can in the end get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is more or less of an exception to the general rule.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)