Canada’s New Route to Citizenship Has Thousands of Americans Lining Up to Apply
Canada has opened a route to citizenship for people who can prove they have a Canada-born ancestor. Millions could qualify, and Americans are already lining up to apply.
By Vjosa Isai and Matina Stevis-Gridneff
Ellen Arthur, a 79-year-old retired family lawyer in Lexington, Va., has decades of experience digging up personal records for her clients. But surfacing a century-old baptismal ledger kept by a Catholic church in Montreal, where her mother was born, was a first.
That dusty old record is what Ms. Arthur is leaning on to seek Canadian citizenship for her two adult sons.
They are among thousands of Americans using a new stipulation in Canada’s citizenship rules that came into effect in December, under which people who can prove a direct Canada-born ancestor — a grandparent, great-grandparent, or someone even further back — can officially become Canadian.
Ms. Arthur had already been eligible for citizenship as the daughter of a Canada-born Canadian, but had not pursued it. Under the old policy, know as the first-generation rule, her sons would not have been able to inherit citizenship because neither she, nor them, were born in Canada.
