dbd33

They're eligible for the passport. Whether they consider themselves to be Canadian or not is a whole other thing. Mine were born here but have allowed their local passports to lapse, if pressed they'll admit to be born here but I doubt they'd rush to claim to be Canadian. Children of diplomats, servicemen or ice hockey players who are born in Canada while their parents are visiting would be technically Canadians but would be unlikely to imagine themselves so.

I beat race around with Manjit all the time, both on GU and in real life. Although born in the UK (outside the M25 but still technically England) and a citizen of Canada he considers himself to be Punjabi. I think that's common, most people I meet in the course of the day have Canadian passports but that's a convenience (same as mine), they still consider themselves to be whatever they are culturally. That's the essence of Canada, it doesn't stand for anything in particular, so we're all semi-detached.

Still, so far as I'm concerned people are whatever they say they are, we only got on this tangent because I echoed Butch's racist caricature of Americans by deriding the weight of people from north of Watford where I believe he's from. (I don't actually believe there's no one at all up there who isn't fat, btw, and I'm sure there's someone up there who doesn't own a whippet).

Madmac

Not today due to:

Letter through this morning to say that I have to go to Kitchener Immigration as the Canadians have managed to f**k-up my PR application. They need to do it all over again and please can I take along copies of all important documents and the forms they issued me at the airport. I think the subtext reads:

“Canadian bureaucrats are mostly twats who make the word incompetent seem efficient. Please do our jobs for us several times over because we are incapable of anything more complicated than sticking sharp pens up our hooters! Thank you and have a nice day.”

Oh, and it has to be done within a specified two hour timeslot, Monday to Friday, but not Wednesdays because we use that day to visit A&E where they remove the pens from our noses.

I know British bureaucrats are mainly useless too, but I'm being selfish and childish at the moment and fed-up. So there.

J

Calgal

Except Birmingham isn't oop north - it's in the Midlands!

dbd33

It's past Watford, innit?

flashman

Very interesting. I was born in the UK, took out Canadian citizenship but consider myself a Martian. Is that OK?

dbd33

Fine by me.

flashman

Great! May the farce be with you!