SchnookoLoly

Why is this crap? I just had to do this for the UK. Time consuming, yes, but does the job and ensures you've actually been in the country.

Martin the cdn expat

Is it really too much to ask for someone to put the time into a new country before they get busy handing those benefits to every family member they can ?

Giving citizenship by virtue of being born on the ground is a mistake;
only a minority of countries still do this.

Novocastrian

How do you know that? I was replying to JAJ who suggested it might be restricted to CC/PRs. Of course he was only guessing too.

I'm sure "birth tourism" exists (well, I'm not sure, but I accept that the phrase exists), however I've never seen any statistics. Have you?

MarkG

I don't know about Canada, but it seems to be endemic for illegal immigrants in America; get over the border from Mexico, have one kid, and they're now a citizen who can sponsor the rest of the family.

It's an insanely dumb idea, IMHO.

At the other end of the scale, one of my friends at school was an American citizen because his parents were in America when he was born. I don't think it was intentional, but he didn't seem to have any intention of ever living there. I think he did say he'd have to register for the draft when he was eighteen, if he ever wanted to go back there.

YoshiPal2010

Actually, I believe the Selective Service Act requires all males between 18years and 25 years -- alien residents, as well -- to register for "the draft", which is what Selective Service is really a prelude for.

Steve_

But it doesn't ensure you've been in the country, that's the problem with it.

It can be quite hard to recall all the times you've been out of the country going back three years and you have to be precise with the dates. And you can lie and it's hard to establish whether you are lying, which is why so many people are ending up in front of judges, vague on the details so the judge has to look into it.

The US method is easier, because you're establishing that you were there which is easier to do, tax returns, pay slips, utility bills, lease and rent agreements and so on. Which is essentially what you have to do in front of the judge anyway, so why not just do the application that way to begin with?

Steve_

Because they have been banging on about it for awhile, search the web: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/birth-...ules-1.1164914

It wouldn't affect people on work permits if they follow the UK model. They're talking about tourists.

Zoe Bell

So called "Anchor babies" in the US are not entitled to sponsor parents for permanent residency until the child turns 21

The " everyone comes to America to give birth so that they can get citizenship " is a myth that refuses to due

Steve_

Yeah I was just going to say that, the whole anchor baby crap is totally overblown.

Novocastrian

Of course I already have done and I found that Jason Kenny denies having any statistics on the frequency of occurrence of this "birth tourism" rabble rousing red-herring. I hoped you could enlighten him (and me).

JAJ

Non-Canadian citizen/PR parents of children born in Canada would generally fall into a number of categories:

- Wealthy persons from less stable countries who want their children to have a Canadian passport and can fund the cost of a 3-6 month stay in Canada + medical treatment (unusual, but not unknown);
- U.S. citizens who use Canadian hospitals (less common than in the past)
- Those unlawfully in Canada, including overstayers (unusual);
- Those marginally legal, who have made a claim to stay in Canada and are allowed to remain pending the claim, but who are expected to leave eventually
- Work permit holders
- Students

The last two categories probably represent a much greater number than all the others. Should those on work permit or student status expect Canadian citizenship for their children, especially if they return home after a few years (which is the normal expectation)?

SchnookoLoly

It's not the sole indicator of presence in the UK though, nor should it be since, as you said, it's easy to massage the dates. In addition to my travels, I also had to provide a letter from my employer stating my dates of employment covering 5 years (I've been with my current company for over 5 years, would have had to have multiples though), my P60 tax forms for the past 5 years, copies of leases, bank accounts, etc for 5 years. All of those together give a pretty good indication of your presence in the UK... as for evidence, passport stamps are able to tell a lot of the story (if you aren't travelling on an EU passport).

A friend of mine at work is Chinese, and just applied for ILR in the UK... she said sorting out her travel was pretty easy because she needs Visas for everything, so it was just a question of going through every stamp in her passport. She's stamped when she arrives in a foreign country, and stamped when she comes back into the UK, and has a billion visas to back it up. In addition to everything else, particularly letters from work, it's pretty easy to determine presence in the UK...

Steve_

They were talking about giving CIC access to the CBSA PAXIS database, why this is such a big deal to do I'm not sure, some sort of Privacy Act issue I assume, so they'd have to add a question to the application saying you're okay with CIC looking at your entry record.

orly

Jus soli is almost an entirely "American" concept. By "American" I mean that just about every country on the American continents operate this system.

Had the system not operated in this way you would not have had the migrations to the Americas that, if you were born in Canada, likely benefited you or your family at some point.

Many countries, including the UK and Ireland, run a "modified" version of it to this day with caveats to prevent "citizenship tourists"

Oakvillian

Wow. The Daily Express is alive and well and publishing its editorials on British Expats.

My two youngest children were born in this country while I was on a TWP. They are dual citizens, and when Kenny's convoluted, constipated nonsense eventually works its way through the Byzantine intestine of the CIC backlog, the rest of the family will join them in citizenship. I'll be proud to take up Canadian citizenship, but could do without the length of time it takes to process an application. In the meantime my kids are citizens of their country of birth, the country where they continue to live. Why is that a mistake?

How on earth you could possibly think that anyone from the EU would consider coming to Canada so they can cash in on benefits is utterly beyond me. Or is it that the wrong flavour of immigrants are usurping benefits that should only be available to true-born Canadians? That smacks of a particularly unpleasant sort of selective xenophobia.