PHRED DVORAK in the Wall Street Journal reports on a new Canadian law that went into effect yesterday that may “bestow citizenship Friday on what its government believes could be hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting foreigners, most of them Americans.” The amendment to Canada’s Citizenship Act automatically restores Canadian nationality to many people forced to renounce it when they became citizens of another country. It also grants citizenship to their children. The Canadian government believes that most of the persons affected are U.S. citizens. According to the WSJ, “U.S. Department of Homeland Security records show 240,000 Canadians were naturalized in the U.S. from 1948 to 1977; the new law fixes problems that occurred during those years.” The Canadian government is reaching out to its new citizens through an upbeat (really hilarious) video on YouTube entitled “Waking up Canadian.” It is hard to imagine our Department of Homeland Security ever doing something like this — advertising rights to citizenship!
For more information on the change in the law, see here.
Hat tip to our Canadian correspondent, Donna Shestowsky.
KJ
