Canadians of convenience

[Aemma]

"Canadians of convenience"


The term "Canadians of convenience" became prominent in 2006 in conjunction with the evacuation of Canadian citizens from Lebanon during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. It is a pejorative term intended to refer to multiple citizenship Canadians who immigrated to Canada, met the residency requirement to obtain citizenship, moved back to their original home country, but continue to hold onto their Canadian citizenship, with those who support the term claiming they do so as a safety net.

Statistics and analyses are unavailable on the distinction between evacuees who were long-term residents of Lebanon and those who were not and on how many of the long-term residents had returned to Lebanon immediately after acquiring their Canadian citizenship.


Coining of the term

Although the term was used by others (such as Peter Worthington of the Toronto Sun) earlier during the conflict in Lebanon, it was made most prominent by posts by Garth Turner, a then Conservative MP for Halton, on his blog, and the subsequent reactions. Turner questioned the fairness of paying CAD$75,000 for each evacuee, saying, among other things, "that’s a hell of a lot of money to donate to people who do not live here, don’t pay taxes here, and may never come here again in their lives." The actual cost was about $6,300 for each evacuee ($94 million for 15,000 people).

The National Post has asserted, that of the 15,000 evacuated, about 7,000 may have returned to Lebanon within a month of being evacuated. [1]


Support of the term

Turner was criticized by some for suggesting that there are two classes of Canadian citizens. Other editorials supported the use of the phrase Canadians of convenience and said many immigrants meet their minimum residence requirement to gain Canadian citizenship (which, since 1977, can essentially never be revoked), leave the country, and only call upon their Canadian citizenship again when in need of publicly-funded medicare or emergency evacuation from a war zone.

The Economist noted that "Of the 5.5 million Canadians born abroad, 560,000 declared in the most recent census that they hold passports from another country. This feeds the belief that some are using Canada as a safety net."


Government policy

The official policy of the government of Canada is that a dual-citizen is the responsibility of the foreign government when living in the foreign country; however, in practice Canada generally does not distinguish between dual-citizen and single-citizen Canadians, as was the case during the 2006 evacuation from Lebanon. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he plans to review current practice.

Canada permits multiple citizenship. Some countries do not grant citizenship to new applicants unless they renounce their original citizenship. For example, Canada currently grants Canadian citizenship to Chinese applicants without requiring that they give up Chinese citizenship; however, Canadians applying for Chinese citizenship are required by China to "not retain foreign nationality."[1] For citizens of countries that do not allow multiple citizenship, those who become Canadian citizens often lose their original citizenship if the original country learns of the Canadian citizenship.


References

"Convenient Canadians", The Toronto Sun, 21 July 2006
"Here's your torch", The Turner Report, 29 July 2006, URL accessed 6 September 2006
"Letter from Egypt", The Turner Report, 7 August 2006, URL accessed 6 September 2006
"I'm a lumberjack, and you're not", The Economist, 3 August 2006, URL accessed 6 September 2006
"O Canada, do we stand on guard for thee?", Macleans, 7 August 2006, URL accessed 6 September 2006
Dual Citizenship Faces Review, National Post, 21 September 2006, URL accessed 21 September 2006
The Passport Package: Rethinking the Citizenship Benefits of Non-Resident Canadians, C.D. Howe Institute, Backgrounder, No. 99, December 2006, URL accessed 6 December 2006


Footnotes

^ Articles 13 of the Nationality Law of the People's Republic of China, URL accessed 21 October 2006
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadians_of_convenience"

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadians_of_convenience

[TheGreatest]

I do not understand how this works. I thought you had to live in Canada for almost a decade to receive citizenship?
I guess what's happening is that one person becomes a naturalized citizen and their children inherit this citizenship, when abroad?


I'm really confused about this and I don't know much about legal law.

[YggsVinr]

Not entirely sure about the fine points of it, but from what I know of eastern European friends who were born in the Ukraine or Russia and came here, it took them about 5 years living in Canada in order to be able to apply for citizenship. At that point you can apply to bring family members over as well, and of course any children born in Canada whether or not you yourself are a citizen are considered Canadian citizens. Five years isn't too long to wait for citizenship. From what I know it doesn't seem unusual for those under refugee status to be able to get citizenship fairly soon after becoming refugees or landed immigrants. If you remember the whole issue with the Khadr family a few years ago, that was a prime example of "Canadians of convenience".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khadr_family

[Aemma]

Yes all of that but the problem is with the dual citizenship aspect. People acquire their citizenship here and then when war-torn places settle down they move 'back home.' But most of these places are always at war and when things heat up again (as in Lebanon a couple of years ago now) then they call on the government of the other country of citizenship, ie Canada, to come bail them out. Either you live here or you don't...but make up your bloody mind! This is why I have a tough time with our immigration laws and this whole dual citizenship thing. In the end, people who have always made this their home and some of us for centuries now, are stuck footing the bill in order to go save these "Canadians" who will eventually go back to live in their country or origin. Something is not quite right here and none of it makes any sense to me. All it does is makes me !

Cheers!...Aemma

[Vulpix]

I don't think dual citizenship is the problem here. The real problem is giving Canadian citizenship to those who don't really deserve it.

IMO citizenship of Western countries should only be given to those of (full) European descent. That would also solve the war-refugees-who-really-want-to-go-back-to-their-war-torn-country-but-have-to-be-rescued-at-the-taxpayers'-expense issue.

[Aemma]

I don't think dual citizenship is the problem here. The real problem is giving Canadian citizenship to those who don't really deserve it.

IMO citizenship of Western countries should only be given to those of (full) European descent. That would also solve the war-refugees-who-really-want-to-go-back-to-their-war-torn-country-but-have-to-be-rescued-at-the-taxpayers'-expense issue.

I understand your point Foxie and it's well taken. The problem is we're well past that stage here of giving citizenship to those who only deserve it since Canada's got the biggest arms in the world it seems. I doubt very much that there's any going back now politically. Realistically now though, I think the question is how can the problem be mitigated or attenuated? I doubt very much that most Canadians have thought that far along. It doesn't seem to be in the Canadian psyche since other factors have lately been introduced to preoccupy most Canadians, primarily the nation's economic health and a suspected oncoming Great Depression. People are too mentally taxed to think about anything else these days other than "what is happening to my RRSPs?"

Cheers!...Aemma

[Solwyn]

This is one of the reasons that working for the Passport Office caused burn out for me, I am sure. It got to the point when I couldn't look at certain groups of people in the waiting room without thinking, "....and what sort of stunt will you be pulling today?" I felt guilty about it and told a trainer during a course one day and she laughed and said she felt the same way about a certain nationality in her city (Montreal) and said "The job will make you racial. No one will admit to that, but it will."

We used to get a list of the Citizenship Days for the year so we could plan our staffing around those events. We would show up early, often to a crowd of over 100 people jammed in the hallway waiting for us to open the floodgates and it would be like that all day. People with passport applications dated before they became citizens, all waving new cards that were still warm, all with plane tickets leaving for Lebanon, Pakistan, Vietnam, China, Korea, Mexico, Sri Lanka, and other assorted paradises - either the next day or very, very soon. They were going home and not coming back.

When Lebanon was bombed that summer, I wondered how many of those people I had to issue passports to, LOL, because Halifax has such a large Lebanese population. I remember one politician who freaked out on the news because "these people were on summer vacation" .......what a load of roadapples that was - those people got one way tickets home and then screamed to be repatriated to a country they don't really wish to be a part of. If ever there was a politically correct line tower, it was her. Too bad I can't remember her name.

Even better were the ones who would show up in Canada one week away from delivery, from Middle Eastern countries, to have their little anchor babies in Halifax and Montreal. They all had the same guarantor, the father was always ".....in Toronto visiting family" (which is what you do when your wife has a baby, isn't it? You get on a plane and go to a city thousands of miles away to spend time with other people, LOL) but the i's were always dotted and the t's were always crossed, so we couldn't do a bloody thing about it. These folks knew every loophole and they exploited the system to the hilt. They, too, would disappear, usually back to Saudi Arabia with their new little Canadian.

The best one was when a woman was in to get her little Saudi anchor baby a passport, and a week later she showed up at the desk again, demanding her child's passport be "fixed". I guess her plane had some trouble on the way over and was forced to land in Israel. ROFLMAO. You can't get into Saudi Arabia with an Israeli stamp in your passport. They wouldn't let her back in because she only had the one passport for the child, so she got on a plane and came back to Halifax demanding that we give her a "clean" passport...which we can't do.....because there is nothing wrong with it in the first place. However, as we very cheerfully pointed out, the appropriate Saudi authorities would deal with her that day.

She was not happy. LOL