CANADA REFUSED CITIZENSHIP TO ITS CITIZEN LIVING FOR THE LAST 41 YEARS IN YUKON WHO IS SON OF CANADIAN MOTHER AND AMERICAN FATHER BUT INSTEAD FACING DEPORTATION AND GOVT FACING MOUNTING CRITICISM OF REPEATEDLY PROMISING TO CORRECT THE LAW BUT NOT DOING AND EVEN IMMIGRATION MINISTER EXPRESSING REGRETS SAYING UNABLE TO HELP Citizenship advocate Don Chapman criticized Canadas Citizenship and Immigration as shameful yesterday for its rejections of citizenship applications from legitimate Canadians despite repeatedly promising to correct the law. Its shameful, Chapman said. We did everything Citizenship and Immigration asked of us, paid their ($400) fees, and now they talk about deporting Donovan McGlaughlin. McGlaughlin, a resident of Dawson City, Yukon, is an Indigenous Canadian who has lived in Canada for 41 years, and the son of a Canadian mother and Native American father. His wife, with whom he has three children, is a Canadian woman from Québec. Although he is of Canadian descent and has lived in Canada most of his life, McGlaughlin did not receive the proper paperwork to prove his citizenship at the time of his birth due to his Indigenous parents deep distrust of governmental institutions. McGlaughlin recently applied for citizenship under section 5(4), discretionary grant of citizenship under the Citizenship Act. He said he was rejected yesterday, despite following Citizenship and Immigrations recommendations for approval. Yesterday I was informed that my application did not meet the requirements for a 5(4) and that it would be processed as a regular immigration application and would take 24 months to process, McGlaughlin said. That was a huge blow -- considering the Citizenship Ministers office was the one that informed me I had to apply under section 5(4). Citizenship and Immigration representatives were reached for comment on Tuesday, but said it was not possible to comment on McGlaughlins case without previous written consent due to privacy laws. Chapman, who has been fighting for the rights of a group of legitimate Canadians excluded by citizenship due to outdated and discriminatory provisions of past legislation, called the federal governments treatment of McGlaughlin and example of bad faith. As a result of his work, the Citizenship Act has been amended multiple times to correct wrongful exclusion of people such as Canadian war veterans and born-abroad Canadians -- who, in many cases, worked and paid taxes in Canada for decades -- from citizenship. Both former citizenship minister Jason Kenney and current citizenship minister Christopher Alexander have expressed regret over the suffering and injustice caused by previous loopholes in the law that forced legitimate Canadians to be excluded from citizenship. Yet despite passing a monumental law in June that included a clause specifically to correct the issue of Lost Canadians, Chapman argues that the federal government has yet to grant any 5(4) citizenship for anyone in his list of Lost Canadians since the bill was passed. In addition to McLaughlin, Jackie Scott -- the daughter of a Canadian war veteran from the Second World War -- was also rejected multiple times in her attempts to apply for citizenship. On the last occasion, she waited two years to hear back from authorities. She finally brought the government to court, having been denied citizenship for close to a decade. In Scotts case, the federal government claimed she was ineligible for citizenship because her Ontario-born father was technically not a Canadian citizen at the time of her birth in 1945, when he went overseas for the Second World War. Kenney told Scott in 2012 that soldiers like her father may have been heroes, but they were not citizens (despite documents from 1943 clearly explaining that soldiers were fighting as citizens of their country).
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 02:59:06 +0000
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