Canada Expats fear for children's fate under new rules

Expatriate Canadians say their children who have been born abroad are being denied the full rights of citizenship under rules that come into effect in April.

Canadians who give birth or adopt in another country will be able to pass along their citizenship to their children. But those foreign-born children of Canadians will not be able to bestow that same citizenship on their own children should they also decide to adopt or give birth outside Canada.

"My own children will be affected," wrote Mr. Nichols, whose son and daughter were born outside of Nagoya, Japan, where he was working as a consolidator for a travel agency. "They were born abroad, but, of course, live in Canada. As bilingual (English-Japanese) children they hope to work in international trade in the future. Do I honestly need to tell them that if they have kids while working abroad, they will not be Canadian?"

In introducing the changes to the Citizenship Act, the government was trying to prevent foreign-born nationals from coming to Canada, obtaining citizenship, then returning to their country of origin and passing along citizenship endlessly from generation to generation.

But federal officials acknowledge they did not contemplate all of the ramifications when they crafted the legislation.

Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, said her group is concerned about people born Canadian citizens in another country - or adopted as Canadian citizens abroad - whose main or only meaningful tie to a country is to Canada.

The new rules, said Ms. Dench "leads to the risk of children of Canadian citizens being stateless." Some countries do not automatically grant citizenship to children born within their borders.