Child born while parents waiting for citizenship

[links18]

So you want the law changed to make an exception to the rule to accommodate very very small numbers PR couples who got caught in situations like this out of their decisions of their own free will. You do realized that making an exception to the law will make it more vulnerable to abuse.

How do you abuse a law? A law is a law. I agree with Dpenabill, as long as they are going to allow PRs to be out of the country foe three years during their most fecund years, there should be an more straightforward process for having whatever progeny flows from this to be reunited with parents in Canada w/o worrying about the possibility of prolonged separation. Sounds like common sense to me....

 

[toronto_dun]

You'd be surprised how often non-PR babies of PR parents are denied a TRV based on it not being the intention for them to just visit. Basically a VO is not supposed to grant a TRV unless it is for a visit. The parents can in those cases apply for a TRP if they know about it but sometimes it is denied too, leaving the couple no choice but to live separately while one settles in Canada and sponsors the child and the other waits with the child in their country of origin.

But this becomes really barbaric when BOTH parents can live ONLY in Canada (citizens of Canada and no other country) and the child cannot live in Canada. So there is no legal way for the family to stay together.

And the fact that parents became citizens very soon after baby's birth may not matter to short-sighted paper-pushers who cannot see beyond rules. But for anyone who can think things through, it's easy to see a huge difference. When parents get Canadian citizenship, they lose citizenship of their country of birth and can legally permanently live only in Canada. But it takes many months to get the right to live permanently in Canada for a child, which creates a period when both parents and a child cannot legally live in the same country, at least permanently. If the baby was born a year or two before parents getting citizenship, this would not have been an issue because there would have been enough time to secure status for a child and avoid this situation. So that's how this matter. Just takes a tiny bit of thinking to figure it out.

And having a baby live in Canada without permanent status on visitor visa is just cruel - in BC, our family doctor cannot see the baby, even if we pay, so the only option is a walk-in clinic, and they cannot do immunisations or diagnose things like autism, which is freaking really important at early age.

 

[toronto_dun]

A woman decides where to be during her pregnancy, and thus decides where the child will be born. The government of Canada has no involvement in that decision.

This is a ridiculous statement. Should a woman stop all travel for work while pregnant, and thus risk losing her income and stunting career? You cannot tell the child to not be born and wait another few weeks. Travel while waiting for citizenship (many many years in my case - I lived in Canada since 2004) is legal.

I perfectly understand the formality of it, but the reality is that it creates an impossible situation for parents.

 

[toronto_dun]

This is no different if the OP and spouse were green card holders and had baby in Canada. They would have to sponsor the child for green card.

Oh, but there is HUGE difference. That difference is processing time - days in the US vs. months/years in Canada. In most other countries it would a formality taken care of in real-time, because they understand that a child cannot live on their own.

 

[screech339]

Oh, but there is HUGE difference. That difference is processing time - days in the US vs. months/years in Canada. In most other countries it would a formality taken care of in real-time, because they understand that a child cannot live on their own.

Well, the "intend to reside" in Canada clause certainly help solve this problem. They wouldn't be having a baby outside Canada while awaiting citizenship to come through. Now the Liberals wants to get rid of it and keep the problem ongoing.

 

[toronto_dun]

They wouldn't be having a baby outside Canada while awaiting citizenship to come through.

This is nonsense. I lived in Canada for 12 years and intend to live indefinitely. And yet I ended up in this situation. The choice was to risk having a baby in the US or leave the job and get on Canadian welfare instead of creating value and paying taxes to Canada. I think the latter is much better for Canada, so why punish people for it.

 

[martha1901]

This is nonsense. I lived in Canada for 12 years and intend to live indefinitely. And yet I ended up in this situation. The choice was to risk having a baby in the US or leave the job and get on Canadian welfare instead of creating value and paying taxes to Canada. I think the latter is much better for Canada, so why punish people for it.

I very well understand your sentiment. When you figure out what kind of application you need to do for your baby, do it as soon as you can. Could be CIC need to have that for them to figure out the best course of action and when they realized that the baby has no status, human as they are, they may see that they need to act on it ASAP. Good luck.

 

[screech339]

This is nonsense. I lived in Canada for 12 years and intend to live indefinitely. And yet I ended up in this situation. The choice was to risk having a baby in the US or leave the job and get on Canadian welfare instead of creating value and paying taxes to Canada. I think the latter is much better for Canada, so why punish people for it.

Canada isn't punishing anyone for those who made calculated risks on their own of having a baby outside Canada. Haven't you read the travel.gc.ca website? Under security tab for United States the first line is "The decision to travel is your responsibility".

 

[links18]

Canada isn't punishing anyone for those who made calculated risks on their own of having a baby outside Canada. Haven't you read the travel.gc.ca website? Under security tab for United States the first line is "The decision to travel is your responsibility".

You think they realized they would face a situation where the child would have no status in Canada (and they would have no permanent status in the child's country of citizenship) for a prolonged period of time?

And if anyone says they should have waited to come back to Canada to have a child; well, fertility is a tricky thing--you never know when it might go--if you want to have a child and are able to support it, best not to wait too long or you may find yourself out of luck.

 

[screech339]

You think they realized they would face a situation where the child would have no status in Canada (and they would have no permanent status in the child's country of citizenship) for a prolonged period of time?

And if anyone says they should have waited to come back to Canada to have a child; well, fertility is a tricky thing--you never know when it might go--if you want to have a child and are able to support it, best not to wait too long or you may find yourself out of luck.

I am not telling people to hold off on starting a new family. I am all for having a baby when you are ready to have a family regardless of where you are in the world. That is important. You should not let geography get in the way of having a baby.

Having said that, by having a baby, you are accepting responsibility to the newborn. That means knowing what you are getting yourself into by bringing the baby into the world. This means looking after the baby's welfare and baby related matters; financial, medical, and immigration.

It would be pretty sad if a couple is more worried about the status of newborn than the joy of having a baby in the family.

If I were in a situation whereby the baby will becomes stateless, I would rather have a chance to have a stateless baby than to delay in wanting to have a "canadian born" baby that may never come. That still doesn't absolve me of my responsibilities of being in a country that lead to child being stateless. That's not Canada's fault. Again it comes to down to personal accountability. I made a personal choice that led to my child being stateless. I would then do whatever paperwork I would have to do to bring stateless child to Canada.

 

[dpenabill]

Note: the procedure for obtaining status in Canada for PRs' children born abroad is a subject in several discussions in the conference for PRs. Again, it is indeed common for PRs to be abroad when a new child comes along. The child has no automatic status in Canada, none at all.

The consequences place-of-birth have are not obscure. Thus, as toronto_dun says, these things are easy to think through, and indeed that is what parents or prospective parents should do.



Thus, to be clear:

PR status is not conferred by descent. There is little or no likelihood this will change.

A child born outside Canada has NO Canadian status unless one of the child's parents is, at the time of the birth, BOTH:
-- a Canadian citizen
-- AND was either born in Canada or is a naturalized citizen


Discussions about what Canada's policy should be regarding children born outside Canada are largely a distraction. There is no hint of any further changes coming any time in the foreseeable future.

And in engaging in the distraction, there may be a tendency to lose sight of, or at least underestimate, how important it is to recognize the impact place-of-birth has. Prospective or even potential parents should be cognizant of what can happen depending on where a child is born.

Note: even a child born to Canadian citizen parents, parents whose only citizenship is Canadian, and for whom all the child's grandparents were Canadian citizens only, might have NO Canadian status if the child is born outside Canada and the child's parents were born outside Canada.

Whatever one believes about what the policy should be, it is far, far more important for prospective parents to understand what the policy actually is.

Like it or not, the policy is that a child born outside Canada has no automatic status in Canada unless, at the time of the child's birth, at least one of the child's parents was BOTH a Canadian citizen AND either born in Canada or naturalized.

The consequences of this can range from the inconvenience of going through the formalities of sponsoring the child for Permanent Residence, and subsequently the process for citizenship, to indeed something significantly more harsh. The harshness of the consequences can be aggravated if there are any potential problems regarding the eligibility of a parent to sponsor the child.

Note, for example, we have seen reports by a Canadian citizen who was born abroad, to Canadian citizen parents, while his parents were temporarily employed abroad. He grew up and spent most of his life in Canada. Parents and grandparents all Canadian citizens living in Canada. He hardly gave a thought to the fact he was born abroad. He married and then he and his PR spouse went abroad while, as I recall, he was attending a university program, and they had a baby while there, in a country which does not automatically confer citizenship on those born in the country. The PR spouse, in turn, for many years had spent very little time in the country whose passport she carried, and had virtually no ties there. Consequence: at birth the child's only status was in that far away, not visa-exempt country, a country with which only one of the child's parents had any ties, and those were very minimal ties.

Like the OP here, he was stunned to discover the formal hoops they would have to jump through to get the child status in Canada. And they did not find this out until they were actually in the process of packing and, they thought, moving back to Canada, and hit this bump-in-the-road. Time to scramble.

But the consequences can be more severe if something happens and there is no parent eligible to sponsor the child for PR status in Canada. I believe there may be some H&C relief available in this situation, but that leaves the parent and child, especially the child, vulnerable to a potentially adverse exercise of discretion.

Canada's family unification policy at the least favours allowing the child to come to Canada and become a Canadian PR. But that may not be enough to overcome some of the hurdles real life can impose. And nonetheless, the formal steps for accomplishing this must be done.

Absent the formal issuance of PR status, the child will have no status to live permanently in Canada.

That is the take-away here. That is what PRs who might have children should be aware of when they live or travel outside Canada.

As for the alleged ridiculousness of the how or why, make no mistake, the consequences are real. This is how it is. And how it will continue to be for the foreseeable future.



Clarification regarding H&C relief:

I earlier noted that there is no H&C exception for conferring status on a child born outside Canada to PR parents. And that is the case. A child born outside Canada to parents who are, at the time of the child's birth, Canadian PRs, has no Canadian status.

That is it. Such a child can only obtain status in Canada by application for such status.

An application for PR status itself, however, may be based on H&C reasons. I also think H&C reasons may be raised in a sponsored family PR application in order to overcome some restrictions, such as certain reasons for the ineligibility of the sponsor. But I have not been following the family class PR application process closely for the last few years, so I am not sure this is currently the case or what the scope of H&C relief may be in this regard. It would be, however, risky, very risky, to rely on an H&C case.



By the way toronto_dun, an observation about having been abroad while the citizenship application was pending:

Foremost: there is NO guarantee of becoming a Canadian citizen until a person actually takes the oath of citizenship. No matter what stage the citizenship application is in, there is no vested right in citizenship unless and until the formalities of the grant are fully effected, including actually taking the oath. More than a few applicants, for example, have been given approval for the grant and scheduled to take the oath, but then denied citizenship . . . including some who were denied at the time they appeared to take the oath as scheduled.

There was a significant risk your citizenship applications could have gone awry given that you were working and living outside Canada during the time the application was in process. Over the course of the last six or seven years, extended absences, and particularly working or living abroad while the citizenship application is in process, has been one of the more common causes for extended delays, elevated scrutiny, RQ, and sometimes CIC's outright reluctance if not opposition to a grant citizenship. The length of experience living in Canada may have been a key, positive factor in yours escaping that fate, or it may have been largely luck. (And note, actually applicants working in the U.S., second only to those working in the Middle East, seemed to be among the most common targets for problematic processing.)

But in any event, you took a huge risk working and living in the U.S. while the application for citizenship was pending. There was no guarantee you were going to become citizens while you were still in the U.S.

Here too you might find this observation "ridiculous," that so long as you met the qualifications for the grant of citizenship, you were sure to be granted citizenship. But that is not how it works. There are numerous topics here, and many more in other forums, going into much depth regarding the travails of those who took this risk and did not fare so well as you did.

Which leads to this:

But this becomes really barbaric when BOTH parents can live ONLY in Canada (citizens of Canada and no other country) and the child cannot live in Canada. So there is no legal way for the family to stay together.

And the fact that parents became citizens very soon after baby's birth may not matter to short-sighted paper-pushers who cannot see beyond rules. But for anyone who can think things through, it's easy to see a huge difference. When parents get Canadian citizenship, they lose citizenship of their country of birth and can legally permanently live only in Canada. But it takes many months to get the right to live permanently in Canada for a child, which creates a period when both parents and a child cannot legally live in the same country, at least permanently. If the baby was born a year or two before parents getting citizenship, this would not have been an issue because there would have been enough time to secure status for a child and avoid this situation. So that's how this matter. Just takes a tiny bit of thinking to figure it out.

Who makes the decision to take the oath?

Hint: no paper-pushers make that decision for an immigrant.

Who makes the decision to become a citizen of Canada, if by doing so they lose citizenship in the only country their child has status to live in?

Again, no paper-pusher makes that decision. The government does not compel a person to take the oath of citizenship and thereby lose their home country citizenship.

You are absolutely right: ". . . for anyone who can think things through, it's easy to see a huge difference."

Becoming the citizen of another country is a huge decision.

It is an even bigger decision for those who will lose their home country citizenship by doing so. And for parents who have children who will be affected by this decision, the onus is absolutely on the parents to think these things through and make an informed, reasoned decision based on the consequences.

And that is also the case in making decisions which can affect the place where a child is born. Yes, indeed, life is full of twists and turns, the way subject to all sorts of competing needs, some more compelling than others, some compelling to the extent of being coercive. Many decisions are hard, and some a lot harder than others.

But the Canadian government has never so much as hinted that a child born outside Canada automatically gets status in Canada unless the child is a Canadian citizen by descent. That is a fixed factor in the otherwise huge range of factors a PR should consider when making decisions.

For some people, perhaps the decision to go ahead and take the oath of citizenship is more important than the consequences that will have on a child without status in Canada. The risks, after all, are not equal; for some the risk is minimal. But again you are absolutely right, it should be easy to think these things through, and that is precisely what parents should do before they engage in an action which might put their child's future at risk.


Trust me: there are millions of babies born every year whose parents would, if at all possible, like their child to have the benefits of living with status in Canada, to have the advantages in health care, nutrition, and education which Canada and a number of other highly developed countries provide. Most of these babies, many, many millions of them, are denied these benefits. Millions. I do not mean to diminish, let alone dismiss, just how unfair this is, how utterly cruel it is to deny millions of babies the benefits of living in one of the more advanced countries of the world. But that is the real world. Every year. Every year millions of babies are born who will never have the opportunities and advantages those of us who live in the more advanced countries take for granted.

Status in Canada is not something to be frivolously disregarded. For parents making choices in life which will have an impact on their children's opportunities, as you said, think these things through. Not a good idea to choose a course of action that will have, as you say, a "barbaric" impact.

 

[links18]

And in engaging in the distraction, there may be a tendency to lose sight of, or at least underestimate, how important it is to recognize the impact place-of-birth has. Prospective or even potential parents should be cognizant of what can happen depending on where a child is born.

No, it is not a distraction. Its a conversation about what Canada's policy should be. That may be distinct from what the policy current is, but to say the discussion is a distraction is a condescending value judgement. You aren't the arbiter of what is a distraction and what isn't. I think we are all perfectly capable of separating the two things.

 

[toronto_dun]

Not a good idea to choose a course of action that will have, as you say, a "barbaric" impact.

There is one thing about what's legal and another about what's morally right. Ideally, we'd have those two things match. Is it right to have a law that would under any circumstances separate a newborn from the mother? Is there any valid practical reason to have a different status for mother and baby? HINT: not in most other democracies. Even in anti-immigrant and more bigoted USA, it's a formality and takes days, not months. Somehow, they get it. Actually, even in Canada in any other situation a mother a baby are viewed as one inseparable unit. This just seems like something that fallen through cracks and was not fixed. I understand sponsoring parents, spouses etc. - they are perfectly independent and can wait, and there may be reasons for them not getting a status, so there is a review process etc.

Secondly, is it right that sponsoring your own baby, the one that you already have and there is no one else who can care for it, is viewed as lower priority than adopting a child? Adoptions are processed much much quicker. Actually, sponsorship of parents is processed quicker now too - I know that for a fact. And is that morally right? No, it's politically motivated - just need to deliver on campaign promises.

I do not understand why you are trying to make a point that this is right and should not be disputed/changed - it's almost definitely not even an intentional policy but rather a corner case that was not through through by law makers. There is even no form for this - I had to write child's name in the "Spouse" field when I applied for sponsorship. And when I called CIC twice, many months in advance of moving back to Canada just to make sure something like this does not happen, CIC agents reassured me that this exact situation would not happen. One actually sent it to me in writing via email because I asked. So hard to blame me for not thinking things though, is it? Why did they give me wrong info? Because they did not know, probably because it's not a very frequent or thought-about situation, something that's just fallen through cracks, and not an intentional and morally right set up, as you try to describe it.

Anyway, as you said, it's just a bump in the road, but it's a freaking unpleasant one. For example, the baby cannot receive service from our family doctor, even though we are ok paying for it. So mum goes to one doctor and baby to a travel clinic. That makes so much sense, right?

...the onus is absolutely on the parents to think these things through and make an informed, reasoned decision based on the consequences...

But the Canadian government has never so much as hinted that a child born outside Canada automatically gets status in Canada unless the child is a Canadian citizen by descent.

I fully agree with the first statement, and that's why I called CIC far in advance twice (to double-check) and also made sure I got instructions from CIC, in writing, telling me what to do when we move back to Canada. Unfortunately, the instructions were incorrect both times. To me, Canada more than hinted but rather explicitly said in writing through one of its representatives (a CIC officer) that a child would be a citizen and would only need to apply for citizenship certificate via form CIT 0001. That's what created this speed bump and not lack of foresight.