Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Well, this is a revolting turn of events...

Mennonites may lose Canadian citizenship over 1920s glitch

Hundreds of Mennonites living in Canada are in danger of losing their Canadian citizenship because of a legal technicality in Latin America where almost 7,000 of their ancestors moved in the 1920s.

The Mennonites went to Mexico and Paraguay looking for a place to live without government interference in their lives. But they have been trickling slowly back to Canada ever since.

Many of them married while living in Mexico, and that's what is causing the problem now. They were married by the church, and Mexico doesn't recognize church marriages as being legal.

That means their children were born out of wedlock, and they»?”? along with their grandchildren and even great-grandchildren»?”? are not eligible to be Canadian citizens.

Lauralea and I spent a couple of years in Southern Ontario working with many of these Immigrants. They totally found a place in our hearts and have helped to make us who we are today.

I hope the government can get this one figured out, in just ways.

Check out the story, here.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like the story I was reading on the CBC website yesterday;

    http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/01/23/citizenship-passports.html

    I hope the government gets all these people sorted out soon. It would be unbelievably heartbreaking to find out, after most of your life, that your country doesn't own you. Crazy.

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  2. A similar thing happened to my grandmother. She was born in Canada to Canadian parents and had never travelled outside of Canada. She married my grandfather who was a Norwegian immigrant. My grandfather eventually took out his Canadian Citizenship.

    In the 1980's my Grandmother (long after my grandfather's death) applied for her passport to travel over to Norway with my aunt. It was at that time the Canadian Government informed her that she had no citizenship. Apparently she lost her Canadian Citizenship when she married a Norwegian.

    Of course back in the 80's we were pre identity theft and pre 9/11 I don't think it took too much to get her citizenship back in order, but for almost 60 years she was a woman without a country and didn't even know it.

    She had a great time visiting Norway.

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