You might end up Canadian??? WTF?

Thanks
to a new law, Canada will bestow citizenship Friday on what its
government believes could be hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting
foreigners, most of them Americans.
The April 17 amendment to Canada's Citizenship Act automatically
restores Canadian nationality to many people forced to renounce it when
they became citizens of another country. It also grants citizenship to
their children.

In
the video 'Waking Up Canadian,' a man goes to sleep in a drab room and
wakes up to find out that he's become a citizen of Canada. Surrounded
by flags, maple-leaf-shaped cookies and a canister of maple syrup, he's
welcomed by a hockey player, two plush moose and a uniformed Mountie.

For More Information

• For more information on the new immigration rules and whether they apply to you, visit the Citizenship and Immigration Canada Web site.
  

The
Canadian government doesn't know the precise number or location of
individuals affected by the legislation. But it believes most are U.S.
citizens, a spokeswoman for Canada's immigration office said. U.S.
Department of Homeland Security records show 240,000 Canadians were
naturalized in the U.S. from 1948 to 1977; the new law fixes problems
that occurred during those years.
To reach that amorphous group of beneficiaries, the Canadian government has turned to YouTube. It's running an ad there titled "Waking up Canadian,"
in which a man awakens on April 17 to a room festooned with
red-and-white Canadian flags. He's met by a welcoming committee
consisting of two stuffed plush moose, a hockey player, and a member of
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Eligible individuals automatically become Canadian citizens. But
they don't get proof of that citizenship unless they apply for it,
meaning other countries -- including those that allow people to be
citizens of only one nation -- won't be alerted, according to the
immigration office spokeswoman. Those people also may renounce their
citizenship rights, she said.View Full Image


James Hager
Canada is using YouTube to tout a new law granting citizenship to unsuspecting foreigners, many of whom are Americans.The
citizenship bonanza is the byproduct of a decadeslong struggle by a
motley group of people who claim they were unfairly denied or lost
their Canadian nationality. Canadian families who crossed the border in
1947 to 1977 to have their babies in a U.S. hospital found those
children weren't recognized as Canadians unless the families registered
them with the government. Some foreign brides of Canadian World War II
servicemen lost their citizenship if they stayed out of the country for
a decade or more.



Then there are the Canadian Mennonites who moved to Mexico in the
1920s to the 1960s. When their children and grandchildren returned to
Canada, many found their nationality unclear.
Some such cases languished in litigation for years. Others surfaced
in 2007, when new U.S. rules requiring passports for travel between
Canada and the U.S. uncovered significant numbers of people who thought
they were Canadian, but weren't. The old rules were "quite intricate,"
said Bill Janzen, an immigration lobbyist in Ottawa for the Mennonite
Central Committee of Canada.
The new law offers citizenship to many individuals now in limbo. It
also stops the previous practice of granting citizenship in perpetuity
to children of Canadians born abroad, limiting eligibility to children
of parents born in Canada.