Some Americans Dig for Canadian Roots as Citizenship Rules Ease

A change to the Citizenship Act that effectively allows anyone with a provable Canadian ancestor to claim citizenship is sending some Americans into archives and church records in search of long-lost family ties, driving an increase in applications from the United States.

Immigration professionals note that while more Canadians continue to move to the United States than Americans move north, political conditions are a significant driver for the recent surge of interest by American applicants, who see Canada as more aligned with their viewpoints—particularly now that there is a possible path to citizenship. But there are other factors involved as well, with some simply not wanting to pass up the opportunity for a second citizenship if it is available to them.

The amendment, introduced last year, removes generational limits on citizenship by descent after the Ontario Superior Court found the previous law unconstitutional. For people born before Dec. 15, 2025, this means it’s now enough to simply establish a family link to a Canadian.

Within roughly six weeks of the change taking effect, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada reported over 12,000 citizenship by descent applications. Now, immigration lawyers, historical record keepers, genealogists, and others are seeing a surge in interest in ancestry from south of the border.

People from any country who prove Canadian ancestry can become a citizen, but it mainly impacts the United States, due to the country’s historical connection to Canada. Applications from the United States alone have outnumbered those filed by all other top source countries combined: the UK, France, China, India, Australia, Philippines, United Arab Emirates, and Germany.

A significant portion of the Canadian gene pool in the United States can be traced to a period between the 1840s and the 1930s called the Great Hemorrhage, when nearly 1 million French Canadians moved south. Today, about 7.4 percent of Americans report French ancestry. In parts of New England, an even greater percentage can trace their roots to Quebec. By one estimate, as many as one-in-four New Englanders could now be eligible to become Canadian citizens.

‘Secret Canadians’

A list of 42 family names that suggest Quebec ancestry is circulating online as a litmus test of whether an American might be a “secret Canadian,” with names like ‘White’ or ‘Stone’ touted as probable anglicizations of ‘Leblanc’ or ‘Lapierre.’

To claim citizenship under the new legislation, applicants have to provide proof of Canadian ancestry, such as an old birth certificate or a baptismal record.

Now, many Americans are digging into church archives, genealogical societies and family records, often stretching back more than a century, in an effort to piece together the documentation they need. The organizations that hold such documents are seeing a surge in requests.

Paul Armstrong, office administrator for the Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia, reports “a surge of research inquiries” starting in February that came “almost entirely” from Americans.

His association now gets two new requests every day, he told The Epoch Times. He tries to help where possible, though lost or damaged records make it hard to “establish a lineage chain back into the 1800s.”

Meanwhile, churches are scrambling to deal with an increase in American interest.

Baptismal record requests to the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto have overwhelmed the resources of the archdiocese archives, says Neil MacCarthy, director of public relations for the archdiocese. Some people who make the requests have only vague ideas about their Canadian ancestors, knowing little about them other than that “they were born somewhere in Toronto and perhaps the year of their birth.”

MacCarthy told The Epoch Times religious archives across the country are now seeing a similar flurry of requests from the United States.

Requests to Nova Scotia’s Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth, for example, have as much as quadrupled, Aurea Sadi, pastoral services manager, told The Epoch Times. Her archdiocese received around two to three requests for baptismal certificates a month before the citizenship change, but now averages three to four per week.

Motivations

Besides the intertwined history, modern politics is helping drive a “huge upsurge” in people in the United States “rushing to claim Canadian citizenship as the child or grandchild of a Canadian,” said Richard Kurland, a Vancouver immigration lawyer and immigration policy analyst.

He said Americans opposed to U.S. President Donald Trump are looking at Canada. This phenomenon is seen after each presidential election, with supporters of the losing candidate declaring they want to leave the country. But now, there is a potential pathway to claim Canadian citizenship, and those opposed to the Trump administration may see Canada as more aligned with their political viewpoints.

“After every presidential election, people say they will move north, but there is no real follow-up,” Kurland told The Epoch Times. “There has not been a run like this for Canada since the war in Vietnam, and this run is bigger.”

Despite the increased interest in Canadian citizenship, the effect is not considered significant enough to change the overall migration pattern, with more Canadians moving south than Americans moving north. Then there’s the question of what Americans who become Canadian citizens actually plan to do with their new status.

Neera Agnihotri, an immigration consultant in B.C. who is seeing a jump in interest from Americans, says many newcomers to Canada are increasingly “gaining citizenship and peacing out.”

This may be why Ottawa included a provision in the citizenship legislation making the requirements much stricter in the future, she said. The act mandates that everyone born after Dec. 15, 2025, must prove a “substantial connection” to Canada—spending at least 1,095 days in the country before passing down citizenship to children born abroad.

The clause may be meant to limit the degree to which these immigrants can pass down Canadian citizenship to infinite generations of descendants born abroad, she said.

This trend has been noted elsewhere, including in a report released by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship last year, which found that one in five immigrants leave Canada within 25 years of arriving.

For now, though, the result of the changes to the Citizenship Act is a growing search for records as some Americans sift through family histories in hopes of unlocking a second passport.