The provisions in Canada’s citizenship laws from 1977 to 2009 allowed a sizeable number of Mennonites who were born in Latin America to “derive” Canadian citizenship from their Canadian ancestry. This avenue to citizenship was vital because most of these Mennonites could not meet the criteria for becoming landed immigrants. I described some aspects of how this worked in my article, “A Personal Reflection on 35 Years of Migration Work” which was published in the 2011 issue of Preservings, but I did not indicate how many Mennonites obtained Canadian citizenship in this way.

Unfortunately, no one knows exactly how many of these Mennonites received citizenship on the basis of derivative claims. Government officials, both in Ottawa and at the Citizenship Processing Centre in Sydney, Nova Scotia, have told me that they do not have numbers. Because of that I made inquiries, early this year, with twenty Mennonite individuals who were involved in this work. (There are more but I was unable to contact them). Some of those I contacted did this work in Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) offices in Aylmer, Chatham, Leamington, Winkler, Taber, Ottawa, and Bolivia. Others did it on an independent basis in Mexico, Belize, and Paraguay. Some are still active in it. Most of these workers only had estimates but several came up with solid numbers.

The Legal Provisions

To understand the numbers, a brief summary of the legal provisions is necessary. One essential condition in those derivative provisions was that a person be born of a parent who had Canadian citizenship. But this condition was not always enough. Several of the legal categories also required that a person be born in wedlock. This was complicated because Mexican law, which Canada had to follow, stipulated that only civil marriages had legal standing. In their early years in Mexico, most Mennonites did not know this so they just had church weddings. As a result, many children later discovered that they were considered “born-out-of-wedlock” and therefore rendered ineligible for Canadian citizenship. Because of this and some other limitations, not nearly all the Mennonites in Latin America could make derivative claims for Canadian citizenship, but many could, even though they had been living outside of Canada for several generations.

The provisions, which opened in 1977, began to close in 2004. In that year the government stopped accepting derivative citizenship applications from people born abroad before 15 February 1977. Then, in 2009, the government replaced the more far-reaching derivative claim provisions with the first-generation-born-abroad principle, meaning that if a child was born outside of Canada after 16 April 2009 to a parent who had Canadian citizenship but who was not born in Canada, then that child could not make a derivative claim. Such a child would have to become a landed immigrant before receiving citizenship. Thus, the 2009 changes ‘narrowed the door’ substantially, though they also opened a small one. By removing the born-in-wedlock requirement, some older people whose parents had been born in Canada before the migration to Latin America but who had hitherto been barred from Canadian citizenship because of this requirement, could now apply. However, such people could not pass any citizenship rights on to their born-abroad children.

Mexico

In response to my request for numbers, Sara Penner, a worker in Mexico, obtained information from the Canadian embassy in Mexico City with annual totals for the years 1999 to 2017. This was most helpful! The total for these nineteen years was 19,373 applications. The information also showed a drastic drop in numbers after 2009. The total for 1999 to 2009 was 16,355, meaning that the average was 1,487 per year; for 2010 to 2017 the average was only 377 per year. No doubt, this drop is due to the change in the law described above. But what about the years from 1977 to 1998? Unfortunately, the embassy had no numbers for those twenty-one years. We will have to make an estimate for them. But how should we do that? We could simply take the number, 1,487, which is the annual average for the years from 1999 to 2009, and apply that to the preceding twenty-one years. This would lead to a total of 31,227; however, I believe this estimate is too high, for several reasons.

For a time, many people in Mexico travelled to Canada and then applied for citizenship from within the country. This might be one reason why the number of applications going through the embassy in the early years after 1977 was probably lower. For a time, this method of applying for citizenship from within Canada was easy to do. A second reason for this lower number of applications is that several workers in Mexico helped people fill in application forms and then sent the forms to workers in Canada, who then submitted them to citizenship offices here. Officials in Canada encouraged this practice because then, when the people actually got here with their certificates in hand, they had the right to work and apply for health care, etc. However, at a certain point, perhaps in the mid-or-late 1980s, the government requested that all applications from people living in Mexico be sent to the embassy. This new request would have increased the number of applications going through the Canadian embassy. Another factor that would support a higher number is that families in Mexico tended to have more children in the early years than in the later years. How should we weigh these different factors? I have only a few pieces of information from different workers in Mexico to help make an estimate for that time, but I will suggest that 18,000 applications were processed through the embassy in the years from 1977 to 1998. If we then add that to the number from 1999 to 2009, which is 16,355, we get a total of 34,355 as the number of people who received their certificates through the embassy in Mexico City in the years from 1977 to 2009.

South America

One other piece of solid information emerged from someone working in the administration of Menno colony in Paraguay who reported submitting 4,361 applications from 1987 until the present. This person did not state how many were from before and after 2009; however, in light of the sharp drop in Mexico I will assume that 3,800 of the Menno colony certificates were from before 2009. This person also did not provide a number for those submitted in the decade before 1987, but this figure will have been several hundred at least. Another person, working independently for people from the Chaco area, believes that their office submitted 2,000 applications over the years. Again, there is no distinction between the years before and after 2009; however, I will assume that the total for the Chaco before 2009 is at least 6,500.

What about the colonies in East Paraguay and those in Argentina? I have no information about them, but I will assume that 500 people received citizenship. Nor do I have any numbers for Belize, but I will assume that 1,500 people received citizenship. As for Bolivia, one person who worked under MCC from 2002 to 2005 estimates that 7,500 Mennonites received Canadian citizenship, not including those who already had Canadian citizenship when they moved to Bolivia. These numbers for South America add up to 16,000. If we add the approximately 34,000 for Mexico described above, that brings the total for Latin America to 50,000. Applications from these countries would have been sent to the appropriate Canadian embassies in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Lima, Peru, and Belize City, Belize.

Canada

What about citizenship applications submitted by workers in Canada? The MCC workers in Aylmer feel that my initial estimate of 17,000 is safe. For Chatham and Leamington, I had discussions with long-time MCC workers and settled on 5,000. For Taber, Alberta, I was able to contact most of the people who have worked there over the years and concluded that the number is at least 6,000. In the case of Winkler, the current staff feel that 4,000 is a very safe estimate. My assistants in the MCC Ottawa Office, especially Freda Enns, submitted many applications from people in the United States. Enns believes that 2,000 applications would not be an exaggeration. This suggests a total of 34,000 for Canada. I know that a few independent workers in the United States were active for many years. I will assume that 1,000 people received their Canadian citizenship through them. Independent workers in Canada also submitted applications, but I will not make an estimate as to how many people received certificates through them. By adding 50,000 for Latin America, 1,000 for the United States, and 34,000 from within Canada, we get a total of 85,000. This does not yet count those applications sent in by independent workers in Canada, whose numbers would be significant. For the purposes of this article, however, I will stay with 85,000 in order to be on the safe side. Also to be noted is that some of these numbers for Canada may include people who did not themselves have a derivative citizenship claim but who were married to someone who did, which made it easy for them to get landed immigrant status. Such people could then apply for a ‘grant’ of citizenship.

A number of other pieces of information are noteworthy. In 2013, I asked an official in Ottawa who was travelling to the Processing Centre in Sydney, Nova Scotia to inquire about the total number of Mennonites who had received citizenship. Upon his return he emailed that they did not have an official number, but that they had fifty feet of shelf space full of binders of Mennonite family trees. Such family tree information was necessary because for a long time officials had to determine whether certain ancestors of an applicant were born in a civil marriage. Often different descendants of such ancestors would submit different civil marriage certificates for them, which required officials to sort out the conflicting information. Additionally, the mere fact that the officials had so many linear feet of binders full of this information means that they were dealing with a very large number of applications. Another noteworthy piece of information is that in 1989 there were official reports that ninety percent of the vegetables in Ontario were being harvested by Mennonites from Mexico. This too indicates that whatever the exact number, there were a lot of people. Finally, I also have an old manual of 186 pages, which was prepared for the government specifically to train new officials to deal with Mennonite citizenship cases.

Conclusion

The changes in 2009 did not close all avenues for obtaining Canadian legal status. Mennonites from Latin America continue to get Canadian status in various ways. My personal involvement in assisting Mennonites to obtain Canadian citizenship also did not cease after 2009; in fact, it increased because of certain legal issues. The reality, however, is that the number of Mennonites getting Canadian legal status today is much smaller than it has been in the past. The legal avenues that were open from 1977 to 2009 make that a very particular era. One question about the work of that time is: how many of the people who received Canadian citizenship actually moved to Canada? In my article from 2011 I stated that the number of those who moved, together with the children they have had since moving here, could be 60,000. Today, I would say that the number is more than twice that high.

The fact that not everyone who received Canadian citizenship moved to Canada sheds light on the motivations involved in attempting to obtain legal status in Canada. There is little doubt that most of those who obtained Canadian citizenship and subsequently moved to Canada wanted to escape poverty. That is what all of us who worked on these cases heard from applicants countless times. For those who did not move, Canadian citizenship was more like an insurance policy, to be used if things got really bad. It also made travel easier. Besides those who moved to Canada and those who stayed in Latin America, are those who came to Canada for short periods and then returned to Latin America. Some of these people came for seasonal labour summer after summer; others lived in the country for some years and then moved back, often with new resources and new ideas that then influenced social, economic, and religious life in their home colonies, perhaps both positively and negatively.

Those who moved to Canada have followed various social and religious paths, going into many different occupations and joining different churches, or none at all. Of particular interest is the establishment of Old Colony churches in Canada. The Old Colony Church in Ontario has thirteen different places of worship as well as eight English-language schools. Many of the Old Colony people live in small towns. The historic impulse to settle in a remote, isolated area no longer seems to be their mindset in the context of their return to Canada. Very few are farmers, though some do earn their living in agricultural work.

MCC became involved with the administrative side of these issues to help people who were already in Canada to live here legally and to settle down. We did not expect it to become such a large movement. But when the legal doors stayed open and the message about escaping poverty persisted, we felt we should continue. The fact that some people obtained Canadian citizenship for reasons other than living in Canada legally was not a major concern for us.

I must mention that some people in Latin America who could have obtained Canadian citizenship chose not to, even if their future looked bleak. They felt that God had called them to leave Canada. They felt that to now get a piece of paper that would enable them to move back would mean that they did not trust God.

Many points related to the acquisition of Canadian citizenship, and the resulting migration, merit further discussion. The main purpose of this article is to shed more light on the question of how many received Canadian citizenship from 1977 to 2009. If anyone has additional information on this matter, I would be pleased to hear from them.