Quote:
Originally Posted by Agamemnon
If the only country you're a citizen of is Canada then the government should never take your citizenship away under pretty much any circumstance. To be stateless is to be completely screwed, regardless of how often you visit the country of your citizenship.
If you have dual-citizenship, then fair enough, but a lot of people are solely Canadians and live in other places for extremely long periods of time. You can't take away someone's citizenship just because they don't come back to the country every 10 years or some other non-related rule. Being a citizen of Canada shouldn't mean you have to come here every x years... citizenship is a right, not a privelige (as far as I'm concerned).
Under current law there is no provision for involuntary loss of Canadian citizenship except:- naturalized Canadians can be deprived of citizenship if convicted of fraud in relation to their citizenship application, or their original admission to Canada as an immigrant
- second-generation Canadians by descent may lose Canadian citizenship automatically on their 28th birthday if they do not meet the requirements for retention
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Yet, those two exceptions show that citizenship is only a right for those who were
born here. It is a privilage for those not born here - If you lied to get citizenship, you lose it, if you do not meet the requirements on your 28th birthday, you lose it. (wonder what those requiremnets are.)
Non-residents (born here or not) should have to file a Canadian tax return at least once in a while. We pay for the benefits of citizenship, why shouldn't they.
Someone is born here then the family moves away when they are five years old, lives their whole life in another country, then at 65 decides to move back to Canada for the health care and pittance social security cheque - I think that person's citizenship should be up for debate.