Recent applicants under Canada’s expanded citizenship laws are facing renewed scrutiny from the government, after their citizenship application has been approved.

The most recent amendment to the country’s Citizenship Act enabled a wave of applications for citizenship by descent, some of which are now facing pushback from the federal government.

On the afternoon of June 13, Canada’s citizenship department sent to emails to recent recipients of a Canadian citizenship certificate across the United States.

These were people who already held a Canadian citizenship certificate. Some even had a passport and a Social Insurance Number, in anticipation of an imminent move to Canada.

The letter told them their citizenship claim, once approved, was now “under review.”

This article will cover the best practices that applicants can use to remedy the situation should they have already received a refusal letter, and how to avoid these pitfalls in their citizenship application altogether.

What the letter says

The letters cite subsection 26(1) of the Citizenship Regulations. This is the rule that lets the Registrar of Canadian Citizenship ask a person to surrender a citizenship certificate (one of the few documents that enables a new Canadian citizen to obtain a passport) when there is reason to believe they may not be entitled to it.

This process is not a revocation of citizenship (though it can lead to one), but it is a review. The letter asks for the paper certificate back while their application file is re-examined.

It also says that the recipient of the letter can respond with more documentary evidence in support of their application.

If entitlement is confirmed, the certificate will come back.

Why did these files get flagged?

The letters from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) give two reasons why these applications were flagged for review.

First, the documents submitted did not come from the source authority: the civil registry, the vital statistics office, provincial archive, or another official body that creates and holds the record needed to support a citizenship application.

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