Millions of Americans are now eligible for Canadian citizenship and many are applying ‘just in case’

The change in Canadian law restores status to “Lost Canadians,” people who lost or never obtained citizenship because of the outdated and unconstitutional rules. (Credit: Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Shutterstock via CNN Newsource)

When U.S. President Donald Trump was first elected in 2016, New York State resident Ellen Robillard briefly looked into getting Canadian citizenship. Her mother, after all, was born in Nova Scotia.

As a Democrat, Robillard was despondent at the election results, but she abandoned the idea after realizing that her young son wouldn’t be eligible for citizenship under a law that barred Canadians born abroad from passing their citizenship to children if they were also born outside Canada.

In 2023, however, the Canadian courts ruled that law unconstitutional and the changes to eligibility came into effect in December, suddenly opening up a pathway to Canadian citizenship for many Americans at a time of political upheaval, violence and uncertainty in the US.

Robillard, 52, is applying for citizenship with her son now that the first-generation rule has been scrapped.

Since criteria for citizenship expanded with the passage of Bill C-3 of Canada’s Citizenship Act, millions of Americans have become eligible to claim Canadian citizenship. The amendment reverses a “first-generation” limit imposed by Canada’s Conservative government in 2009.

As the leader of her local Democratic Committee in a suburb of Rochester, New York, Robillard fears that if the political violence escalates, she could have a target on her back.

Robillard is an outspoken activist in her town of 3,000, has received veiled threats on social media, and was once followed home after a protest.

She’s suffered from burnout, depression and insomnia over political disagreements and has fallen out with friends and family. She’s become increasingly disillusioned with her life in the US.

“I really don’t recognize my world anymore,” Robillard says.

A spring trip to her mother’s birthplace of Nova Scotia last year helped her reconnect with her Canadian heritage and cemented the idea.

“The experience of being there was so interesting. I felt like a different person there. It was so much less stressful. Everyone was nicer,” she says. “I observed so many positive interactions between people and it just made my heart so full to be there.”

The revised law will allow her to pass on her citizenship to her son, who is now 19. In light of the political climate in the U.S., both are gathering the required documents in preparation for her Plan B.

“If things start deteriorating here with our economy, I know that I can just get in the car and go. It’s an option anyway.”

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Huge uptick in Canadian citizenship queries

Since the new bill was passed, Ottawa-based regulated immigration consultation Cassandra Fultz says her American caseload has soared tenfold, from an average of 10 to 100 applications a month. As long as applicants can provide proof of direct lineage from a Canadian citizen, they can make claims going back generations, be it a grandparent or great-great-grandparent. Should the chain of citizenship break somewhere along the line, however, where an ancestor renounced their citizenship, rights to Canadian citizenship end there.

Fultz, who is a dual American-Canadian citizen herself, also points out that she’s handled queries from disgruntled Americans after every U.S. election cycle — regardless of political party. But the demand has always been short-lived, she says, peaking in November and waning by January. This wave has been markedly different.

“There’s been a very steady increase in interest in moving to Canada since November 2024, which is unprecedented. I’ve never seen this in my 17 years in the industry,” says Fultz.

“Usually people just get over it. But it’s already nearing the mid-terms and people are very interested, even two years later.”

It’s a similar story at the National Library and Archives of Québec (BAnQ). In February 2025, the archive services received 100 requests from the U.S. for marriage, death and baptismal records. In February of this year, that figure ballooned to 1,500, a spokesperson tells CNN.

At the time of writing, the processing time for citizenship certificates from the U.S. is 10 months, with about 50,900 people currently waiting for a decision, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

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‘It’s a very scary time right now’

When Rachel Rabb left the U.S. in 2018, she thought she was escaping the anti-immigrant policies and threats of racial violence she feared under the first Trump administration. The American citizen assumed that she’d left it all behind as she settled into her new life in Latin America.

At least there, Rabb, who is biracial with an African-American father and Irish-German mother, felt that she wouldn’t have to worry about being assaulted or harassed for her skin color. She thought she was safe.

But Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024 reawakened old fears and followed her to Costa Rica and Mexico where she now divides her time — and where she finds herself, once again, in the crosshairs of Trump’s hardline politics.

In February, a US-backed military strike against a powerful cartel leader in Mexico led to a retaliatory violence across the country and the death of more than 60 people.

This month, Trump signed a proclamation that promises more military strikes across Latin America, operations she fears could bring more destabilization, chaos and violence to the region.

So when Rabb learned that Canada had recently revised its citizenship laws and widened the pool of eligibility, she took a shot and started looking up her ancestry online. She had nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

Her gamble paid off: at the age of 34, she belatedly learned that she has distant Canadian ancestry through her great-great-grandmother, who was born in Peterborough, Ontario.

“It was heaven-sent to discover that I have this Canadian ancestry, given the current political climate,” Rabb tells CNN Travel.

Rabb, who has been mistaken for being Latina over her biracial features, said she wouldn’t feel safe returning to the U.S.

“I don’t plan to return to the U.S. at the moment. It’s just too dangerous,” she says. “So many people are targeted, even if you just look Latino, or if you look like you might be an immigrant. They’re even arresting US citizens, and allies. It’s a very scary time right now because anyone can be targeted.”

Should the situation in Latin America escalate, Canada will become her exit plan.

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Seeking citizenship for history, culture and ‘just in case’

Fultz points out that, like Rabb and Robillard, many American applicants aren’t looking to make the move to Canada right away, but are requesting proof of citizenship “just in case.”

Nor are all applications politically motivated. Some of the most common reasons for requesting citizenship include family reunification, job offers, international studies, and the more basic desire to reconnect with their ancestry.

“It could be the best president ever in office in the U.S. and I would still apply with as much passion,” says Timothy Beaulieu.

It wasn’t until his early 20s when Beaulieu started spending more time with his U.S.-born grandfather, that he began to hear about his family’s French-Canadian heritage, which was passed on through his great-great-grandfather.

“It was like a new world was open,” says Beaulieu, now 45, of New Hampshire.

He became active in Franco-American associations and traveled to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Montreal, where he discovered the local dish poutine — fries, cheese curds and gravy. It was there that a lightbulb went off and in 2016, he founded PoutineFest, which hosts outdoor poutine festivals around New England, home to an estimated two million French-Canadian descendants today.

The presence of Franco-Americans in the area can be traced back to 1840-1930, when nearly one million Francophone people emigrated from Quebec where farmlands were depleted and jobs scarce, to work in textile mills in New England.

“I feel like Quebec and Canada are part of our family, it’s the motherland now,” Beaulieu says. “It really means a lot to me to be able to feel more connected to the place where our family came from.”

Rabb also expresses a keen interest in learning more about the history and culture of Canada’s indigenous culture, and salutes Canada for trying to put right past wrongs.

Aaron Lowry, who created the fast-growing Facebook page “Canadian Citizenship by Descent,” was one of the first Americans to get his citizenship through a short-lived interim bill that was introduced following the court ruling and was eventually replaced by Bill C-3.

Since becoming a Canadian citizen in 2024, the Ann Arbor, Michigan, resident has traveled around Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes and has taken deep dives into Canadian politics: he can rattle off dates and factoids about Canadian history with ease.

“I really enjoy learning about Canadian civics and how the parliamentary system works. I find the relationship between the British monarch and Canada very interesting.”

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‘A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian’

Not everyone is happy with the relaxed citizenship rule: on online discussion forums, some Canadians complain it favours Americans with few ties or contributions to the country at the expense of tax-paying, working immigrant households who can face lengthy, complicated citizenship procedures.

Some also take umbrage at the fact that Americans are using Canada as a “Plan B” option at all.

But Fultz underscores that the bill was introduced because the previous legislation was deemed unconstitutional and discriminatory by Canadian courts. The amendment also restores status to “Lost Canadians,” people who lost or never obtained their citizenship because of the outdated and unconstitutional rules.

“Basically, the outcome of this case is that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,” she says. “We don’t have multiple tiers of citizenship here, where if you’re naturalized you can do X, but if you’re born in Canada, you can’t. This is about fostering and enhancing equitability.”

She also emphasizes that the American applicants she’s worked with include doctors, lawyers, and Harvard and MIT grads — “the best and the brightest.”

“This is a good thing for Canada, and a good thing for Canadians. These are quite literally our cousins. I just don’t see a downside.”

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