When 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.
The Supreme Court sided with a Christian counselor on Tuesday in her free speech challenge to Colorado’s ban on counselors attempting to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
An Israeli court has drawn criticism after closing an investigation into the death of a Palestinian teenager in custody, despite finding indications he had been starved prior to his death.
The Israeli Knesset on Monday passed a death penalty law targeting Palestinians, in a move condemned by human rights organisations.
One of the Kremlin’s most widely viewed advocates of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, Yuri Podolyaka, on Friday, told Russian audiences the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) is superior to the Russian army in fighting efficiency, and that a spring offensive attacking Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions would probably fail with heavy losses to the attacker.
NPR has confirmed more than a dozen U.S. service members were wounded and two E-3 Sentry aircraft were damaged in an Iranian strike on an air base in Saudi Arabia on Friday.
Chad Bianco, the Riverside county sheriff, has halted a contentious investigation into a alleged voter fraud that has drawn opposition from the state’s attorney general.
