Canada announces citizenship for illegal immigrants

TORONTO – The government of Canada has announced to grant citizenship to all immigrants who have been residing in the country without documents.

The Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller confirmed in an interview that such a proposal would be presented to the cabinet in spring, though stating that the support for such a proposal might not be unanimous.

The citizenship would open pathways for hundreds of thousands of people who have lived and worked in the country illegally and the construction workers would take benefit first.

Marc Miller said the program would allow those without documents to apply for permanent residency, including people who entered Canada legally, as temporary workers or international students, but then their visas expired. 

The minister said 300,000 to 600,000 people are living in Canada without valid documents, adding that many of these foreigners have worked for decades and have children but are at risk of deportation.

Miller said that the deportation merely due to lack of a formal status “makes absolutely no sense.”

“The conversation on regularizing people that are here, and by my estimation – my belief – should be Canadian, is not one that’s unanimous in the country. We have to have a greater conversation as a country about that,” he was quoted as saying by The Globe and Mail.

The decision to grant citizenship to illegal migrants has been widely hailed by workers across the country who advocate that the decision would help the migrants live in the country with dignity and a social status.

Canada has been known to welcome immigrants despite anti-immigration strategies being implemented globally. Statistics Canada, the government census agency, had also said that the population has reached 39.5 million. The 2.7-percent population growth was the highest since 1957, when the country saw a 3.3 percent increase in its population.