The more broadly rights are extended, the more your rights are protected. One of the best ways to ensure the protection of individual freedom is to ensure clear and enduring rules for who is considered a citizen, and ensure that citizenship cannot be stripped away on a whim or because of aspects of people that they cannot control, such as race, religion, and circumstance of birth.
When we start to narrow the circle of rights and give the government the power to pick who gets rights based on short-term political calculation, we expand government power in a way that can undermine individual freedom.
Today, you empower a politician you like to strip rights from those you oppose. Tomorrow, those you oppose empower a politician to strip rights from you.
On the latter point, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding birthright citizenship, there has been some discussion online about the fact that Canada also has birthright citizenship, with some saying Canada should remove it.
While those who express concerns about automatic jus soli citizenship note that it can create significant incentives for people to enter Canada with the intention of securing citizenship status for their child, addressing such a concern by ending birthright citizenship would be an excessive reaction that would put the rights of many Canadians at real risk. Instead, it can be addressed through immigration levels. Fundamentally, birthright citizenship is about the protection of Canadians who are already here. Debates over the rate of immigration are where concerns over incentives and overall immigration numbers can be best addressed.
Many Canadians are the descendants of individuals who have citizenship because of birthright citizenship, or are direct beneficiaries from it. Efforts to strip away birthright citizenship would be a first move in the removal of the edifice of rights that protect tens of millions of Canadians. It would be the first move in a process that could pose an escalating risk to more and more Canadians who could find their legal protections under threat.
The bulwark should be kept in place. Birthright citizenship is an example of our commitment to building a country where being Canadian is potentially open to any kind of person from anywhere in the world. By holding that line, we protect our rights, the rights of our families, the rights of our neighbours, and the rights of Canadians all across this country.
Canada should protect birthright citizenship, and, in a world where many are pushing for countries to become more closed off, remain open to recognizing that ‘the other’ can become ‘us.’
Spencer Fernando
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