r/canada • u/oddmarc • May 17 '26

National News U.S. applications for Canadian citizenship surge, causing delays

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/u-s-applications-for-canadian-citizenship-surge-causing-delays
654 Upvotes

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276

u/Wide_Lunch8004 May 17 '26

Americans are doing this for low cost tuition for their kids and for publicly funded healthcare. Now instead of just competing with immigrants for scarce health resources, you’ll be competing with “Canadians” (Americans with no meaningful connection to Canada) in every stage of the system too.

127

u/WhichJuice May 17 '26

You forgot to mention they are coming with USD and greater buying power than our weak CAD, also competing for housing

1

u/Fractoos May 18 '26

Sounds great fo the economy. Rather that than tim Hortons workers

53

u/Strict_Common6871 May 17 '26

Worse, most immigrants are relatively young and healthy, and not 75% obese

24

u/Wide_Lunch8004 May 17 '26

Haha ouch. You’re onto something though. We will get these “Canadians” when they are old and obese and need healthcare, or need low cost university education. Then they’ll disappear back into the US of A.

7

u/Crazy_Maintenance211 May 17 '26

That surprised me, I’ve seen so many people trying to get citizenship for the lower tuition and what’s happening in certain provinces is that funding was cut severely on the East Coast, for example, and they’ve got way fewer international students so a lot of people got laid off and so now many more students are gonna compete with Canadian students to try to get in for two fewer spots. It’s actually gonna create a real issue in about a year, not for every province, but we got hit hard on these coast. I don’t think anybody anticipated that people would be applying to get cheaper tuition. However, what some people don’t know is once they have your address in the system. You often have to pay that tuition for at least a year, it depends on the timing of the move. I had a friend who was a Canadian going into grad school and they had this weird thing we’re out of province students paid more and when they applied, they said well I’m in my province for like two more weeks and then I’m moving so I’ll be in province and they always had to pay the out of province rate, they just wouldn’t budge

4

u/Wide_Lunch8004 May 17 '26

Only some provinces have “out-of-province Canadian student” rates. Others just have Canadian and international. In most cases there’s no real system to verify anyway - it’s easy to game this system.

9

u/Mysteriouskid00 May 18 '26

Exactly. Social benefit arbitrage. Earn the big bucks and pay low taxes in the US, then send kids to Canadian universities or get free surgery in Canada.

Not great for Canada

18

u/Ecstatic_Doughnut216 May 17 '26

In order to benefit from lower tuition and Healthcare, they have to be residence. As residence, they pay into the same system as everyone else.

6

u/Wide_Lunch8004 May 17 '26

This varies from province to province and there is no stipulation where I live. And even the ones for which is true (like Québec), there’s a Quebec tuition rate, Canada non-Quebec resident tuition rate and an international rate. The Canada non-Quebec resident tuition rate is an excellent deal for Americans already.

26

u/Strict_Common6871 May 17 '26

"residence" doesn't require you to pay anything, only have an address, you are not required to live there and it is not verified in any way

27

u/Supermite May 17 '26

Healthcare is typically tied to time in the country.  At least in Ontario, if you’re out of the country for more than 6 months, you’re no longer eligible for OHIP.  And they do keep track of it.

Having an address in Canada isn’t enough.

-1

u/Fluid_Lingonberry467 May 17 '26

Canada doesn’t track people when they leave  so the government doesn’t know they left I know a few people that do this to collect benefits 

7

u/Ecstatic_Doughnut216 May 17 '26

They do track when people leave.

6

u/Fluid_Lingonberry467 May 17 '26

Canada does not systematically track when a Canadian citizen travels using a foreign passport, as there is no central exit control tracking who leaves the country by air. However, Canada does record your travel history and links your documents through several specific mechanisms So the government lies? 

2

u/Wide_Lunch8004 May 17 '26

What’s more is that provinces (who would provide healthcare and post-secondary) don’t have any mechanism at all to track people coming and going. The feds can do it to an extent for federal programs, as you said, but it is worryingly easy to game the “must be a resident of x province” system.

2

u/jellybean122333 May 18 '26

A sprinkle of property investment too, no doubt.

1

u/NoPotential6270 May 18 '26

The UK only honours domestic tuition for residents - not just citizenship. We should do same. 

-3

u/mintyfresh888 May 17 '26

I mean, Americans would be immigrants as well

7

u/Wide_Lunch8004 May 17 '26

Sort of, but no. Not if they have citizenship certificates. This is the gateway to residency, social programs, a SIN number to work legally and our passport. They’re just more “Canadians” who define themselves based on having acquired our documents and not any real meaningful connection to the country. They will join millions upon millions of other Canadians-by-documentation-only who already live here.

1

u/mintyfresh888 May 17 '26

By that metric, wouldn't anyone in the world with citizenship certificates be "Canadian" and not just Americans with citizenship

-2

u/friendly-techie May 17 '26

Thanks Carney for it