A recent change to Canadian law grants citizenship to some people with Canadian ancestors. Could Cajuns qualify?
A change to Canadian law may grant citizenship to Louisiana’s many Cajuns, whose ancestors were forced to leave modern-day Canada centuries ago. But there are many caveats, and aspiring Canadians may have to wait a long time for clear answers.
Most children born to a Canadian citizen outside of Canada qualified for citizenship themselves. But there used to be a so-called “first-generation limit.”
“Previously, you could pass citizenship down to your children if they weren’t born in Canada, but that was limited in most cases to the first generation born outside Canada,” said Ronalee Carey, an Ottawa-based immigration attorney.
The Canadian government recently ruled the first-generation limit unconstitutional. As of Dec. 15, 2025, it is no longer in effect.
Many in Louisiana wondered if the change had granted citizenship to Cajuns, which would allow them to become dual citizens of the US and Canada.
Cajuns are descended from a group of French settlers who were expelled from present-day Canada in the 1700s by the British because they refused to renounce their Catholicism or swear loyalty to the British crown. Several thousand settled in what is now Louisiana.
Today, more than a million people along the Gulf Coast are estimated to have at least some Cajun ancestry.
However, a spokesperson for the Canadian government told WWL Louisiana “having distant Canadian ancestry alone does not make someone automatically eligible” for citizenship.
They explained that the change in law only applies to people with a Canadian ancestor born after 1947. That’s when Canada established its own citizenship code separate from that of the British.
But Carey said Canadian immigration law is complicated, and that so far, the government has indicated it will obey the spirit of the law rather than the 1947 limit.
“Spokespersons from the Immigration Department are saying that the government is not going to take a restrictive reading of those sections, that they are going to fulfill the intention of Parliament, which was to allow citizenship by descent,” she said.
She added, “we’re just now getting to the point where people are submitting these applications. We’re not going to be getting decisions for a year or two, probably.”
Anyone who decides to test the law may run into another obstacle. To apply for a citizenship certificate, the government spokesperson told WWL Louisiana that “information from online genealogy websites cannot be used on its own.”
The applicant is required to submit “documents proving both that their parental ancestor was Canadian and that they are directly related through each generation.”
Amy Denisco, an archivist for the New Orleans Public Library’s special collections, said it can be difficult to find records as far back as a Cajun would need in order to prove Canadian ancestry.
Typically, she said the “starting blocks for most genealogy research” are “birth records, marriage records, death records and census records.” But the US did not mandate birth certificates until the early 1900s, and the US Census used to only record the name of the head of the household, not every member.
“You start hitting the point before there really are a lot of governmental vital records,” said Denisco.
But people trying to trace Cajun ancestry may have an advantage. Denisco said the Catholic Church tends to keep very good records. Early Cajuns were, almost by definition, Catholic.
“When your child is born, if they get baptized, if they get married at the church, if they have a funeral at the church, these are all more likely to be recorded with the church,” she said.
To find genealogical information, Denisco recommended this guide published by the New Orleans Public Library.
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