SOMERVILLE, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) \u2013 Canada has opened up its citizenship guidelines, qualifying millions of Americans for citizenship.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The barriers to dual citizenship have been relaxed for many Canadian descendants. Now,\u00a0Americans that have grandparents who were Canadian citizens can apply to be Canadian. Prior to this, only children could apply.<\/p>\n
Mary Mangan of Somerville\u00a0will be taking advantage of the opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t believe it at first, because I had looked into its years ago, but the barriers at the time were way too daunting,\u201d said Mangan. \u201cI never thought it would become a simple process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mangan is just one of the estimated\u00a0300,000\u00a0Massachusetts residents who have Canadian ancestry, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m quite sure there are a lot of people I know both inside my family, and outside of my family who are eligible for this. I expect a lot of interest,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not always easy; paperwork\u00a0from over 100 years ago can be hard to find. Mangan was able to get her grandparent\u2019s birth certificates thanks to cousins who were\u00a0interested in genealogy.<\/p>\n
The paperwork is like any other government form, a few pages long. But it\u2019s something that a lot of people with good records can do on their own, though some are opting for immigration attorney\u2019s when their family documentation isn\u2019t as straight forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really appreciate that Canada is welcoming back its cousins that haven\u2019t been able to apply for citizenship for various reasons,\u201d said Mangan.\u00a0\u201cNow they are making it possible for us to re-join them and celebrate Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cost of applying is\u00a0$55 to file the paperwork.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SOMERVILLE, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) \u2013 Canada has opened up its citizenship guidelines, qualifying millions of Americans for citizenship.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3303,13296,17,13298,428,116,13300,13302,3392,13301,252,13297,13306,13303,13305,13307,13304,13308,13299,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-28018","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-boston","9":"tag-breaking","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-dan-rea","12":"tag-new-england","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-news-radio","15":"tag-news-talk-radio","16":"tag-talk","17":"tag-talk-radio","18":"tag-traffic","19":"tag-wbz","20":"tag-wbz-1030-am-listen-online","21":"tag-wbz-internet-radio","22":"tag-wbz-news","23":"tag-wbz-news-radio","24":"tag-wbz-radio","25":"tag-wbz-talk-radio","26":"tag-wbz-am","27":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}