How the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is helping Americans get Canadian citizenship

Audio By Carbonatix

How the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is helping Americans get Canadian citizenship

In December, Canada enacted a law declaring that anyone with a direct ancestor from that country — no matter how far back — could be a citizen.

Now thousands of Americans and other foreign nationals are exploring dual Canadian citizenship for personal or political reasons, including President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants and economic concerns.

Some are desperate to find a grandparent, great-grandparent or even great-great-grandparent who lived in the North American country.

The only trick? Proving it.

That’s where The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its genealogical treasure trove comes in.

The church-owned and -operated FamilySearch International is seen as the world’s largest genealogy organization. It boasts billions of historical records from hundreds of countries. Volunteers have worked with many churches — which were once the repository for records of births, baptisms, marriages and deaths — to collect, copy and store these precious documents.

While Latter-day Saints maintain these genealogical records for their own rituals and beliefs about eternal families, the information is available for free to all who are looking for their ancestors. There are links to source materials that can be used as evidence of lineage.

In the past few months, the website and facility have “seen a slight uptick” of people delving into the church’s Canadian archives, FamilySearch Library Director Lynn Turner told The Salt Lake Tribune. “We do know that people use our resources to seek out documents for citizenship.”

The library doesn’t ask why users want the information, he said. “Our resources are there for them to use, and we wish them success.”

It makes sense for wannabe Canadians to look for evidence of their ancestors in the church’s files. After all, the Utah-based faith has some 30 million records from Canada, Turner said. It collected census data starting in 1851, broken down by provinces, all indexed for easy access.

There also are “vital records,” like births and deaths, some of which were provided by Catholic and Protestant churches, Turner said, “to help people trace their ancestries.”

It has worked for Greg Kearney, a Latter-day Saint editorial cartoonist in Topeka, Kansas, whose dad’s family was Canadian and mom’s family was American.

The new rule

Under the old policy, known as the first-generation rule, only children of those born in Canada can inherit citizenship.

But there were inconsistencies, Kearney said in an interview.

A Canadian father married to an American woman could pass citizenship to his children, he said, but a Canadian woman married to an American could not.

A legal challenge to the rule prompted the new law, known as “citizen by descent.”

That unlocked the “floodgates of applications,” Kearney said. “There has been a rush of people, mostly from the United States, applying to the Canadian government for proof of citizenship.”

Online sources like Canadian Citizenship by Descent and media outlets confirm the frenetic activity.

“There is early evidence that the new rules are already spurring higher demand for historical records,” The New York Times reported. “The Nova Scotia Archives, for example, has seen a sharp increase in requests for official copies of historical records, from about 260 requests in all of 2024 to about 1,500 in just the first three months of 2026.”

Still, the process can be arduous, The Times noted. “Documents that meet the bar for the Canadian authorities can include birth certificates, citizenship or naturalization certificates, or other official records showing family relationships and citizenship status.”

But not, the paper said, “information gleaned from genetic testing.”

No matter how much research is completed, citizenship is not guaranteed.

“Between Dec. 15 and Jan. 31, about 6,280 applications for proof of citizenship were processed by the Canadian authorities,” The Times said. “Of those, 1,480 were confirmed as citizens by descent under the new rules.”

Slow process

Kearney has begun the process for his American wife, whose Canadian ancestor was there in 1640.

The cartoonist said he spoke with the clerk of Michigan’s Cheboygan County, “who told me that there was a big increase in people obtaining birth records because of this. There are also similar reports from the provincial archive in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.”

He has been told it can take up to 10 months or longer, but “there are ways to get it sooner.”

Authorities “will expedite the paperwork if the person has a well-found fear of retribution in the United States,” Kearney said, “and this includes applicants who are LGBTQ+, transgender or who are under political, religious or racial pressure.”

Some applicants do this “so they can then become the Canadian ancestor for their own children and grandchildren,” he said. “This then opens the door for things like employment where they would no longer need to go through the whole visa and immigration process, which is both time consuming and expensive. They can take a job in Canada as a citizen, which is attractive to Canadian companies.”

Troy Hicks, who had a great-grandfather born in Canada, told The Associated Press he pursued this avenue after visiting Australia.

“[The] first words out of the first person I talked to in Australia was basically an expletive about Trump and the U.S.,” Pahrump, Nevada, resident. “It was just like, whoa, I walked off a 20-hour flight and literally the first words of somebody’s mouth to me were that. ... So the idea of doing that with a Canadian passport just seemed easier, better, more palatable.”

What you don’t get with this citizenship

A certificate of citizenship does not, however, “grant voting rights unless you move to Canada,” Kearney said. “Under the Canadian Westminster system, voting is tied to your last physical location in Canada, called a riding, and so you need an address in Canada to vote, which most of these people would not have until or unless they moved there.”

Ditto for national health insurance.

“That is tied to the province or territory that you live in,” he said, “and so one would need to establish a residence in Canada for that as well.”

But a Canadian passport alone, Kearney said, is worthwhile.

“It is one of the strongest in the world permitting visa-free travel to more countries than the U.S. one does. There is also some early talk about a citizenship agreement between Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand that would extend work permits to citizens of all four countries,” he said. “Finally, there has been some early discussions about having Canada join the European Union. This would then open up all sorts of employment.”

This story was produced by The Salt Lake Tribune and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.