Americans are driving a sharp rise in Canadian citizenship proof applications, pushing certificate wait times to one year.
The wait time for proof of Canadian citizenship certificates has climbed to 12 months, as thousands of Americans apply under Canada’s updated citizenship rules.
In July 2025, the processing time was five months. It has now more than doubled, following a sharp rise in applications from people claiming Canadian citizenship through family ancestry.
The increase follows changes to Canada’s Citizenship Act that took effect on December 15, 2025. The update removed the first-generation limit for citizenship by descent for people born before that date.
As a result, anyone born before December 15, 2025, who can show a continuous family line from a Canadian ancestor may apply for proof of Canadian citizenship. This includes Americans whose families may have lived in the United States for several generations.
Many applicants are not necessarily planning to move to Canada right away. For some, the goal is to secure a second passport during uncertain times.
Between December 15 and the end of January, Canada received more than 12,000 citizenship-by-descent applications. U.S. citizens made up the largest share. In January 2026, applications from Americans outnumbered those from the next nine top source countries combined.
The application surge has also affected archives across Canada. Americans have been searching for birth, baptism, marriage and death records needed to prove their Canadian ancestry.
Quebec’s provincial archives, the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, reported a 3,000 per cent increase in requests.
The demand is especially strong among Americans with roots in New England. Between 1840 and 1930, about 900,000 French Canadians moved to the northeastern United States, leaving many descendants who may now qualify for Canadian citizenship.
People who receive proof of Canadian citizenship may apply for a Canadian passport. Canadian citizens can enter Canada freely, live and work anywhere in the country, buy residential property and qualify for publicly funded health care if they become residents.
The article notes that, at the time of writing, the Canadian passport ranked above the U.S. passport on the Henley Passport Index, offering visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 182 countries.
For U.S. citizens, getting proof of Canadian citizenship does not create extra Canadian income tax duties. Unlike the United States, Canada does not tax citizens worldwide simply because they hold citizenship.
People applying now can expect Canada’s immigration department to finish processing their certificate by May 2027, based on the current estimate.
The federal government calculates processing times by looking at the number of applications waiting, available staff and expected future demand. The estimate is updated every month and can change quickly if more applications arrive.
Applicants can check their own expected wait using the Canadian government’s online processing time tool.
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