Wow, here’s a story… With the new U.S. passport requirements (effective today) for all Canadians travelling there by air, many people who’ve never had a passport are suddenly applying for one. There are all kinds of backlogs at Passport Canada offices all over the country.
The weirdest stories are about the estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people who’ve lived in Canada for most of their lives and (surprise!) are now discovering they are actually not Canadian citizens. Or rather, they were but it vanished from under them. This is because of some weird Citizenship Act that was in place between 1947 and 1977, and said that if you were out of the country on your 24th birthday (and didn’t fill out a required form), you lost your citizenship.
I wonder if this leaves some people stranded, as citizens of no country… I never thought that was possible before (to be honest, I never thought about it much), but now I see that perhaps it could be possible (or could have been). Talk about feeling disconnected.
They say home is where you hang your hat.
I hang my hat here.
They say home is where the heart is.
My heart, the people that I love and love me, are here.
Home is where your passport is from.
I tried to get a passport and can’t; they say I don’t belong here.
Home is…
Nowhere?
[Gulp!]