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Tag: citizenship

Privileges and responsibilities

When we moved to Canada for my husband’s academic job in 2009, we had work permits. Mine stated I couldn’t work with children or do farmwork. I’d previously been a teacher, but, with this work permit, I only taught adults. I volunteered at friends’ farms, but these skills couldn’t offer income. I did a few Jewish community events, leading family services, for instance, but I didn’t want to jeopardize my status.

I felt all the upheaval was worthwhile. We lived in a college town in Kentucky before moving to Canada. We drove 121 kilometres each way to attend a congregation with a rabbi. The town we lived in had about 20 Jewish families and a lay-led small Reform congregation. While my husband’s professor job was good, I’d lacked job prospects there. It was lonely without much of a Jewish community. When my husband was offered a Canada Research Chair in Manitoba, moving north made sense.

We’re law-abiding folk. We followed all the visa requirements. However, when trying to get Canadian permanent residency, the process required a chest X-ray. Pregnant with twins in 2011, I had to wait until after I gave birth. This stalled things. Meanwhile, we never thought committing a crime was a good choice while in Canada on a visa or a residency permit. (Or now, as citizens.)

Canadian permanent residents have all the rights of citizenship except voting and running for public office. If you’re convicted of a crime, permanent residency can be revoked. At each stage, whether work permit, permanent residency or citizenship, it’s important to obey the laws of the place you’re living in.

Later, as a permanent resident, I pitched book ideas to publishers at a Winnipeg library event. The publisher asked if I was a citizen. If not, they said they couldn’t read my manuscript. Their government funding was “only for citizens.” Afterwards, I researched it and emailed the publisher – Canadian presses can publish eligible permanent residents’ work using the same government funding. I received no reply.

By then, I realized my non-citizen experiences were normal and considered acceptable. Citizenship means something. Those born in Canada often don’t understand their privileges. Newcomers will mention their credentials and the hard effort it took to enter Canada. Canada loves successful, educated immigrants. Yet, upon arrival, those credentials often aren’t recognized, meaning we’re not eligible to do the same work here. It might take years to requalify the “Canadian” way.

I recalled all this when the US government began to detain foreign university students before deporting them. The outcry has been fast and furious. How dare immigration take Mahmoud Khalil away from his pregnant wife? Yet, as a parent, I thought, “Why would anyone on a visa or residency permit risk illegal behaviour? They might be forced to abandon their family!” 

Perhaps protesting international students never reviewed their visa terms. In the United States, green card holders aren’t allowed to try to change the government by illegal means. Those who trespassed on or vandalized university campuses, threatening resistance in support of groups deemed terrorists by both the United States and Canada, took big risks.

Some US international students knew they’d violated their visa regulations. Some students “self-deported.” A Cornell graduate student, Momodu Taal, left the United States on his own.

Cornell University emphasizes that actions have consequences and that, with privilege, comes responsibility. I heard this repeatedly during my undergraduate years at Cornell. However, when a Columbia University grad student, Ranjani Srinivasan, left the United States for Canada, CBC’s headline read, “Grad student who fled US says claims about her alleged support of Hamas are ‘absurd.’” Why did Srinivasan flee if the allegations were absurd and didn’t violate the law?

Long ago, my husband attended graduate school in Britain. As an American, he had to register his identity and contact information at the local police department. Though he didn’t break any laws, the trek to the station and the US passport stamped “ALIEN” were a sobering reminder of status. 

It isn’t popular to take responsibility for one’s actions. Even expecting law enforcement to enforce the laws against some illegal activity isn’t common. Hate crimes against Jewish Canadians soared out of control in 2024. According to a recent B’nai Brith Canada audit, few cases are prosecuted. According to 2023 statistics, 72% of these types of hate crimes went unsolved. 

Perhaps those fleeing the United States have seen this statistic. It’s now common in North America to protest on city streets, waving Hezbollah or Hamas flags. Protesters use words like “intifada” and “resistance” while claiming this is a right to free speech. These words and the actions that followed resulted in the deaths of thousands whose identities differed from the Islamist groups who “resisted.” Sometimes, Jews in Israel (or Canada) are the targets. Targets include Israeli Druze, Christians or Bedouin, too. In neighbouring Syria, minority groups targeted by Islamists are slaughtered, but without Canadian news coverage comparable to the Israel/Gaza conflict.

As but one example of many incidents across the country, it’s apparently legal to protest and yell “baby killers,” an antisemitic trope, outside of the Winnipeg Jewish community centre. That same building complex contains a daycare, school and programming for the elderly. In April 2025, protesters claimed they did this because two Israeli soldiers came to speak about their experiences on Oct. 7, 2023, and their military service in Gaza.

But, wait a moment, Canadian soldiers who speak about their military service in Afghanistan don’t face protesters. Do protesters stand near mosques when a relevant guest speaks, to protest violent upheavals in Syria, Nigeria or Sudan? No, it’s only about Israel, where half the world’s Jewish population lives. Protesters openly spout hatred against Canadian Jewish citizens, about 1% of the Canadian population, but not other minorities. 

Immigrants, like foreign students, don’t get all the rights of citizenship. Citizenship is a “membership” and has its privileges. Freedom of expression isn’t absolute in either the United States or Canada. In both countries, discrimination, hate speech, incitement to violence and defamation are illegal. 

Canadians must remember the responsibilities that accompany the privileges. Let’s enforce Canada’s laws against hate. Behaving properly towards one another and treating all Canadians as worthy of respect are Canadian values. Hate speech, and valorizing terrorist groups and their flags, aren’t. 

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Posted on May 30, 2025May 29, 2025Author Joanne SeiffCategories Op-EdTags citizenship, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, immigration, law, responsibilities, rights
Gaining Spanish citizenship

Gaining Spanish citizenship

Michelle Valenzuela, centre, along with her brother, Pedro de Jesus Valenzuela Mora, and mother, Diana Mora. (photo from Michelle Valenzuela)

Almost 500 years after her Sephardi ancestors were forced out of Spain, Michelle Valenzuela is on a path back.

The 28-year-old artist and art teacher from Colombia is currently living and studying in Vancouver as the Spanish government finishes processing her citizenship application along with one from her brother. Their mother is pursuing a similar process with Portugal after both countries opened their doors to the descendants of Sephardi Jews persecuted during the Inquisition.

Growing up in a deeply Catholic family, Valenzuela had no inkling of a Jewish heritage until a cousin who works at the Colombian Academy of Genealogy told them what he had discovered: their family descended from Samuel Levi Abulafia, who had adopted the Christianized name of Cristobal Gomez de Castro before being expelled from Spain in 1570. He had been found guilty of sacrilege, bigamy, heretical ideas and promoting Judaism.

“We found out the Jewish background of our family story,” Valenzuela told the Independent. “For me, it was shocking. I don’t have a good relationship with Catholicism so I always felt like the black sheep of the family. It was an explanation for myself that our origins weren’t that Christian.

“There’s something particular about my mother’s family, the whole personality of the family, which is really different from other cultures in Colombia.”

Her grandmother, for instance, started a successful business that still exists, unusual at a time when most Latin American women were expected to stay home and care for children.

Although her cousin had earlier discovered the Jewish origins, he didn’t tell the rest of the family until after Spain passed legislation in 2015 to offer citizenship to members of the Sephardi diaspora.

“I think it’s related with the fact that the family became really Catholic and proud of being Catholic. One of his brothers is a priest,” explained Valenzuela.

Jews who came to Colombia hundreds of years ago had to hide their faith because the colonies of Spain carried out their own inquisitions.

As Sephardi people spread to all corners of the earth, the largest communities were established in Israel and Turkey, followed by the colonial holdings of Spain and Portugal in the New World. The expulsion of Jews followed Spain’s campaign to also rid the country of followers of Islam, known as Moors.

The 2015 law is aimed at historical redress for the descendants of about 160,000 Jews expelled on the 1492 orders of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. About 100 years later, another 300,000 Jews who had converted to Catholicism, but nonetheless incurred the wrath of Spanish authorities, were also expelled – including Valenzuela’s ancestor.

Remarkably, documents from the hearings that forced people into exile are accessible online due to digitization of the Catholic Church’s records.

Now, her parents face the knowledge that the church they serve – her mother as a Bible teacher and her father as a deacon in training – is the same one that forced her ancestors to convert or flee.

“I tried to ask [my mother] about her thoughts about her family being Jewish and I think she’s not able to confront it,” Valenzuela said. “Her answers are vague, evasive. I think she’s surprised as well with her Jewish roots, but she has always referred to the Jewish people as older brothers to the Christians.”

Accountant to the king

photo - A bust of Samuel ben Meir Ha-Levi Abulafia in Toledo, Spain, near the synagogue he founded in the 14th century
A bust of Samuel ben Meir Ha-Levi Abulafia in Toledo, Spain, near the synagogue he founded in the 14th century. (photo from Michelle Valenzuela)

Research into the family’s roots in Spain and Portugal also led to a much more famous Samuel Levi Abulafia, a 14th-century advisor and treasurer to Pedro I, the king of Castile and Léon.

Abulafia was prominent between about 1320 and 1360, first as an aide to Portuguese nobility and ultimately as a wealthy and powerful official in Toledo, where Abulafia commissioned construction of El Transito Synagogue on a street now bearing his name and statue. His nearby former palace in the city’s Jewish Quarter now houses a museum of El Greco’s paintings.

Also known as Samuel ben Meir Ha-Levi Abulafia, he fell out of favour with the king as anti-Jewish sentiment grew in the Late Middle Ages. Accused of disloyalty to the king, he was imprisoned, tortured and killed in 1360 and his assets seized by the crown.

The synagogue was converted to a Catholic Church and declared a national monument in 1877. It has since been restored as a synagogue and now includes a Sephardi museum.

Applying for citizenship

The process to gain citizenship is long and costly, requiring money and persistence to complete. Even now, two years after the deadline for applications closed in Spain, Valenzuela and her brother are waiting for final citizenship documents to arrive.

photo - Genealogy prepared for Michelle Valenzuela for her application for Spanish citizenship. It dates back to a man exiled from Spain in 1570 for being Jewish despite his adoption of a Catholic name, Gomez de Castro
Genealogy prepared for Michelle Valenzuela for her application for Spanish citizenship. It dates back to a man exiled from Spain in 1570 for being Jewish despite his adoption of a Catholic name, Gomez de Castro. (photo from Michelle Valenzuela)

Files received by the 2019 Spanish deadline are still being reviewed, while a similar program in Portugal continues to accept applications.

About 132,000 have applied to the Spanish program and at least 34,000 new citizenships have been granted so far. Most have come from Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia, according to news reports. The program began refusing a high number of applications in 2019, saying that fraudulent cases were on the rise.

Even before the Spanish bureaucracy considers the evidence, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain, along with a Jewish community in countries of origin, must approve the application. Then, there is the need to show a “special connection” to Spain, which the Valenzuela family fulfilled by contributing to the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Bogota. Applicants must also speak Spanish.

There is no requirement to be a practising Jew or give up citizenship from their home country.

New possibilities

It’s not lost on Valenzuela that the process brings cash into Spain – a 100 euro application fee, about 600 euros for notarizing original documents delivered in person to Madrid and another 80 euros to write a test on knowledge of Spanish history, society and culture. Applicants also travel to Spain at their own expense, putting it far out of reach for many applicants from Latin American countries with high unemployment and weak currencies.

It means successful petitioners will have both money and education. And many are young, bringing the possibility of adding new workers to an aging country. United Nations data indicates 10% of the Spanish population was over 60 in 1950, but that will rise to 30% in 2025.

For Valenzuela and her partner, Carlos Perdomo, a lawyer from Colombia working in Vancouver, proving Jewish roots in Spain is another chance at finding a way out of the economic difficulties in their home country. They are both also permanent residents of Canada.

“We wanted to improve our possibilities for the future [outside Colombia],” she said, and obtaining a European Union passport should help.

“It’s so great to know more about your family and have a material link. We would love to use it, maybe for a master’s degree in the future. It would be cheaper and easier for me to travel there, having citizenship.”

Valenzuela says her trip to Spain in December was her first and she was surprised at how much it is like Bogota: disorganized, loud and crowded.

“Being a Colombian is always linked to the notion that Europeans are better in every way. It’s easy to romanticize and idealize Spanish culture and art, but the reality is we’re very similar.”

Erin Ellis is a former newspaper reporter and copy editor for the Edmonton Journal and Vancouver Sun. She also contributes to Canada’s National Observer and CBC News. She’s keenly interested in history and loves telling people’s stories.

Format ImagePosted on February 25, 2022February 23, 2022Author Erin EllisCategories LocalTags citizenship, Colombia, immigration, Portugal, Spain
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