Naturalization and Immigration in Quebec

Presenter(s): Jessica Samples

Faculty Mentor(s): Matthias Vogel & Laurie deGonzalez

Poster 192

Session: Global Engagement ARC

Obtaining Canadian citizenship is a process many people aspire to complete every year. Going through the naturalization process is one step towards becoming a Canadian citizen. According to macleans.ca, Canadian citizenship was granted to more than 260,000 individuals during the year of 2014, after completion of a number of tasks. Depending on their reasons for wanting to immigrate, these people help boost the Canadian economy, while diversifying the country at the same time. A fraction of these hopefuls are immigrants seeking refuge specifically Quebec.

For this presentation, our focus will be on the immigration and naturalization process for the Canadian province Quebec. Quebec is a French-speaking province and has recently begun to accept larger numbers of Haitian refugees into its borders. The main topics we will be examining are how open the borders are, how difficult or easy it is to gain naturalized status, why immigrants chose Canada, and also why the country is so welcoming to refugees and immigrants to draw parallels and to suggest different approaches to the discussion about immigration in the United States of America.