A $55 application fee and a family tree could be all it takes to become a dual citizen of Canada. Tens of thousands of Americans are finding out if they qualify.
SEATTLE — Nick Wallick has big dreams for his film production company — and he’s just getting started. The recent film school graduate launched Hyper Fixated Media out of a backyard ADU in Seattle, building his crew one connection at a time and already eyeing his next market: Vancouver’s booming film industry just two hours north.
A new Canadian law may be his ticket in.
Wallick suspects he has French Canadian ancestry through his mother’s side of the family, whose maiden name is Turgeon — a common name in Montreal. If he can document that lineage, he could qualify for Canadian dual citizenship under a sweeping law that took effect last December.
“Having it so close to a busy film production area like Canada would be amazing,” Wallick said. “Work here, work there, without having to deal with visas or anything like that.”
Wallick is one of tens of thousands of Americans who have begun exploring dual citizenship since Canada’s Bill C-3 took effect Dec. 15.
The law allows anyone who can document an unbroken line of Canadian ancestry to claim citizenship — regardless of how many generations back that ancestor lived. No residency is required. No waiting list. The application fee is just 75 Canadian dollars, or about $55 U.S.
Immigration attorneys across the Pacific Northwest say they have never seen anything like it.
Terry Preshaw, an immigration lawyer based in Everett, Washington, who is licensed in both the United States and Canada, said her caseload has exploded. Last year she had four clients seeking Canadian citizenship. Now she has more than 50.
“My phone is like off the hook,” Preshaw said. “People are finding out they might have a viable claim to Canadian citizenship — and they want to get that right away.”
Brian Gallagher, lead attorney at Boundary Bay Law in Bellingham, Washington, said his practice has shifted dramatically to accommodate the surge. In the past, he handled roughly one Canadian citizenship application every three months. Now he fields about one consultation per day on the issue alone.
“We’ve kind of shifted a lot of other work away in order to push these cases through,” Gallagher said.
The rush comes against a backdrop of political uncertainty in the United States.
Gallagher said the majority of his clients are left-leaning Americans deeply unsettled by the current political climate, though motivations vary widely. Some are making concrete plans to relocate. Others simply want options.
“Most people I talk to don’t have any immediate plans for moving to Canada,” Gallagher said. “They’re kind of viewing it the same way as — wouldn’t it be nice to hop off to Hawaii for spring break?”
Preshaw described it more bluntly. “It’s like insurance,” she said. “Why do we buy insurance? Not because we want to use it — but just in case something catastrophic happens.”
The law’s roots stretch back decades.
Under Canada’s older citizenship statutes, women could lose their status simply by marrying a foreign national — and could not pass citizenship down to their children. Men generally faced no such restriction.
A Canadian court ruled in December 2023 that those rules violated the country’s Charter of Rights, finding the laws discriminatory on the basis of sex and national origin. Parliament responded with Bill C-3, which retroactively restores citizenship to those who lost it under the old rules and eliminates the generational limit entirely.
Preshaw, who lived in Canada for 12 years before relocating to Everett, said she believes Canada deliberately allowed the law to move forward — seeing an opportunity to attract Americans frustrated by U.S. immigration policy.
“Canada, more times than I can count, says — hey, come to Canada,” Preshaw said. “Here’s the big easy button. Press this button, we’ll get you in. We want you. We recognize your value.”
Attorneys warn the process is not as simple as a subscription to an ancestry website. The chain of Canadian citizenship must be unbroken — meaning if any ancestor lost citizenship along the way, often through marriage under the old laws, the entire claim can be disqualified. Gallagher said most clients arrive with roughly 75 percent of their documents already gathered, having done preliminary research on their own.
The Canadian government’s website says processing times for a certificate of citizenship currently run about 10 months, with more than 56,000 people already awaiting a decision.
For Wallick, the search is just beginning. He has started asking relatives about his mother’s French Canadian roots and hopes the paper trail reaches back across the border. Whether or not it does, he said, the pursuit has already given him something unexpected — a deeper sense of his own history.
“I don’t know much about my history on both sides,” Wallick said. “So this helps me learn more about who I am. And maybe this would be a benefit to me as well.”
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