It was just so exciting to finally take my oath of Citizenship, I have to bore you with it for one more post.
As you may know, I was born and raised in Germany, and came to Canada at the age of 19. I hadn’t come to stay, but stay I did. Later on, I made a conscious decision to make Canada my new home. This was fine and dandy with my permanent resident card. But at some point, I started feeling more and more Canadian, I began taking pride of ownership; this was becoming “My Canada”. And I also began wanting to be able to participate in the democratic parts of this constitutional monarchy. I wanted to be able to vote!
Germany is not a fan of dual citizenships. With a country that tiny, full of 65Million people (!), they figure: if you are not in, you are out. But they do make exceptions in cases like mine, where all of my family is there, except my kids, who are here. The process for applying to the Germans for dual citizenship took two years. And then, after having lived here for almost twentyfive years, when I finally applied for Canadian citizenship, I got stuck in a residency audit that was a whole lot of work, and which took another two years!
Needless to say: I was ecstatic when I finally received word that my application was granted.
And now? I literally feel like I have one foot in each country, on each continent. I am feeling of split!
I find it very interesting to observe what it is doing to my loyalties, feelings that I felt engrained in my being, either since birth, and also since deciding to make this my new home country. In a sense, my new dual citizenship almost feels like betrayal?
I had to speak with the lady at the German consulate general in Toronto. She had also become a dual citizen, and she assured me that the feeling won’t last long. That was very reassuring. Coming from (a German) government official (in Canada) , and all.
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