Ancestors were Russian Empire citizens?

[emergentcypher]

Hi, I know there are lots of posts on this but each situation seems to be a little bit unique. I understand the rule is that one of your grandparents or parents must be or have been a Finnish citizen. How does this apply to people born before independence, under the Russian Empire?

Here's my situation: my great grandparents were born in Finland while it was part of the Russian Empire. Around 1905 they moved to Canada where they gave birth to my grandmother. Does my grandmother automatically have Finnish citizenship, or does she not have it unless she requests it? Can I apply for residence on the basis of her parents, or would I need her to apply for it first, before I would be eligible? How does this work when my ancestors left Finland before it became an independent country?

Thanks all.

[betelgeuse]

This special permanent residency permit is not granted based on a grandparent being a citizen alone. You must prove close ties to Finland and it's much too far back in your family tree for you to do that. You clearly do not have close ties to Finland in any way, and one failure in the checklist means no residency permit - Migri is quite clear on this.

You will get a residence permit based on a grandparent being a citizen alone. The relevant form has no fields for showing close ties:

http://www.migri.fi/download/15051_OLE_ ... 8ef234d288

"Receiving the residence permit depends on the strength and closeness of Finnish ancestry. If ancestry dates back several generations, a residence permit cannot be obtained on this basis."
http://www.migri.fi/remigration

If you use the link in that page, you will see that the close ties thing refers to very special categories of people:

http://www.migri.fi/remigration/returne ... pplication

Oh and in answer to your question about your grandmother... Migri would first need to clarify whether your great-grandparents ever had citizenship at birth. If so, I believe others have said that Canadian law disallowed dual citizenship so your grandmother wasn't born with it. Then there would be a long and involved daisy chain of trying to get citizenship one generation at a time and it will cost well over a thousand euro.

The citizenship at the time of application is irrelevant. The criteria is their citizenship at birth. Canada does not allow dual citizenship but that doesn't mean the grandmother was automatically Canadian at birth. If the parents hand't naturalized, this would only happen if Canada had Jus soli forcing kids to take Canadian citizenship which I find very unlikely. I might get back to the question of the OP later. Don't have time atm.

[Rip]

The case number three seems quite relevant:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=70800
So your grandmother would be considered a former Finnish citizen (assuming she was born before 1928, which seems likely, even in the case her parents had come naturalized Canadian citizens before her birth) and you'd be eligible for a residence permit.

[betelgeuse]

So... they say "is or has been a native Finnish citizen". I guess that could be quite ambiguous. (Could be a translation mistake into English.)

http://www.migri.fi/remigration/descend ... sh_citizen

The quote should be read like this:

is a native Finnish citizen = alive
has been a native Finnish citizen = dead

[betelgeuse]

Canada does not allow dual citizenship

Oh yes it does.
Did you mean to say that in the early 1900's Canada did not allow dual-citizens?

It was just a reference to the quoted post. Could have been phrased better.