Canada did not remove Palestine as a birthplace on passports
Minister of Immigration wrote on X there have been no recent changes to the country list available
(Reuters) – Canada did not make changes to its passport application to remove Palestine as an option for the applicant’s place of birth, as claimed in a viral TikTok video saying that selection has been replaced with “no country of birth.”
One Instagram post, reads: “Palestine is no longer listed in the options of countries on the new Canadian passport. Instead, ‘no country of origin’ must be selected.”
The posts stem from a viral Feb. 23 TikTok video, in which a young woman speaks to the camera saying in part, “…This is my grandma’s current Canadian passport. It says she was born in El Bassa, Palestine."
"But it expires this month and she’s trying to get it renewed. According to the government of Canada, on her new passport, Palestine has to be removed and replaced with ‘no country of birth.’ When you try to renew your passport in Canada, Palestine is not an option for a country in the dropdown list.”
However, “Palestine” does remain a write-in option for those born before 1948 and there have been no recent changes to the online application form, a representative of the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) department told Reuters.
An “apparent clerical error” led to the 90-year-old grandmother of the video’s creator seeking to renew her Canadian passport being told that Palestine was no longer an option as a birthplace, according to CBC News.
Marc Miller, Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, also responded to the viral video in a Feb. 26 post on X, saying there have been no recent changes to the country list available on the passport application form.
“If an applicant was born before May 14, 1948 and requests Palestine as their country of birth, they can do so by going into the application dropdown menu and clicking on the ‘Other’ field followed by entering ‘Palestine’,” Miller said in another post on the same thread. “This can also be done by hand, as always.”
The video’s creator told CBC News that following Miller’s statement, a representative of IRCC called and apologized to her grandmother for the error, adding that the new passport would have “Palestine” listed as her place of birth.
The application is available online and does not list “no country of birth” as an option in the dropdown menu for an applicant’s birth country. It does include the option “other - please specify” as described by Miller.
Matthew Krupovich, an IRCC representative, said in an email that there have been no recent changes to the country list on the application form.
“In 2006, Canadian passport application forms were digitized, which included dropdown menus for country of birth,” Krupovich said.
VERDICT
Misleading. Canada did not make recent changes to its passport application to remove Palestine from the list of available countries for an applicant’s place of birth.
