Why Cajuns may be Canadians under new citizenship law

Louisiana ranks among the top states for residents who can now claim Canadian citizenship – at double the rate of Michigan.

Under a new law which removed the generational limit to Canadian citizenship by descent, thousands of Cajuns and other Louisianians can apply for proof of Canadian citizenship – provided they can trace their descent from a Canadian ancestor.

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Louisiana’s high level of Canadian ancestry stems from the source of its Cajun heritage: a migration which began years before the Declaration of Independence, and whose legacy remains stamped on present-day America.

Le Grand Dérangement: Canada's Great Wound

In 1755, French-speaking settlers called Acadians—the ancestors of today’s “Cajuns”— were forcibly expelled by the British government from what is now northeastern Canada, where their families had lived for generations as farmers of drained salt marshes.

Thousands were put on ships and scattered across the Atlantic world: to France, the Caribbean, and British colonial detention camps along the eastern seaboard.

That many Acadians landed in the region of present-day Louisiana was no historical accident, but was in fact “orchestrated in no small part by the Acadians themselves,” according to research by historian Carl A. Brasseaux.

Like the founding fathers of the United States, the expelled Acadians took ownership of their own destiny. Their settlement in Louisiana was the result of a co-ordinated, community-driven effort to assemble their scattered diaspora and forge a new homeland.

The long journey to the bayous

In February 1765, legendary resistance fighter Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil arrived in Louisiana leading 193 refugees from Halifax detention camps.

Beausoleil and his group had originally hoped to join fellow Acadians in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), but letters from the island told a grim story: their compatriots had been pressed into slavery, and their children were dying of malnutrition and tropical disease.

Shunning Saint-Domingue, Beausoleil’s group pressed on to New Orleans, arriving with "little more than the clothes they carried on their backs," according to Brasseaux.

There, they found a lifeline: each family was given land grants, seed grain, a gun, and basic tools by the French colonial government. Within a decade, the settlers had transformed the semi-tropical landscape into productive farms.

Having found their footing, they began writing letters to stranded relatives, who came in waves, arriving in chartered vessels from across the diaspora: France, New York, Halifax, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and St. Pierre and Miquelon, all bound for the nascent settlement they called "New Acadia."

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They bayou country in which they settled provided a rich cultural soup, being already home to Native Americans, Creole settlers, and Spanish colonists.

Acadian dwellings became “Creole” houses (raised on piers). Acadian music absorbed the Spanish guitar. And Acadian cuisine became home to Iberian spices, Native American corn, and African okra, in forms “only remotely resembling their African and [Native American] counterparts," according to Brasseaux.

By the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the music, food, French dialect, and Catholic faith had formed what Brasseux calls "the basis for a new, synthetic South Louisiana culture," the living inheritance of a Canadian exile that began 270 years ago.

The return to Canada

Today, many Americans with family roots in Canada are looking northward, after Canada’s new citizenship law removed the generational limit for inheriting Canadian citizenship.

The number of Louisianans—and other Americans—who are eligible for Canadian citizenship is likely far higher than the percentage who self-report Cajun, French Canadian, or Canadian ancestry.*

Provided they were born prior to December 15, 2025, any American descended from at least one Canadian is a Canadian citizen—for many, the hurdle is simply obtaining the right documents to include as evidence in their proof of citizenship application.

In today’s era of geopolitical turmoil, brave Americans of diverse cultural roots are pursuing their own individual paths to prosperity, driving the cultural evolution of diasporas stretching back hundreds of years.

For some members of the Cajun diaspora, the Canadian passport—a return to Canada—represents the safety and security they seek.

Today's Cajuns aren’t returning to the drained salt marshes their Acadian ancestors farmed in the Canadian Maritimes in the 1700s.

They're seeking what brought their ancestors to New Orleans nearly three centuries ago: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

*2.84% of Louisiana residents report Canadian ancestry ("Cajun," "French Canadian," or "Canadian"), compared to only 1.47% of Michigan residents, according to the US Census Bureau, 2024 5-year estimates.

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