Conrad Black wants his Canadian citizenship back - but the former international media baron faces significant hurdles, and possibly outright rejection. The ex-media mogul, recently slapped with fraud charges in the US, famously renounced Canada for the UK in 2001 in order to accept a peerage in the House of Lords, where he is known as Lord Black of Crossharbour.

As a Canadian citizen, Lord Black could request a transfer to a Canadian jail if he is convicted in the United States. He still maintains a home in Toronto.

A newly proposed amendment to the Citizenship Act could however wreck Lord Black's attempts to regain his Canadian citizenship.

If passed, the proposed foreign criminal prohibitions provision will, with respect to foreign offences, "prevent people from acquiring citizenship if they are currently serving a sentence, have been convicted of a serious crime in the last three years or are currently charged with a serious offence.”

Foreign charges and convictions do not currently stop someone from obtaining Canadian citizenship.

Even if the amendment does not pass, Lord Black will still have to jump through a series of procedural hoops and place his fate in the hands of a visa officer to regain his Canadian citizenship.

According to the federal Citizenship Act, the first step for Black will be to apply for permanent residency.

And he will have to hope a Canadian visa officer doesn't decide that the charges under which he is currently indicted could result in a serious enough conviction to render him ineligible, according to officials with Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act stipulates that an applicant is ineligible if "convicted of an offence outside Canada that, if committed in Canada, would constitute an offence ... punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment of at least 10 years."

If convicted on all charges of defrauding Hollinger International, the company he founded, of roughly $80 million, the 61-year-old Lord Black would face up to 40 years in prison.

And without Canadian citizenship, he would be unable to request a transfer to a Canadian jail — something only Canadian citizens can do.

Lord Black is believed to have recently hired Toronto law firm Green and Spiegel, which specializes in immigration cases, to help his criminal lawyer, Edward Greenspan, craft his citizenship request.

Lord Black renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2001 to claim a British peerage that former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was attempting to block. So the Montreal-born Black gave up his citizenship, later referring to it as an "impediment to my progress in another, more amenable jurisdiction."