Denaturalization
[3] The British practice of penal transportation led to 380,000 people being sent into exile in other parts of the empire through the mid-nineteenth century.
[5] Following the growth of the welfare state, emigration and denaturalization were legalized by many countries for pragmatic reasons in order to avoid having to support poor returnees.
[15] Sociologist David Scott FitzGerald states, "Racialized denationalizations accompanied expulsions and population transfers on a massive scale following the remaking of nation-states around the two world wars.
"[16] Two million former citizens of the Russian Empire, the "white émigrés", were denaturalized and made stateless by the Soviet Union in 1921.
[12][20] One argument advanced for the decrease in denaturalization is the increase in human rights norms and growing legal protection against statelessness.
[23] The 9/11 attacks brought on a heightened fear of terrorism; governments tried to reduce any legal obstacles to the unlimited exercise of executive power deemed necessary to combat the terrorist threat.
[24] Immigration law was seen as a powerful tool to exclude those people deemed threats to national security, but it could only be wielded against non-citizens.
[25] The countries that introduced, expanded, revived, or considered denaturalization laws include Canada, France, Austria, Germany, Norway, Netherlands, Australia, Egypt, and the Gulf States.
[26] Denaturalization does not necessarily result in an individual losing the right of legal residence in the country that revokes their citizenship, but it often does.
[27] Denaturalized people are often forced to return to countries with which they have few ties with far-reaching consequences for their family, professional, and social life and well-being.
[31] When applied to entire ethnic groups, denaturalization is often used as part of an attempt to encourage people to leave the country.
[37] Hundreds of citizens of various European countries, as of 2021[update], are stranded in the Middle East because their government refuses to repatriate them in the absence of formal denaturalization.
[36] In many African countries and elsewhere, including the Dominican Republic and Texas, officials deliberately deny the required documentation to people entitled to citizenship, which can have similar consequences as denaturalization.
[55] The same year, Poland, which was trying to reduce its Jewish population, passed a law that denaturalized Polish Jews living abroad.
However, the 1923 Supreme Court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind found that Indians were legally non-white and could not be considered citizens.
A number of denaturalization cases went forward, including against Thind's lawyer, a Californian named Sakharam Ganesh Pandit.
However, Pandit successfully argued that he had reasonably relied upon his American citizenship and he would be unjustly harmed by its removal, winning his case in court.
[1][62] All German Jews lost their citizenship rights in 1935[1] and those who emigrated were denaturalized en masse, often to make it easier to confiscate their property.
[65][66] In German-occupied Europe, Jews who retained citizenship in a neutral or Axis country were often protected from deportation and death while those who were stateless were at increased risk.
[45] Several post-Communist countries denaturalized people who did not belong to the dominant ethnic group during the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.
[77][78] Especially in the early and mid-twentieth century, the United States often used denaturalization against left-wing immigrants, such as anarchists and members of the Communist Party USA.
[85] Denaturalization on this basis expanded during the early twenty-first century due to increasing terrorist attacks in Europe and the phenomenon of people traveling to the Middle East to fight for the Islamic State group.
[88][89] According to counterterrorism researcher David Malet, "Osama Bin Laden is Exhibit A of the folly of stripping a foreign fighter’s citizenship and then washing your hands and assuming the individual is no longer your problem.
"[90] Another consequence of denaturalization is worsening relations with third countries who view it as an illegitimate attempt to export terrorism risks.
[91] In Iraq, suspected Islamic State militants (including foreign fighters) are often subjected to ten-minute trials that often result in the death penalty.
It scanned more than 16.5 million of records of naturalized Americans and flagged approximately 124.000 of them for manual analysis and review by USCIS officers regarding denaturalization.
[95][80] According to legal scholar Audrey Macklin, "The logic of citizenship revocation for fraud or misrepresentation is that it unwinds the effect of the misleading conduct and restores the situation that would have been obtained had the truth been disclosed.
[18] As of 2014[update], more than a dozen European Union countries provide for denaturalization if a citizen resides abroad for an extended period.
[24][105] The broadness of this provision has been the subject of widespread public criticism,[106] and its use is not restricted cases where the individual is argued to be a threat to national security.
"[109] An exception can only exist if the person is convicted of a crime related to national security and is a serious threat, and if other international law obligations are upheld, including the prohibition of statelessness, non-discrimination, right to a fair trial, and proportionality.
