Chris Selley: Stripping jihadis’ citizenship feels good. But what good does it do?
2014/06/21 1 Comment
Another good column by Chris Selley on citizenship revocation (see his earlier Actually, my citizenship is a right | National Post). Quite funny in places too, but his fundamental point is serious:
But that only leads us to the biggest question, which is why we would want to banish terrorists at all — not in our guts which is understandable but as policy. British terrorism suspects recently stripped of their citizenship are currently at large in Sudan, Kenya, Somalia, Afghanistan and other places that could certainly use fewer terrorism suspects rather than more. Home Secretary Theresa May has denaturalized and deported at least one British citizen over the advice of her own security officials, who would have much preferred to keep an eye on him.
FOX News types pitch a fit whenever a former Guantanamo detainee pops up on the frontlines — as many have. They went nuts when it emerged the Americans released Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from custody in Iraq in 2009, only to have to deal with him now as leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
You can’t keep people in custody forever. Sometimes you have to make tough choices and cross your fingers. But why would we deliberately choose to set ostensibly dangerous people loose in the Middle East? No doubt it would give some of us a cheap thrill. But Chris Alexander is not Minister of Cheap Thrills.
National Post | Chris Selley: Stripping jihadis’ citizenship feels good. But what good does it do?
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
This is very true. To me, it compares in a way to present practice of releasing criminals from our prisons who may be a risk to the public: often, people in the area do not want them there, understandably. However, at least (hopefully) the police are notified of their presence and people know where they are. Under the new law, if those criminals are dual citizens of some other country, they might be stripped of Canadian citizenship, deported and sent offshore to continue criminal activity. Worse, they might be someone found later on to have been innocent in the first place (it’s happened!) and now deported somewhere they may not be welcome.
Perhaps I am prejudiced by my personal experience, but I don’t feel sure that our authorities would not deem someone a “terrorist” to be stripped for just appearing undesirable according to their values.