Would-be Canadian terrorists are often made in Canada: Gurski

2018/09/05 Leave a comment

Good reminder by Phil Gurski:
What is a citizen? Well, it depends. The concept appears to date back to city states in ancient Greece, but in the modern era each state decides what the rules are. For the average person citizenship is determined by the particular country in which they were born. There are, however, exceptions. Some nations recognize anyone born on their soil—so-called jus soli—so that if a woman gives birth while in transit on a flight that child can receive that country’s citizenship. Others do not.
During the recent Conservative convention in Halifax a resolution was passed calling for the government to stop granting citizenship to anyone born on Canadian soil, and instead to require at least one parent to be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. The motion was spurred by a belief that pregnant non-Canadian women were flying to Canada for the sole purpose of giving birth, although there are no indications that this is a significant problem in our country. The Conservative position has already led to reactions that it is not necessary.
Two cases in our country have arisen that lead to interesting dilemmas. In the first, two children born in Canada to Russians here illegally as spies were once seen as citizens. The Supreme Court is currently weighing in on a lower court decision that removed their citizenship. I imagine that most Canadians would not want to see the offspring of Russian spies receive the privileges our country has to offer, even if the fact they were born here was not their ‘fault’.
So what about terrorists? The Harper government tried to enact legislation that would strip those convicted of terrorist offences in Canada of their citizenship. The case of Zakaria Amara, one of the leaders of the 2005-6 Toronto 18 terrorist cell, was the test case. His citizenship was revoked but re-granted after the Liberals took power.
Like the case of the children of the Russian “illegals” I would wager that most Canadians would have little to no problem with taking away the benefit of being one of us from someone who sought to blow us up. If an immigrant to whom we granted citizenship goes and becomes a terrorist and plans to kill his fellow Canadians, does he deserve to be one of us? Great question.
There are of course limitations on when a state can take citizenship away. No state can—or rather, no state should—render a person stateless. Hence, an individual with status in only one country can not have that status taken away: that act can only be applied to those who can fall back on a secondary citizenship. Mr. Amara had dual Jordanian-Canadian citizenship and had temporarily lost the latter.
As I argued in Western Foreign Fighters, however, the decision to take away citizenship does not solve one significant issue: those who come to our land as children and become terrorists (note that I wrote “become” and not “were born as”) do so within our society. In other words, the process of radicalization occurs here, not elsewhere. Even if we were to remove such people who pose a threat to us through their terrorist plots by stripping them of their Canadian citizenship and deporting them, this does little to disrupt the incidence of radicalization here (aside of course from removing one radicalizing influence who can affect others).
This is an important detail. Contrary to public wisdom, radicalization to violence is a Canadian problem: it does not appear on our shores via the immigration system. We thus have to learn to deal with it and the government has started a new centre to help coordinate those efforts.
I fully understand the anger that Canadians feel towards those of us who choose to embrace terrorism (note that I wrote “choose” and not “were duped into”): I share that anger. Perhaps steps to yank citizenship will act as a deterrent for others: perhaps not (I lean towards the latter). Which ever way the government goes it does not eliminate the need to develop a better understanding of why Canadians radicalize to violence, and either travel abroad to join terrorist groups or plan acts here. One thing we cannot do is deport our way out of this problem.

Filed under Citizenship, Radicalization Tagged with

What the previous government learned about birth tourism: My article in Policy Options

2018/08/29 1 Comment

Excerpt are my concluding observations:

All this being said, the number of births by foreign mothers should be monitored. Statistics Canada numbers may not present an accurate picture. The number of births to foreign women in Richmond was reported as 394 in 2016-17, greater than the 313 that Statistics Canada reported for the whole country for 2016 (see table above). The Richmond numbers showed a steady increase from 2010, compared with the flatter trend in national numbers. Statistics Canada and IRCC need to work with provincial health ministries to ensure more reliable and consistent data.

More focused measures need to be considered to reduce or contain birth tourism. Options include making it more expensive by increasing the deposit that mothers pay hospitals; making suspected birth tourism grounds for visa refusal; and banning or regulating “birth tourism hotels,” places catering to pregnant foreign women and the consultants who help make the related arrangements.

These concrete actions would be a more proportionate response to the concerns raised by politicians and their constituents, and one that should be pursued by any government to improve the integrity of the citizenship program and address public concerns about fraud and abuse.

It is also important that the motivation behind discussion and debates on birthright citizenship not be labelled as racist, xenophobic or anti-immigrant. The fundamental issue remains fraud and misrepresentation, not discrimination.

What the previous government learned about birth tourism

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with ,

Richmond Hospital reports more “non-resident, self-pay” births than the provincial government reports “non-resident” births, due to birth registration discrepancy

2018/08/29 Leave a comment

An older article from June 29 this year that was brought to my attention following the CBC article thanks to Ian Young of the SCMP that helps explain the discrepancy between the vital statistics data collected by Statistics Canada and local reports:

The frequency by which birth tourism may be occurring in B.C. and across Canada is significantly underreported, however health officials in this province are near to closing a glaring reporting loophole.

For instance, a discrepancy between how births by non-residents are reported at Richmond Hospital and how they are reported to the B.C. Ministry of Health could soon be rectified by provincial health officials, according to a ministry spokesperson.

“In the past, the Ministry of Health has tracked non-resident births by the address listed by parents on a baby’s birth registration, which could be local or international. Hospitals will typically go by whether or not patients are paying out-of-pocket for services to determine if someone is a resident of British Columbia,” stated spokesperson Laura Heinze, via email last week, to the Richmond News.

“We are currently in the process of aligning these reporting methods in order to get a more accurate picture of non-resident births across British Columbia,” Heinze added.

The existing reporting system can create significant discrepencies in tracking because many of the non-resident women who give birth at the Richmond Hospital list their address as the “birth house” where they may be living at the time.

In Richmond, Chinese nationals are known to stay at such houses, of which there are dozens identified by the provincial government and numerous advertised online both in China and Canada. As part of advertised month-to-month accommodation packages, birth house operators typically assist women with anything from tour guides, passport applications, doctor appointments, some pre- and post-natal care as well as hospital registration.

And so, should the birth house operator list the address of their home business at the hospital’s registration desk, the ministry would not count the baby as a non-resident. Only when the true address of the mother is registered, does the birth become a non-resident in the eyes of Vital Statistics B.C., noted Heinze.

Whereas Richmond Hospital reported 299 “self-pay” births from non-resident mothers in the 2015-16 fiscal year and 379 in the 2016-2017 fiscal year, Statistics Canada only reported 99 births in B.C. in 2016 where the “Place of residence of [the] mother [is] outside Canada.”

Across Canada there were only 313 such births reported in 2016.

Statistics Canada told the News the Canadian Vital Statistics Birth Database collects demographic data annually from all provincial and territorial vital statistics registries on all live births in Canada.

“To the best of our knowledge, there is currently no government department or agency tasked with identifying and collecting data on births to non-resident mothers,” noted Statistics Canada spokesperson France Gagne.

From 2004 to 2010 the hospital helped birth, on average, 18 new Canadians per year from non-resident mothers. Numbers rose dramatically in 2014 and have risen steadily since, to the point where one in five births in Richmond are to foreign nationals.

While immigration lawyer Richard Kurland notes not all non-resident births are necessarily a result of birth tourism, Richmond may be at the epicentre of a burgeoning, and legal, birth tourism industry, whereby visiting foreign nationals seek to have “anchor babies,” who automatically become Canadian citizens under Canada’s citizenship laws.

Kurland said the key to good data is determining immigration/visitor status of the mom.

A national, public petition penned by Richmond resident Kerry Starchuk and sponsored by Steveston-Richmond East Liberal MP Joe Peschisolido aims to officially condemn birth tourism and study remedies to what Peschisolido describes as an abuse of the immigration system.

“Underground and unregulated ‘for profit’ businesses have developed both in Canada and ‘countries of origin’ to facilitate the practice of ‘Birth Tourism’; and the instances of ‘Birth Tourism’ are increasing in multiple cities across Canada,” the petition notes online.

Peschisolido disagrees with Conservative counterparts who have called for an end to birthright citizenship.

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , , ,

It’s fraudulent’: Former immigration official says action needed on ‘passport babies’

2018/08/29 Leave a comment

This CBC story, for which I did an interview, provides a good overview. Interesting to see just how much attention this story has and continues to receive (The National did a short report in which I was interviewed among others: The National Version):
A resolution passed during the Conservatives’ weekend policy convention calls for a future Tory government to end the practice of granting citizenship to babies born in Canada to non-resident parents. (Tom Hanson/Canadian Press)

One of Canada’s former top immigration officials says so-called passport babies are a genuine problem in some Canadian locales and closing a loophole being exploited by pregnant foreign tourists is required to curtail the fraudulent practice.

But Andrew Griffith, a former director general at Citizenship and Immigration, said that a policy resolution passed by Conservatives this weekend to end the practice of giving citizenship to anyone born in the country may be akin to “using a hammer to squash a fly.”

Delegates at the Conservatives’ policy convention in Halifax endorsed a resolution to end the policy of birthright citizenship, with backers contending too many foreigners are travelling to Canada solely to give birth to secure status for their children.

Party members voted to call for a key section of Canada’s nationality law to be rewritten, endorsing a policy that would remove citizenship rights for children born in Canada to non-Canadian (or non-permanent resident) parents. The resolution is, however, non-binding on a future government.

“It’s basically using fraud to get citizenship for a child. People are coming on a visa under false pretences and just coming for the opportunity to provide citizenship for their kid. I can understand the motivation, but it’s really not what the policy was designed for and it’s a form of fraud and misrepresentation,” said Griffith in an interview with CBC News.

Proponents of the change, introduced by delegates from Newfoundland and Labrador, said such a move is necessary to crack down on foreigners travelling here for the sole purpose of securing perks and privileges for their children that come with being Canadian.

The change would upend a section of Canadian law that has been largely intact since the advent of a distinct Canadian citizenship decades ago.

Conflicting statistics

Canada — along with some other nations in the Americas, including the U.S. — is among a few developed countries that grant citizenship to any child born on its soil, regardless of the immigration status of their parents.

There are a few exceptions, notably the children of foreign diplomats are excluded, but generally the principle of jus soli, Latin for “right of the soil,” is applied.

The Conservative party’s resolution on birthright citizenship, as adopted by a majority of delegates on Saturday. (Conservative Party of Canada)

Some have suggested this is a solution looking for a problem as, according to Statistics Canada, just 313 babies were born in this country in 2016 to non-Canadian mothers, out of the 383,315 children born here that year.

But other data suggests the phenomenon is more common. Richmond Hospital in Richmond, B.C., a city near Vancouver, recorded 383 births to non-resident mothers in 2016-17 — representing 17.2 per cent of all births at the hospital.

Last year, the number rose to 469, or 22.2 per cent of all births — according to statistics provided by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority to CBC News. The authority said the majority were to Chinese nationals.

“It’s arguably crowding out [hospital] space and facilities for residents of Canada. So, there’s a real issue there in Richmond, B.C. and other localities,” said Griffith.

But Griffith questioned whether the Conservative solution is workable, noting former Conservative citizenship minister Jason Kenney pursued a policy change while in governmentonly to find the numbers relatively small and the cost to provinces — which issue birth certificates — prohibitive.

“I don’t want to see [birth tourism] happen, but on the practical side as to what you do about it, abolishing birthright citizenship is using a hammer to squash a fly, because if the numbers are small … do you really want to inconvenience literally millions of Canadians to address a relatively small problem? Are there other ways one can address the issue?”

Griffith suggested hospitals could require higher deposits from non-residents to cover medical expenses, or there could be changes to how visas are granted to pregnant women to allow border officials to refuse entry if they suspect a person is travelling to Canada to give birth.

He also said the clear discrepancy between StatsCan data and information supplied by just one B.C. hospital suggests the government needs to “get its act together … to get a real handle on what exactly the numbers are.”

B.C. ‘birthing houses’

The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s newspaper of record, has also documented a rise in the number of “birthing houses” in B.C. that host pregnant tourists looking to give birth to a Canadian baby.

That paper found dozens of such houses catering to pregnant foreign women who come to B.C. specifically to give birth to Canadian citizens.

“Can’t we do some regulation around these birthing houses? Or ban them?

“It is an abuse of the system, it’s an abuse of the policy but I think the measures need to be more focused and targeted rather than just wholesale change,” Griffith said.

Conservative B.C. MP Alice Wong, who has introduced a petition in Parliament on the issue, railed against the current policy, saying “passport babies take away the resources from our system.”

“It is dangerous to the mother and the child themselves. The Liberals support it. They do not support a fair citizenship system — we should fight for our own babies,” she told the convention Saturday.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer walks off stage after speaking to delegates at the Conservative national convention in Halifax Saturday. Scheer defended the party’s resolution on birthright citizenship Monday.(Darren Calabrese/Canadian Press)

Another delegate said citizenship should only be inherited from a Canadian parent.

“Justin Trudeau would tell you that Canada has no nationality and I think everybody here would disagree with that. I think our nationality runs in our culture, our land, our blood from Juno Beach to Vimy Ridge. We have a culture, we have a nationality, there’s no reason to arbitrarily hand out citizenship to whoever happens to be on vacation here,” the delegate said.

Liberal officials were quick to pounce on the Conservative resolution, suggesting it could allow future governments to strip immigrants of their status.

Stripping citizenship?

Gerald Butts, the prime minister’s principal secretary, said it was “remarkable … they committed to give the government the power to strip people born in Canada of Canadian citizenship,” while linking to a series of tweets from a Somali refugee who was born stateless.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh went even further, “unequivocally” condemning the “division and hate being peddled by @AndrewScheer & the Conservative Party of Canada.”

Conservative Alberta MP Deepak Obhrai also spoke out against the change, suggesting a birthright ban could be open to abuse.

“Any person who is born in Canada by law is entitled to be a Canadian; we cannot choose who is going to be a Canadian and who is not going to be a Canadian,” he said at the convention. “This is a fundamental question of equality.”

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer defended the adoption of the resolution Monday.

“Conservatives recognize there are many Canadians who have been born in Canada by parents who have come here to stay and have contributed greatly to our country. I will not end the core policy that facilitates this. Unlike Justin Trudeau, I will safeguard it against abuse. A Conservative government will restore order, fairness, and compassion to Canada’s immigration system,” he said in a statement.

Howard Anglin, a top legal adviser and deputy chief of staff to former prime minister Stephen Harper, said the Liberals were whipping up fear among immigrants for political purposes.

“Here we see openly the beginning of a plan to mischaracterize another policy proposal, which would align us with virtually all our peer countries and allies (and which, of course, is not yet in an election platform) to stoke fear and alienation in ethnic communities,” he tweeted.

“No one will be stripped of citizenship, which is what [Butts’s] tweet said. It’s not retroactive. The proposal is that children of tourists, visitors, & others temporarily in the country or here illegally, will no longer automatically become citizens (just like in our peer countries).”

But Janet Dench, executive director of Canadian Council for Refugees, said Monday there is no meaningful data to suggest “birth tourism” is an actual problem and that if the measure came into force, “the vast majority of people affected would not at all be people who come for birth tourism reasons.”

Dench told The Canadian Press it would impact many women who give birth in Canada while they are waiting for permanent residency status, refugee claimants and others in limbo.

Source: ‘It’s fraudulent’: Former immigration official says action … – CBC.ca

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

USA: The History Behind the Birthright Citizenship Battle

2018/07/21 1 Comment

Important historical background:

The 14th Amendment, which declared that African-Americans were citizens, turned 150 earlier this month. But even as it was being commemorated as one of the signal achievements of post-Civil War Reconstruction, its bedrock provisions were colliding with the furious 21st-century debate over immigration.

In June, President Trump tweeted that undocumented immigrants should be sent home “immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases”— a direct contravention, legal scholars pointed out, of repeated Supreme Court rulings saying that the amendment’s guarantee of due process applies to all people in the United States, whatever their status.

This week, Michael Anton, a former national security official in the Trump administration, wrote an Op-Ed article in The Washington Post saying that birthright citizenship — the longstanding principle that anyone born in the United States is a citizen — rests on a “deliberate misreading” of the 14th Amendment.

The article drew furious responses from scholars on social media and elsewhere. Among those weighing in was Martha S. Jones, a historian at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of the new book “Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America.”

We talked with Dr. Jones about how the idea of birthright citizenship was created, and how it connects with the current debate about who belongs in America. The interview has been edited and condensed.

The idea of “jus soli,” the right of the soil, goes back to English common law. Where does the American idea of birthright citizenship enter our political tradition?

In the United States, it is the African-American community that first begins to articulate the claim to birthright citizenship. They do it because they need it. Other folks do not.

By the 1830s, African-Americans in what we call the Colored Conventions Movement are crafting an argument that will help defend them against colonization schemes that involve trying to get them to leave the country, and also trying to resist state “black laws” that regulate where they can travel or gather in public, whether they can go to school, own guns and so on.

They look at the Constitution, which doesn’t really define who is a citizen, but does have this clause saying that the president must be a natural-born citizen. They ask, if the president is a natural-born citizen, why aren’t we? The Naturalization Act of 1790 says that only white people can be naturalized. But there is no color line in the Constitution.

We tend to think of the 1857 Dred Scott decision — which declared that back people could never be citizens — as definitively slamming the door shut, until the 14th Amendment came along. How much resistance was there to the decision?

Roger Taney [the chief justice, who wrote the decision] was very aware of the history of African-Americans’ efforts to claim citizenship. And after the decision, we see African-Americans continue to resist, to critique Taney’s decision from the podium, in newspapers. At the same time, lower courts are narrowing the scope of the decision, or refusing to defer to his reasoning.

And African-Americans are not retreating to their homes, or living quiet lives in response to Dred Scott. In Taney’s home state, Maryland, there are about 75,000 to 80,000 free blacks. When the state legislature proposes a new set of draconian black laws that would either remove them or re-enslave them, people organize, gather petitions, go to Annapolis, the capital, as part of an effort that ultimately defeats the legislation.

Black voting rights, which were guaranteed in the 15th Amendment, came under sustained attack for more than a century. Were there similar efforts to roll back birthright citizenship itself?

After 1868, African-Americans are citizens, if they are born in the United States. Now they have a tool that protects them from any effort to remove them from the country. With citizenship, there really is a there there, even as the struggle over civil rights continued, arguably into our own moment.

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with ,

Australia: State politicians not safe as dual citizenship crisis rolls on

2018/07/19 Leave a comment

Possible expansion of the Australian dual citizenship problems for elected state-level politicians, but narrower in its application:

It has been widely assumed that any dual citizenship problems are confined to the federal parliament. But that may need a rethink.

Over the past year, 15 federal parliamentarians have left the Australian parliament because of dual citizenship.

Under Section 44(i) of the Australian Constitution – which has been given a strict interpretation by the High Court of Australia in recent cases – a person is not eligible to nominate for, or be elected to, the federal parliament if they are a dual citizen. The removal of such a large number of parliamentarians in such a short space of time is unprecedented.

Throughout this controversy, it has been assumed that any dual citizenship problems are confined to the federal parliament. Certainly, it is widely acknowledged that state constitutions do not contain the same general prohibition of dual citizenship and that dual citizens are at least initially eligible to be elected to state parliaments.

Unfortunately, the analysis generally stops at this point. There has been little consideration given to the important follow-up question of whether there are any other disqualification provisions that might affect any dual citizens sitting in our state parliaments.

An examination of state constitutions (and relevant electoral laws) reveals that while a dual citizen is eligible to be elected, this citizenship status may subsequently put them at risk of disqualification if they engage with that foreign citizenship while serving in the parliament.

In particular, in New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania, the state constitutions, or relevant electoral laws, provide that a parliamentary seat will become vacant if a member commits any act that acknowledges allegiance to any foreign power.

This disqualification does not apply in Victoria, the ACT or the Northern Territory, and in South Australia it has been expressly limited to make it clear it doesn’t apply in particular circumstances.

Clearly, these state provisions are substantially different from the dual citizenship prohibition at the national level. A dual citizen is eligible to be elected as a state member of parliament, and will only be disqualified if there is a positive action taken by them that acknowledges a foreign allegiance.

And that’s the pertinent question: what exactly constitutes an “acknowledgement of allegiance”?

A plain reading of this phrase would seem to suggest that any positive act that seeks to exercise any right arising from citizenship would be disqualifying. In essence, a person who seeks to rely on their foreign citizenship in some way (however trivial) is making an acknowledgement of that foreign allegiance. Some obvious examples would be travelling on a foreign passport, or even renewing a foreign passport.

If a state MP from NSW, Queensland, WA or Tasmania did either of these things, they would appear to be in breach of the state constitutional requirements, resulting in their disqualification from parliament.

This issue has been flagged as a potential problem in the past. For example, leading constitutional expert Professor Gerard Carney suggested almost 20 years ago that if an elected state member subsequently acts to affirm the foreign citizenship, such as by renewing or applying for a foreign passport, disqualification will be incurred.

The question was also considered by the NSW Parliamentary Joint Committee on the ICAC, which recommended repealing this grounds for disqualification back in 1998.

This broad interpretation is further reinforced by the fact that South Australia saw a need back in 1994 to insert a qualifying provision into its state constitution to provide that members would not be disqualified simply because they acquired or used a foreign passport.

The fact that such a qualification was thought necessary highlights that acquiring or using a foreign passport will ordinarily fall into the category of being an “acknowledgement of allegiance”.

It is important to note these issues have never been tested before the state courts, and there is no particular evidence to suggest any current state parliamentarians are in breach.

It is also worth noting that some jurisdictions – notably Queensland – have provisions that allow parliament to resolve to disregard a “trivial” disqualifying event.

Source: State politicians not safe as dual citizenship crisis rolls on

Filed under Citizenship, Dual Citizenship Tagged with ,

A foreign passport is the latest status symbol, and rich people are spending up to $200000 to buy it

2018/07/16 Leave a comment

Interesting angle to the citizenship-by-investment schemes:

While some people take pride in their stamp collection, some high-net-worth individuals bask in the glory of a different type of collection: passports.

Through Citizenship by Investment Programs (CIPs), wealthy individuals are investing in a country in exchange for citizenship. Once they have citizenship, they then have the basic rights of any other citizen of that country — like owning a passport, Nuri Katz, president of international financial firm Apex Capital Partners, told Business Insider.

Common types of investments include real estate, an enterprise project, or significant donations to a country’s fund — and they don’t come cheap. While the six-figure cost of a CIP can vary, it’s usually around $200,000, Business Insider previously reported.

But those who are racking up citizenships and passports aren’t the “ultra rich,” Katz said. Most have a net worth of $1 million to $10 million, he said.

To them, a second passport buys much more than a travel document — it also buys them status.

Passports offer status, freedom, and for some, a good investment

“It’s a status symbol — it shows friends you can afford it,” Katz said. “I call it the black American Express syndrome.”

Becoming a global citizen has become a status symbol for the world’s elite, Armand Arton, president of Arton Capital, a global financial advisory firm that specializes in investor programs for residence and citizenship, told Business Insider.

But there are physical advantages to owning more than one passport beyond external perception. According to Arton, investors primarily seek increased global mobility, better security and education, diversified business opportunities and tax planning strategies, and an overall improved quality of life.

“People who are investing in citizenships are people who come from countries with limited visa-free travel abilities, such as someone from Pakistan, India, or China,” Katz said. “It provides a certain freedom that some citizens of some countries don’t have; it’s a freedom of movement.”

But, that doesn’t mean that wealthy Americans don’t find their own advantages in these programs. While they represent a smaller share, Arton says, Americans are enticed by beneficial tax conditions the host country might offer, which they can take advantage of if they renounce their American citizenship.

“Americans are giving up their citizenship and taking on other citizenships for all sorts of personal reasons, including wanting to live abroad, retire abroad, and not wanting to have to deal with the American government if they are not living there,” Katz said. “Also surprisingly, citizens of Grenada, for example, have visa-free travel to China and Americans still do need a visa to travel there.”

The costs and advantages vary from country to country

Obtaining a CIP isn’t an easy process — it’s not just a matter of investing; it also involves going through a vetting system. “You need to go through a due diligence process, including showing sources of your sums and biography — they go deep into your life to make sure you’re an upstanding person,” Katz said.

Each country also has different investing requirements and costs. For example, investing in a citizenship in St. Lucia requires a donation of at least $100,000 to the St. Lucia National Economic Fund (depending on the number of dependents), an investment of at least $300,000 in an approved real estate development, or an investment of $3.5 million in an approved enterprise project, Katz previously told Business Insider.

Meanwhile, to obtain a citizenship in Canada, investors must state their intention to settle in Quebec and sign an agreement to invest $800,000, Katz said. They must have a legally-obtained net worth of at least $1.6 million CAD, reside in the country for three years within a four-year timeframe, and have at least three years of experience in planning, finance, human resources, or general management.

Cost and the return on investment can make some countries more appealing than others.

“Some countries offer no income or inheritance tax, so for those looking to purchase for financial purposes [that’s advantageous],” Katz said. “The CIP program in Dominica is the most financially advantageous of its kind which also attracts potential buyers. In general, the Caribbean programs are less expensive than those in places like Cyprus or Malta.”

In fact, Cyprus has the most expensive CIP, with citizenship starting at €2 million ($2.34 million), according to Arton Captial.

Arton explains that more countries are in need for foreign direct investments, and are thus leveraging citizenship as a means to raise funds. More choice often drives price down and lowers entry level to a wider range of investors.

“The Caribbean islands of Antigua & Barbuda, St. Kitts & Nevis, and Saint Lucia are very much in demand due their relatively low cost to benefit ratio,” Katz said. “Meanwhile, Europe, Cyprus, and Portugal win the trust of most investors due to the significant exposure to real estate investments, whereby they can potentially make interesting return on their investment along with their newly acquired residency or citizenship.”

Source: A foreign passport is the latest status symbol, and rich people are spending up to $200000 to buy it

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment

UK: Government halts ‘hostile environment’ immigration policy after Windrush scandal

2018/07/14 1 Comment

Undoing one of the legacies of the previous conservative home secretaries:

The government has halted its “hostile environment” policy for anyone over 30 to prevent more people being “wrongly and erroneously impacted” by the measures, following the Windrushscandal, the home secretary has said.

Sajid Javid said data sharing between the Home Office and other government departments, such as HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions – as well as banks and building societies – has been suspended for three months for people of all nationalities aged over 30.

In a letter to the Home Affairs Select Committee, Mr Javid​ said the department was also looking at the best ways of evaluating the effectiveness of the policy – which he has renamed the “compliant” environment – to ensure there is “no adverse impact on individuals who have a right to be here and to access those services”.

The Home Office has so far issued documentation confirming a right to live in the UK to 2,125 people who contacted the Windrush hotline. Of these, 1,014 were born in Jamaica, 207 in Barbados, 93 in India, 88 in Grenada, 85 in Trinidad and Tobago and 638 were from other countries.

Some 584 people have so far been granted citizenship through the Windrush scheme.

The department is only in touch with 14 people who were wrongly deported, and no details have been given about their nationalities or whether any of them had been allowed to return to the UK. Contact has not been made with the majority of those wrongly deported or removed, the Home Office has said.

Labour MP Yvette Cooper, chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said she was disappointed there was still no clarity about the number of people wrongly detained, and that the Home Office had “still not managed to make contact with the majority of those who were wrongfully deported or removed”.

“The committee is awaiting more information from the Home Office, which is expected by the end of this week, and will be asking further questions to follow up the information in the Home Secretary’s letter,” she said.

Mr Javid said officials were also reviewing cases where the Home Office has ordered other departments to deny or revoke services, or taken action to penalise a third party for employing or housing an unlawful migrant.

A final figure of those affected will not be available until the review is complete, he said.

The news comes after a damning report by the Home Affairs Select Committee said unless the Home Office was overhauled, the scandal “will happen again, for another group of people”.

The committee expressed concern for the children of EU citizens, saying the government should ensure they are not “locked out of living a lawful life, as we have seen happen to members of the Windrush generation”.

The MPs also said recent attempts by the government to rebrand its “hostile environment” policy the “compliant environment”, were “meaningless”.

Source: Government halts ‘hostile environment’ immigration policy after Windrush scandal

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Henley & Partners Wins Mandate for Moldova Citizenship-by-Investment Program

2018/07/13 Leave a comment

Entry level price keeps on getting lower (Euro 100k):

LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jul 12, 2018–Henley & Partners, a leading global investment migration firm, has won the public tender to design, implement, and promote the much-anticipated Moldova Citizenship-by-Investment (MCBI) program. The firm submitted its application for the public tender — issued by the Ministry of Economy and Infrastructure of the Republic of Moldova — at the end of May.

The MCBI program, set to launch within the next few months, will become the third such program in Europe — after Malta and Cyprus —and the most affordable, giving individuals the opportunity to acquire alternative citizenship by making a EUR 100,000 contribution to Moldova’s Public Investment Fund.

Henley & Partners has accumulated over 20 years of experience working with governments in North America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia on the design, set-up, operation, and promotion of some of the world’s most successful residence and citizenship programs, raising more than USD 7 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI).

The firm applied for the mandate as part of a consortium together with MIC Holding LLC (Moldovan Investment Company), a company based in Dubai, UAE and founded to focus on strategic FDI initiatives. In addition, an agreement has been signed with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a leading global management consulting firm with 90 offices in 50 countries, to provide advice on best-in-class FDI strategy and implementation.

“The program is poised for success on account of its competitive pricing structure and strong value proposition,” says Marco Gantenbein, Executive Committee member at Henley & Partners. “Moldova offers its citizens visa-free access to 121 destinations, including the countries in Europe’s Schengen Area as well as Russia and Turkey. It has entered into an association agreement with the EU and is aiming to become a candidate country for EU membership.”

Moldova’s Minister of Economy and Infrastructure, Chiril Gaburici, says his government’s primary objective is to create long-lasting societal value for the Moldovan people. “The MCBI program will provide our economy with valuable FDI that will enhance the daily lives of all Moldovans. Uncompromising due diligence standards and compliance procedures will guarantee the credibility, competitiveness, and long-term sustainability of the program. In this regard, we are delighted to be working with Henley & Partners, whose good governance systems are industry-leading.”

Source: Henley & Partners Wins Mandate for Moldova Citizenship-by-Investment Program

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment Tagged with ,

Why Trump’s Denaturalization Task Force Matters

2018/07/12 Leave a comment

Well argued. Fully legitimate to strip citizenship from those whose applications were either fraudulent or misrepresented their situation, but distinctions need to be made between material fraud (e.g., war crimes) and non-material (e.g., getting some dates slightly wrong).

Given the overall Trump administration approach, unlikely that any such distinctions will be made:

In June, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that a newly established office would investigate naturalized Americans suspected of lying on their citizenship applications. USCIS director L. Francis Cissna said the probes would target “a few thousand” people, with the aim of revoking citizenship from those who did, in fact, lie. This news stoked fears that President Trump’s already-restrictive immigration rules were taking an authoritarian turn.

This week, an early target emerged: According to the Miami Herald, the Department of Justice is suing to strip citizenship from a grandmother in Miami because she did not disclose her minor role in a financial crime in her naturalization application. She immigrated legally, suffers from a rare kidney disease, and even cooperated with the FBI when they investigated the crime. Still, after living and working for decades in the United States, she is facing deportation.

There is no denying that the Trump administration’s policies are often racist, cruel, and politically motivated. But investigating fraud isn’t the same thing as expelling entire groups, like when the Nazis denaturalized German Jews en masse in the early 1930s. Nor can this initiative be solely attributed to Trump: An earlier version of the program known as Operation Janus began during the Obama administration, and identified many of the cases the current program will examine.

Still, there is something decidedly unsettling about the timing of the new announcement. Why did the government choose, in the middle of a nationwide outcry over family separations at the border, to declare its interest in a trivial amount of naturalization fraud?

To understand what might be going on, we need to put aside the Nazi references and turn to America’s own history. Denaturalization—the legal procedure for revoking and nullifying citizenship—was for decades a relatively common practice in the United States. Unlike totalitarian versions of this policy, which were politically and ethnically defined, denaturalization in America hinged on legal interpretations of fraud: From the use of naturalization as a tool to rig election turnout in the late 19th century, to the current interest in the use of fake names and other falsehoods on citizenship applications.

Denaturalization first became a legal possibility in the United States with the passage of the 1906 Nationalization Act. Section 15 of this piece of legislation gave US attorneys the authority to initiate proceedings “for the purpose of setting aside and canceling the certificate of citizenship on the ground of fraud or on the ground that such certificate of citizenship was illegally procured.” The original purpose of the denaturalization clause was to clean up a naturalization process that had been wildly inconsistent across state and federal courts. Once introduced, though, it quickly opened the gates for the interpretation of fraud to support exclusionary and often racist investigations.

The 1907 Expatriation Act used the denaturalization clause to rid the populace of certain unwanted individuals who were targeted for their ethnic background, their gender, and their political views. Between 1907 and 1931, the clause was used to strip citizenship from American women who married foreigners. It was also used by the government to target individuals on the basis of their political opinions, which is what happened, most notably, to the anarchist Emma Goldman: Her US citizenship was deemed invalid because her ex-husband, who sponsored her, had not met the full residence requirement before naturalizing himself. Further, the government even used the clause to allow the denaturalization of “un-American” races, specifically Asians.

This history, which historian Patrick Weil eloquently narrates in his 2012 book, The Sovereign Citizen, shows us that denaturalization fraud was for decades at the center of racist and xenophobic immigration policy in the United States. However, in the early 1940s, the Supreme Court began to issue decisions to protect naturalized citizens, culminating in a landmark 1967 decision, Afroyim v. Rusk, that ruled that all American citizens, whether native-born or naturalized, could not be deprived of their citizenship involuntarily.

This decision does not mean that today naturalized citizens can neverlose their citizenship. A naturalized citizen of the United States can be denaturalized on the grounds that they falsify or conceal relevant facts, refuse to testify before Congress, are proven a member of subversive organization (such as the Nazi Party or Al Qaeda), or because of a dishonorable discharge. As recently as last year, an Indian immigrant named Baljinder Singh was stripped of his US citizenship because he used a false name to apply for naturalization while he was wanted for deportation. And though litigation is pending, the Associated Press just reported the discharge of approximately 40 immigrants from the army—dismissals that could affect their attempts to become citizens down the line.

It remains to be seen to what extent the government will be able to substantially expand what counts as naturalization fraud, and how the courts will handle the issue. Last June, in Maslenjak v. The United States, the Supreme Court heard the case of an ethnic Serbian woman who fled Bosnia for the United States during the Balkan wars in 1998. The government argued that Maslenjak could be denaturalized because she lied on her citizenship application about her husband’s involvement in the Bosnian army; Maslenjak countered that she had indeed lied, but that the lie was immaterial and had no bearing on the decision related to her naturalization.

In a 9-0 decision, the Court supported her argument, sending the case back down for resolution in a lower federal court. “Under the Government’s reading,” wrote Justice Elena Kagan, “a lie told in the naturalization process—even out of embarrassment, fear, or a desire for privacy—would always provide a basis for rescinding citizenship. The Government could thus take away on one day what it was required to give the day before.”

In our unsettled times, Americans are right to instinctively worry about the government’s task force on denaturalization fraud. For now, though, the law is on the side of the immigrants, so the government is unlikely to win denaturalization cases in the courts; even a more conservative Supreme Court, after the replacement of Justice Kennedy, is unlikely to change this calculus.

What we should worry about immediately is what sort of message the government is sending. Even if USCIS’s new office closes up shop after handling a few thousand cases of clear-cut lying, cheating, and fraud, the threat of denaturalization now hangs over the heads of America’s immigrant population, and its effects will be far-reaching and long-standing. This is precisely why the government made its announcement in the middle of a public outcry over immigration policy: to ratchet up fear as an indirect means of border control.

Fear, unlike a border wall or the travel ban, is inexpensive, and does not have to be passed through Congress or the courts. Fear also threads through people fast, and spreads quickly, especially online. After the immigration agency’s announcement, many naturalized citizens were left questioning the validity of an immigration status they assumed would always be safe. Many others, afraid of being targeted or tripped up in a lie, may now never pursue naturalization at all, even if they are eligible.

This is why comparisons to the Third Reich fall short. Not only do they belie America’s own history with denaturalization, they also let fear control the behavior of naturalized Americans—and future citizens, too. Americans, regardless of where they were born, should remember that their citizenship cannot be revoked on a dime. The real lie is that they were ever made to feel otherwise.

Source: Why Trump’s Denaturalization Task Force Matters

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →