Swiss to revoke citizenship of dual-national jihadists – SWI swissinfo.ch

2016/07/30 Leave a comment

The criteria range from relatively specific to extremely broad. The one about “insulting” another state is particularly egregious as well as the lack of due process:

The issue has been debated for a long time. The State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) is in theory already able to denaturalise dual nationals, based on the 1952 law on the acquisition and loss of Swiss citizenship.

This law is vague, however, stating that the SEM can revoke – with consent of the canton of origin – the citizenship of a person holding dual nationality if his or her conduct is “seriously detrimental to the interests or the reputation of Switzerland”. This has never occurred.

On June 17, the cabinet agreed the regulation, which will enter into force in January 2018. Among other things, it listed offences that could result in someone being stripped of their Swiss citizenship.

These include a serious crime being committed in connection with terrorist activities, violent extremism or organised crime. Also mentioned are genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, violations of the Geneva Convention and other crimes that could apply to Islamic State fighters and jihadists.

Since 2001, 77 people have left Switzerland to fight in conflict areas, mostly Syria and Iraq, according to figures for July from the Federal Intelligence Service. Of these, 29 had Swiss citizenship – and of those 17 had dual nationality.

Criteria

Dual citizens could also lose their Swiss passport if they “endanger in the long term Switzerland’s good relations with another state by insulting that state”.

In addition, the regulation includes the main offences that were written into the 1952 law with Nazis in mind: attacks upon Swiss independence, banned political intelligence and propaganda that could harm the country.

The regulation will apply only to dual nationals, since preventing statelessness is central to basic international law and the Swiss government regularly rejects bills that violate this.

Citizenship will also be revoked only on condition of a legal conviction. That said, this requirement can be qualified: if the state in which the offence is committed is not in the position to carry out penal proceedings, citizenship can be revoked without a conviction.

Source: Swiss to revoke citizenship of dual-national jihadists – SWI swissinfo.ch

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Bahrain Revocation Of #Citizenship: Both Tactic And Strategy – Eurasia Review

2016/06/29 Leave a comment

Changing demographics through citizenship policy:

Among Arab countries and also at global level, Bahrain ranks first in terms of revoking citizenship of its citizens under political excuses, especially in response to peaceful opposition against the government’s policies. This issue has made Bahrain subject to strong criticism from regional and global human rights bodies. Last April, Nidal Al Salman, a member of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, said 280 Bahrainis have had their citizenship revoked since 2012 and about 200 cases of revocation of citizenship have taken place in 2015 alone. He added that university professors, religious leaders, businesspeople and former parliament members have been among those people who have lost their citizenship. Meanwhile, the UN high commissioner for human rights has greatly criticized revocation of Bahrainis’ citizenship. According to an announcement by the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, more than 3,000 people have been sent to jail on charges of taking part in anti-government demonstrations or inciting hatred against the ruling regime.

In its statement on March 7, 2016, Amnesty International said forceful expulsion of citizens from Bahrain and revocation of their nationality is a blatant violation of human rights and other rules of international law, especially the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Despite all the criticism, revocation of citizenship has apparently turned into a major tool for the suppression of political opponents in Bahrain. Amnesty International has added that revocation of citizenship has turned into the best weapon in the hands of the Bahraini government to suppress its opponents, while issuing warning about increased frequency of revocation of citizenship and forceful expulsion of the country’s citizens.

Systematic citizenship as opposed to revocation of citizenship

On the other hand, in parallel to revoking citizenship of opposition figures, the government of Bahrain follows the policy of systematic granting of citizenship and intentional acceptance of foreigners. It seems that the Al Khalifah regime has put the policy of changing the composition of the country’s population on top of its priorities in order to counter its opponents. Many analysts maintain that Al Khalifah is trying to implement the same policy in the country, which the British monarchy implemented in Palestine. They believe that by revoking the citizenship of Bahraini people and granting citizenship of Bahrain to foreign nationals and expulsion of Bahrainis from their homeland, Al Khalifah regime is actually implementing the same strategy that Britain implemented in the occupied Palestinian territories. Based on a plan by the British government, Israel started in 1967 to secretly change the composition of population in the al-Quds (Jerusalem). As a result, while in 1967 about 7,000 Palestinians lived in al-Quds with no Israeli citizen being present there, at present, there are 200,000 Israelis living in this city along with about 300,000 Palestinians.

By following suit with that plan, the Al Khalifah officials are pursuing a purposive and long-term plan to change the composition of Bahrain’s population – most of whose residents are Shias – according to their will. Hadi al-Mousavi, a prominent member of Bahrain’s Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, says in this regard, “Since Shias account for a majority in Bahrain and Bahrain is the only member country of the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council with a Shia majority population, the Al Khalifah regime is incessantly trying to change the population composition of the country.” Another noteworthy point about this policy, which is being followed diligently by the government of Bahrain, is that Bahraini officials, unlike officials of other countries in the world, give no figures on the number of people who have been granted the citizenship of Bahrain on an annual basis.

With regard to figures that have been released so far, a report by Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society can be cited here, which says, “The Al Khalifah regime granted citizenship of Bahrain to more than 95,000 foreign nationals between 2002 and 2014.” Sheikh Ali Salman, the secretary general of Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, who is now doing time in Al Khalifah regime’s prison, made a speech in August 2014, describing as “catastrophic” the regime’s policy for granting citizenship to foreign nationals while calling on the people of Bahrain to seriously oppose this policy. In reality, the policy of revoking citizenship of political opponents in Bahrain has been used by Al Khalifah regime as both a tactic and a strategy and this reality can explain why Manama is resisting international protesters against the country’s recent suppressive measures.

Source: Revocation Of Citizenship: Both Tactic And Strategy – Analysis – Eurasia Review

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Citizenship Act: Changes to revocation for misrepresentation coming

2016/05/06 Leave a comment

At the CIMM hearings 5 May on the IRCC estimates, Minister McCallum committed to address the concerns raised by witnesses regarding that revocation for fraud or misrepresentation lacked  procedural protections and due process (e.g., no right to appeal).

He stated that he would return in the fall with legislation and that IRCC was considering options. This could not be done “overnight” in the “proper way” and hinted that some of these options might include machinery changes (e.g., role for IRB).

In addition, he acknowledged that some of the amendments ruled inadmissible (see C-6 Citizenship Act: Clause-by-clause review) may be possible at some future date.

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Gaps in Ottawa’s detection of citizenship fraud, auditor finds

2016/05/04 Leave a comment

I did not find this OAG study all that surprising, particularly the challenges of maintaining accurate and consistent database records (e.g., spelling of addresses) and the lack of consistent follow-up to any cases flagged.

One of the lasting legacies of the Conservative government was increased attention to the integrity of the program, beyond the issues identified in the OAG report (e.g., rotating citizenship test questions, more rigorous and consistent language assessment, and the integrity measures of C-24).

But like many OAG reports, it is weak with respect to the materiality of fraud and the gaps it uncovered.

Six addresses out of 9,778 that IRCC officials missed is 0.06 percent. Other aspects are more problematic, multiple versions of addresses in particular, as well as lack of follow-up to warning flags and coordination between IRCC and RCMP or CBSA.

IRCC’s own number of revocation cases pending is 700, again a relatively small number (0.14 percent) compared to  the large numbers of new citizens in the past two years (500,000). And of course there is no comparative data in the report on permanent residency, EI, CPP or other program fraud to relate compare these numbers with.

So while any fraud is by definition unacceptable, the realities of large programs means that some degree, as small as possible, is inevitable, and ongoing attention to reducing its incidence is necessary:

Canada’s immigration department did not properly detect and prevent citizenship fraud, resulting in the review of some 700 citizenship cases as of January, according to Auditor-General Michael Ferguson’s spring report.

The report, tabled in the House of Commons Tuesday morning, found a number of concerns in the citizenship program affecting the department’s capability to prevent citizenship fraud, including the absence of a method to identify and document fraud risks.

“We concluded that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s (IRCC) efforts to detect and prevent citizenship fraud were not adequate,” said Mr. Ferguson in a prepared statement. “These gaps make it difficult for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to assess the impacts of its efforts to combat citizenship fraud.”

…According to the report, the most common reasons for revoking citizenship are residency and identity fraud, and undeclared criminal proceedings.

The report found that citizenship officers did not consistently apply their own methods to identify and prevent fraud when dealing with suspicious immigration documents, such as altered passports. For example, in one region, citizenship officers did not seize any suspicious documents for in-depth analysis since at least 2010, while they did in another.

It was also found that citizenship officers did not have the information they needed to properly identify “problem addresses” when making decisions to grant citizenship. Problem addresses are those known or suspected to be associated with fraud, and used by citizenship applicants to meet residency requirements for citizenship.

“For example, one address was not identified as a problem even though it had been used by 50 different applicants, seven of whom were granted citizenship,” said Mr. Ferguson.

The problem was further complicated by poor sharing of information with the RCMP, which provides information about criminal behaviour among permanent residents, and the Canada Border Services Agency, which leads investigations of immigration fraud, said the report.

While the department did not track the exact number of citizenship fraud risks, it reported 700 pending revocation cases as of January. According to the report, revoking citizenship after fraud is discovered is “time consuming and costly.”

Source: Gaps in Ottawa’s detection of citizenship fraud, auditor finds – The Globe and Mail,

Dozens of fraudsters and suspected criminals became Canadian citizens, watchdog says in damning report

Liberals order investigation into possible citizenship fraud

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Germany to consider stripping IS fighters of citizenship: document | Reuters

2016/04/22 Leave a comment

Unclear whether this is just the normal draft looking at options or whether it is something the government is seriously considering:

Germany’s ruling coalition plans to look into stripping Islamic State fighters of their German citizenship to prevent them from coming back to the country, a draft document seen by Reuters on Wednesday shows.

More than 800 people have traveled from Germany to Syria and northern Iraq in recent years and around 70 returnees took part in combat or military training there, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said earlier this month.

“To prevent jihadists from returning to Germany, we want to examine the legal possibilities for depriving people of German citizenship if they fight for a terrorist militia abroad and have another citizenship alongside their German one,” read the draft document, which the coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats are to discuss on Thursday.

The coalition is also considering depriving German supporters of Islamic State of identity cards and passports to prevent them from traveling to areas controlled by Islamic State, the document said.

Increasing video surveillance of public areas to better tackle threats from Islamists as well as right and left-wing extremists is another measure the coalition is considering, according to the document.

Any talk of boosting surveillance generally causes controversy in Germany, where many people still remember the Stasi secret police and its network of informants in the former Communist east.

The coalition may also consider whether people returning from fighting for IS could be given electronic tags.

Source: Germany to consider stripping IS fighters of citizenship: document | Reuters

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Australia: Stripping of citizenship a loss in more ways than one

2016/04/19 1 Comment

Australian law professor George Williams on the lack of due process in citizenship revocation in cases of terror or treason:

The job of resolving whether a person has engaged in conduct like this would ordinarily fall to a judge. We ask judges to take on this role because a person should only lose their liberty or rights in a democracy as a result of a fair process and a decision by an independent person. In the case of serious crimes involving the possibility of imprisonment, members of the community are also involved through service on a jury.

The Allegiance to Australia Act confounds these understandings. It confers no powers upon judges or juries, instead leaving a vacuum when it comes to determining whether someone has fallen foul of the law. The government has inserted the Citizenship Loss Board into this gap.

This results in a breach of traditional legal principles such as the rule of law and the separation of powers. Unnamed government officials are left to determine whether a person should be banished from the country. To use the words of Chief Justice Warren of the US Supreme Court, public servants are able to impose a punishment involving “the total destruction of the individual’s status in organised society”.

The creation of the Citizenship Loss Board is an Orwellian development, and yet another indication of Australia’s willingness to compromise good governance and basic rights in the name of the war on terror. Measures such as this show how we are losing our sense of perspective. Our goal in countering terrorism is not to maximise security by creating a police state, but to preserve a liberal democracy that safeguards liberties such as freedom of speech and the right to a fair trial. We must not compromise these important democratic values in the name of preserving them.

Our leaders would do well to recall the words of Prime Minister Robert Menzies on September 7 1939, four days after he announced that Australia was at war with Nazi Germany. In introducing an extraordinary new law to safeguard the nation’s security, he warned that in the battles to come “there must be as little interference with individual rights as is consistent with concerted national effort”. He concluded that “the greatest tragedy that could overcome a country would be for it to fight a successful war in defence of liberty and to lose its own liberty in the process”.

Source: Stripping of citizenship a loss in more ways than one

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ICYMI: Hollande cancels plan to strip French citizenship in terrorism cases – The Boston Globe

2016/04/04 Leave a comment

Welcome pull-back, even if prompted more by politics than substance:

President François Hollande of France announced Wednesday that he was withdrawing a proposal to strip French citizenship from dual nationals convicted of terrorism, ending a months long debate that convulsed his governing Socialist Party, dominated political discussion after the November terrorist attacks and led to the resignation of the justice minister.

The idea, originally endorsed by right-wing parties and adopted by Hollande three days after the deadly attacks Nov. 13, drew furious opposition on the left in France, even though all sides agreed it was largely symbolic and would have little practical effect in combating terrorism.

But the proposal highlighted a growing split within the Socialist Party, between those who favored a tough law-and-order approach in the wake of the attacks that killed 130 people, and those worried that the government would be impinging on civil liberties.

Critics on the left complained that the plan would create two classes of citizens, saying it recalled the dark days of the World War II collaborationist government in France, which rendered hundreds of Jews stateless.

France is still under a state of emergency imposed after the attacks, and the police have conducted thousands of raids and put hundreds of suspects under house arrest.

Last week, after the Brussels bombings March 22, officials identified a possible terrorist attack in the “advanced stages” of planning, according to the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, and announced the arrest of a suspect with links to one of the November attackers.

On Wednesday, however, Hollande said he was pulling back from the citizenship proposal that had become the most intensely debated measure in a bill to overhaul the Constitution. The reversal is likely to reinforce among many voters what pollsters say is Hollande’s reputation for indecision.

Hollande blamed members of the right-wing opposition, which controls the Senate, for his decision.

“I take note that part of the opposition is against all constitutional revision,” he said. “I deplore, profoundly, this attitude, because we must do all we can, under the current serious conditions, to avoid divisions.”

Hollande also abandoned a proposal to create a constitutional provision for declaring a state of emergency, even though it had garnered broad support across the political spectrum.

Hollande’s government had slightly backtracked on the citizenship proposal in January, largely to mollify his critics on the left, in deciding that the bill would not contain any language explicitly referring to dual citizens.

The lower house, the National Assembly, where Socialists are in the majority, approved an amended bill that extended the measure to all French citizens, regardless of how many passports they held.

But the Senate insisted on sticking to the original idea and restricting the proposal to people with dual citizenship, with its leaders saying that the creation of stateless individuals was a “red line” they would not cross. With a presidential election scheduled next year, analysts interpreted the move as a way of dealing yet another blow to an already weakened Hollande.

Source: Hollande cancels plan to strip French citizenship in terrorism cases – The Boston Globe

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ICYMI: Liberals cheapen citizenship | Chong

2016/03/24 1 Comment

Gordon Chong, former Toronto municipal councillor, criticizes most aspects of the changes to the Citizenship Act announced by Minister McCallum (like all such critiques, ignores that McCallum maintained and added to integrity measures introduced by the Conservatives):

But this new soft-headed federal government wants to demonstrate its soft-heartedness by easing the rules to obtain our most treasured commodity, citizenship.

But should newcomers self-segregate and be functionally illiterate in English and French?

Should we establish a multitude of solitudes in addition to our “two solitudes”?

Should we discourage newcomers from “throwing their lot in with us”, as former federal court judge Francis Muldoon described unconditional commitment to Canada?

We need Canadians of conviction, not Canadians of convenience!

If citizenship is to be made irrevocable, a true “until death do us part” contract — unlike the Order of Canada, or an Olympic medal — then we should make the requirements reflect the unalterable nature of that contract.

Serious standards should be de rigueur.

When Paul Martin Sr. brought in Canada’s first Citizenship Act in 1947, he did not do so lightly.

He had visited the battlefields of Europe and solemnly recognized the contributions of French Canadians and others, including Japanese Canadians, Chinese Canadians, Italian Canadians and German Canadians, even though some were not recognized as “Canadians” in the same way as those of British descent.

Martin Sr. corrected that glaring oversight because so many had volunteered to fight for Canada — some on the battlefields, others in intelligence gathering — in World War II.

By 1947, Chinese inhabitants of Canada could finally vote.

In my family, there had been a dichotomy before that.

My British mother could vote, but my Chinese father could not!

The then Liberal government thought Canadian citizenship sufficiently precious that five years of residency was required prior to applying — with no flexible interpretations of “residency”.

In the 1960s, the residency requirements were shortened to three years with a looser interpretation of “residency”, to accommodate the business interests of those with international ties.

As their families were settling in, the business class immigrant (usually the husband] could leave the country and still be considered a “resident” because he had established a residence in Canada.

Our new-age Liberals are now proposing a change in the requirements for someone to be physically present in Canada from four out of six years to three out of five.

Why? The present rules are hardly onerous when granting something so valuable.

How much is Canadian citizenship worth? How much are we willing to devalue it? How soft-headed are we going to be?

Admittedly, revoking citizenship is challenging.

However, if the federal government is determined to keep dual citizenship, then those convicted of terrorism or other treasonous crimes against Canada should face the death penalty.

One way of extracting a seed of good from the psychotic nihilism that permeates terrorism would be to harvest the organs of convicted terrorists sentenced to death for transplantation and medical research.

Some faint-hearted souls may think this extreme. Many Canadians will not.

Serious, hard-headed, utilitarian leadership is the sine qua non for this debate. Who will lead it?

If patriotic Canadians willingly sacrifice their lives fighting terrorism, should traitorous Canadians not have to sacrifice theirs?

Then our policy will truly be once a Canadian, always a Canadian, irrevocably, right up to, “until death do us part!”

Source: Liberals cheapen citizenship | Chong | Columnists | Opinion | Toronto Sun

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Wells: Justin Trudeau takes Ottawa’s debates to Washington

2016/03/14 Leave a comment

Interesting snippet from Paul Wells’ account of Trudeau in Washington:

The other striking moment came when Trudeau raised, by himself, his decision to repeal the provisions in the Conservatives’ “Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act,” C-24, that stripped some convicted terrorists of their Canadian citizenships.

“One of the things the right-wing had done was put forward a bill that took away the citizenship of convicted terrorists,” he said. “A number of countries have done that around the world. It seems like a fairly obvious thing to try and do. If someone’s gonna commit an act of war, an act of terrorism against the country, they probably shouldn’t deserve to keep Canadian citizenship if they’re doing that.”

This is indeed a decent paraphrase of the arguments Conservatives made in support of C-24. Trudeau said his opponents “felt they were on very, very safe ground” with their policy.

“The problem is, as you scratch into that a little deeper, you realize it only really applies to citizens who have, or could have, a dual nationality. So a kid who was born in Canada, and only has a Canadian citizenship — but whose parents were born, for example, in Pakistan — could lose his citizenship if he committed an act of terror, [whereas] a kid who was tenth-generation Canadian home-grown terrorist could never lose his citizenship. And suddenly we’d made citizenship conditional on good behaviour. Or on non-heinous behaviour, which comes down to the same thing. And that devalues the citizenship — made two classes of citizen.”

Trudeau’s tone suggested he knew this was not, on the face of it, a winning issue for him. “And it came to the point where, in one of our largest debates, I was standing on stage against the former prime minister. And he was telling people that I was willing to stand up and restore the citizenship of the one Canadian who, under this law, had had his citizenship taken away.

“He knew he had me on that one. I’m actually standing there defending the right of a Canadian — stripped of his citizenship for terrorism — to become, once again, a Canadian citizen. And I stood there, and I defended that principle, that you should not be able to take away citizenship from anyone. And our government would be, because we’d reverse that law, restoring the citizenship of someone who was convicted of terrorism in Canada.

“And that’s a perfect narrative for the politics of fear and aggression. And yet it’s me sitting here as Prime Minister of Canada, not Stephen Harper.”

Source: Macleans

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Laura Track: Citizenship comes with the same rights and responsibilities, regardless of birthplace

2016/03/10 Leave a comment

Citizenship - Conference Board April 2016.001Laura Track of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association supporting the Government’s planned repeal of the revocation for terror or treason provisions (the above chart has been revised with full-year data for 2015):

Critics point out that the government can still revoke someone’s citizenship on the basis that they lied or committed fraud in order to obtain it. How can that be a more serious offence than terrorism, some wonder? However, the two scenarios are fundamentally different. Citizenship obtained by fraud is a citizenship that should never have been granted. Revoking it is akin to correcting an error. Revoking citizenship from a Canadian based on a crime they committed after citizenship was legitimately obtained is a punitive response that amounts to the ancient punishment of exile. Such medieval practices have no place in a rights-respecting democracy.

It’s no secret who would have been targeted by the law: new Canadians of colour who arrived in Canada only one or two generations ago. This unequal treatment is why the BC Civil Liberties Association and Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers challenged the law in court last summer, arguing that it is discriminatory and violates key constitutional rights. It is also poor security policy, and fundamentally wrong.

We applaud the government for taking the first steps towards bringing about the law’s demise. The reforms are not perfect, and still leave too much power in the hands of government bureaucrats to revoke citizenship in cases of fraud or misrepresentation, without the involvement of a judge. But it’s a step in the right direction — the direction of equal rights for all Canadians.

Source: Laura Track: Citizenship comes with the same rights and responsibilities, regardless of birthplace | National Post

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