British Home Secretary Waited Until Terror Suspect Was Abroad Before Stripping Citizenship | Global Research

Interesting debate in the UK over revocation of suspected terrorists. UK has gone further than proposed changes to revocation in the revisions to Canada’s Citizenship Act, namely;

• Ministerial discretion rather than through the courts; and,
• Not respecting the international statelessness convention.

MPs voiced concern on Tuesday that prospective changes to the Immigration Bill allowing the Home Secretary to make people stateless would result in ‘two classes of British citizens.’

Theresa May is seeking the power to strip terror suspects of their UK nationality even if it renders them stateless – currently she can only use the law against dual-nationals, who won’t be left stateless by the loss of their British nationality. The changes in legislation will only apply to foreign-born or naturalised British citizens.

Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, said: ‘We will have two classes of British citizens. That is a dangerous road to go down.’

Abbott added: ‘The fear will be that although this has started with suspected terrorists, where will it end, once the state decides that British citizenship is not indivisible?’

Security minister James Brokenshire replied: ‘We do not accept that there is, or will be, a two-tier citizenship system.’

But a recent Home Office briefing showing how the Immigration Bill amendment seeks to comply with EU law, said it was ‘satisfied that there is an objective and reasonable justification for treating naturalised citizens differently from others.’

British Home Secretary Waited Until Terror Suspect Was Abroad Before Stripping Citizenship | Global Research.

The US approach is more draconian: revocation through targeted drone strikes.

With A Citizen In The Crosshairs, Where’s The Line Drawn For Drones?

Canadian commentary on the risks of mistakes and lack of due process of the proposed revocation provisions of the Citizenship Act revisions by Azeezah Kanji in the National Post:

Moreover, neither [former Minister of Citizenship and Immigration] Mr. Kenney nor the proposed legislation specifies that revocation of citizenship is permitted only for acts of terrorism executed against Canada or Canadians. Vile as it may be, an act of terrorism committed on non-Canadian soil, against non-Canadian nationals or interests, should not be considered a “fundamental breach of mutual loyalty” against Canada.

The inherently political nature of terrorism means that terrorism accusations, prosecutions and convictions are also deeply politicized, and subject to radical re-evaluation in hindsight. Yesterday’s terrorists may be today’s honorary Canadian citizens — as the case of Nelson Mandela demonstrates.

Banishing those convicted as terrorists does not “strengthen” Canadian citizenship; it only leaves Canadians more vulnerable to the political prejudices of the day.

Sometimes I think that we should have another version of Godwin’s law that prohibits always using Nelson Mandela as an example of “one man’s freedom fighter is another one’s terrorist,” as many of the extremists are a particularly nasty lot with little if anything in common with Mandela’s early days (he targeted infrastructure, not people).

This is not to say that we should not be extremely cautious and examine carefully the implications of such a fundamental change to the long-standing Canadian policy of considering Canadians as equal, whether born-here or elsewhere.

Stripping convicted terrorists of their citizenship leaves all Canadians vulnerable