Who’s next?
Christopher Bertram · The Case of Shamima Begum
The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has revoked Shamima Begum’s British citizenship. Begum left the UK with two friends four years ago, at the age of 15, to join Daesh. She now finds herself stateless, with a newborn and possibly British baby in a Syrian refugee camp. Public sympathy in the UK has been limited. Begum has said she wasn’t ‘fazed’ by the sight of severed heads in bins, and suggested that the Manchester Arena bombing was payback for airstrikes against Daesh territory. She has regrets, but little remorse. Still, she was born and grew up in the UK, and when she left as a child she had been groomed online by a criminal organisation.
The use of an administrative process to strip Begum of her nationality sets a worrying precedent, if you value the rule of law and are concerned that citizens be protected from tyranny. Someone who has been stripped of their nationality and made stateless loses most of the protections of the state. A dual national who is deprived of the nationality of the country where they have grown up, and where their friends and family live, faces removal to another country, nominally ‘theirs’, where they may know nobody and not speak the language. Legally they are members of that other place; functionally they are not.
Since 2010, successive home secretaries have increased the use of citizenship deprivation powers and widened the field of people against whom action can been taken. Citizenship may now be revoked for ‘serious criminality’. So far this has been used against the members of ‘grooming gangs’, transformed into ‘foreign criminals’ who can be sent ‘home’. Public reaction to their removal will often be ‘good riddance’, but once the precedent is established, others, guilty of less heinous crimes, can also be removed.
Defending deportation flights to Jamaica, Javid referred to those being removed as ‘serious criminals’. Many were guilty only of drug or even driving offences yet could be flushed from the system. They had never formally secured British nationality, but some had known no other home than Britain. The extension of citizenship deprivation potentially allows more people to be shifted to the category of the deportable.
The UK is a party to the 1961 Statelessness Convention and bound not to revoke someone’s nationality if they do not have another one to fall back on. In 2014, the Coalition government weakened the protection: naturalised citizens could lose their British nationality if the secretary of state had ‘reasonable grounds’ for believing they were able to acquire the citizenship of another country. Depriving naturalised citizens of their status is not unproblematic, since it divides society into those who hold their membership securely and those who do not. But at least when people naturalised as adults, swearing allegiance to their new state, it could be argued that they went against their word.
The naturalised are a tiny proportion of the citizens of most countries. Like most British citizens, Begum acquired her nationality at birth. In her case, Javid seems to be relying on her already being legally a citizen of Bangladesh, a country she has never visited. The government in Dhaka, however, has said that she is not a citizen and ‘there is no question of her being allowed to enter into Bangladesh.’
If Javid’s decision is not overturned by the courts, the vast majority of citizens, for whom losing their citizenship was literally unthinkable, may need to think again. So who is at risk? Potentially, any UK citizen who also holds the nationality of another state, whether they are aware of it or not. And certainly anyone who is naturalised and whose entitlement to another citizenship excites the ‘reasonable belief’ of the home secretary. Add these groups together and you have an awful lot of people.
Anyone in Northern Ireland who holds Irish nationality could be kicked out if this is believed conducive to the public good. Children whose parents thought it wise to get an Irish or other EU passport after Brexit now carry this hidden vulnerability. Every Jew has the right to Israeli citizenship. The British children of citizens of other EU states may grow up with a hidden nationality that makes it easier to kick them out later. And the same goes for those whose parents came from parts of the former British Empire, as in Begum’s case. You might think the government would never do that, even for ‘serious criminals’, at least if they were white and middle-class and with English ancestors going back a bit. You'd probably be right: those who are singled out to be redesignated as not British and marked for exclusion tend to have a ‘funny tinge’ about them.
Comments
Also, "How does any of this affect those who keep their noses clean and their heads down" sounds a bit like "If you are keeping your nose clean and head down, why should you oppose any degree of State surveillance (ostensibly inflicted on the citizens to keep them "safe")".
And post-Windrush, shouldn't we be even keener to scrutinize the reasons given by authorities for kicking out people at the drop of a roach?
He's the same guy who when Editor-in-chief of The Sun published a column which called for gunboats to be used against refugees as part of a "final solution".
https://wp.me/p86l64-6mb
What is more, naturalized citizens can't be stripped of citizenship either, unless it can be proved that they lied on their application or committed heinous crimes before being naturalized.
Whereas a working majority in Commons is supreme, indeed arbitrary, and your long stops are feeble reeds against it. I hold no brief for Charles I, but his example shows what a Commons with the powers of both the purse and the sword can do if it is so minded. And one of the lessons of the Holocaust is: "Whatever can happen, can happen to you."
State Vs Citizen,
Public Interest Vs Private Human Right.
But is citizenship simply a right?
Or is it a right that carries some 'weight',a conditional right?!
And who should be responsible for defining 'reasonable grounds'?
The Legislator,the Home Secretary or the Courts?
Of course there are moral and practical issues for all these wannabe stateless citizens, but...but Governments should find a way of putting them into a system of either 'surveillance' or 'constraint', they need to adopt some sensible precautions.
But above all,the way to resolve problems like Begun's is by debating them...openly .
It doesn't weaken the principle of citizenship to accept that one rescinds one's rights by going abroad to fight for ISIS - not merely a terrorist organisation, but an evil one. Rather, the principle of citizenship is weakened when reactionary moral relativists use it to defend such people -- not on any moral grounds, but technical legal grounds, with hefty doses of sophistry (e.g. lumping it together with cases of driving offenses or hypothetical pogroms). If the argument for something unjust is merely "it's the law", the response is obvious, since laws are mutable.
Islamophobes might be keen to revoke her citizenship, but to contend with them on this does nothing to improve the status of Muslims in our country (many of whom are here to escape from ISIS, not to defect from them). We can defend the rights of Muslims without defending the rights of outright, unrepentant terrorists. With much greater ease, in fact.
It is worth noting that, barring naturalisation, one doesn't usually have to apply for citizenship, dual or otherwise - you are automatically a citizen of whatever countries you qualify for when you are born (I should know, as I have dual citizenship). In the case of Shamina, the BBC consulted the right people, and this is what they report:
"Expert lawyers with experience in Bangladeshi citizenship cases have told the BBC that under Bangladesh law, a UK national like Ms Begum, if born to a Bangladeshi parent, is automatically a Bangladeshi citizen. That means that such a person would have dual nationality.
If the person remains in the UK, their Bangladeshi citizenship remains in existence but dormant.
Under this "blood line" law, Bangladeshi nationality and citizenship lapse when a person reaches the age of 21, unless they make efforts to activate and retain it.
So, it is Ms Begum's age, 19, that is likely - in part - to have given Home Office lawyers and the home secretary reassurance there was a legal basis for stripping her of her UK citizenship.
...Her Bangladeshi citizenship, if established, would remain intact until she reaches 21, even if she has never visited the country or made active efforts to retain her citizenship."
(https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47310206)
In any case, this will certainly end up in court and the government may well lose. The troubling precedent is not actually this one case, as this post claims - there have been similar cases before. The real problem is the precedent May established when she was Home Secretary.
jamesmann: Theirs is far worse, of course, and it's disingenuous of you to adopt default-mode classic liberal relativism on the point. 'Who's to say who's right etc'. Well, IS does, unequivocally, no arguments! The Windrush business was scandalous and had extra impact for me as one of neighbours in Hackney came over to London on the Windrush and a nicer, harder-working man you couldn't wish to meet. I trust bureaucratic heads rolled... but I fear we know the true outcome.
Rich Will: You discharge your fusillade with much sound and fury but Stig Abell was managing editor of the Sun, not editor-in-chief. He held the same position as the ineffably charming Richard Caseby at The Sunday Times. They're lads all right, those managing editors.
"Begum has said she wasn’t ‘fazed’ by the sight of severed heads in bins, and suggested that the Manchester Arena bombing was payback for airstrikes against Daesh territory. She has regrets, but little remorse. "
If you folks in the UK wish to allow her to return, you are welcome to her. To me, her actions and beliefs are prima facie evidence that she is far outside the pale of what I had considered core principles of the UK. But maybe not,,,