Close

More search Options

Browse by Subject

Close
Close

More search Options

Browse by Subject

LRB blog

Two-Tier Citizenship

Sadakat Kadri

The power of the Home Office to revoke citizenship, which dates from 1914, originally applied only to British identities acquired after birth. It first became possible to act against UK-born citizens after 9/11, and the law now allows for deprivation whenever the home secretary is satisfied it’s ‘conducive to the public good’. For a century, however, an important safeguard was retained. Even the most troublesome citizen couldn’t be left stateless.

Things started to change with the Immigration Act 2014, which authorised home secretaries to disregard the rule against statelessness when it came to naturalised individuals, if it was reasonable to believe they could get citizenship somewhere else. A court ruling two years ago against Shamima Begum (the former Tower Hamlets schoolgirl who went to Syria as a fifteen-year-old to join Islamic State) affirmed that much the same applies to British-born people. Judges upheld the deprivation of her citizenship on the basis she was a dual national. They found she was Bangladeshi by descent, despite expert opinion to the contrary and a statement disavowing her from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Dhaka. She has never set foot in Bangladesh.

The 22-year-old’s fate won’t be conclusively determined before November, but that preliminary finding illustrates that there are two tiers of British citizenship. Anyone eligible to be foreign – in the opinion of this country’s judges – may lose the right to be British. Suspected terrorists aren’t the only people disadvantaged by this. The law jeopardises anyone whose family ties arguably give rise to dual nationality. People of African, Asian or Caribbean heritage are disproportionately affected. According to one estimate, 5 per cent of the UK’s white population is vulnerable, compared to 41 per cent of non-whites.

A provision of the Nationality and Borders Bill that’s currently going through the House of Lords would make arbitrary enforcement more likely still. The home secretary’s power is already akin to banishment, thanks to a Supreme Court decision that Begum can’t return to the UK to fight her appeal. If Priti Patel gets her way, another procedural safeguard is going to crumble. Under Clause 9 of the bill, it will become justifiable to remove someone’s citizenship without telling them, whenever the Home Office finds notification impractical or thinks it ‘otherwise in the public interest’ to keep shtum. It won’t even be necessary to disclose a deprivation after it’s happened.

The clause was a late addition to the bill, and Patel hasn’t yet explained why it’s necessary. That’s because it’s a statutory afterthought, intended to circumvent a recent adverse court decision. It’s also myopic. Citizenship isn’t a ‘privilege’ (contrary to the Home Office’s repeated assertion) but an implicit promise from rulers to the ruled. In a phrase made famous by Hannah Arendt, it constitutes ‘the right to have rights’ – a foundation for stable societies, without which international order wouldn’t endure.

Eroding a civic cornerstone to disown national enemies is counterproductive, and no country should unilaterally worsen global statelessness. Patel and her colleagues might not agree with that, but a previous generation of Conservatives did. In September 1972, when Lord Hailsham outlined arrangements to admit Asians expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin – refugees with UK passports who’d been hastily disqualified from British citizenship four years earlier – he conceded that ‘a state is under a duty as between other states to accept in its territories those of its nationals who have nowhere else to go.’

Comity has given way to widespread expediency (powers to strip citizenship from alleged or convicted terrorists have expanded in at least a dozen countries since 2010), and the UK has gone furthest. Even oligarchies and autocrats are showing more restraint. Laws recently tabled in Russia and Belarus threaten to repudiate citizens who perpetrate ‘crimes against the state’ and ‘extremist activities’, but they retain, in theory at least, a tradition that British governments have abandoned: if you’re native-born, you can’t be cut loose.

Plenty of parliamentarians will object when Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders Bill is properly scrutinised for the first time later this month. Expanding the limits of an already draconian power isn’t a technical abstraction; to many people, including me, it’s personal. Though I was born in Parsons Green, my father grew up in Pakistan, which acknowledges citizenship by descent. That means the home secretary could annul my Britishness, without even telling me, on the strength of a foreign entitlement I wouldn’t know what to do with. Apologists for executive discretion often argue that the innocent needn’t worry, but that complacent assumption misses the point. It isn’t only the notional risk of a despotic home secretary that’s disturbing. It’s the injustice of knowing that most citizens face no risk at all.

Oddly enough, Priti Patel’s citizenship is also provisional. She’s nurtured a backstory that might seem to exclude dual nationality, involving her family’s arbitrary expulsion from Uganda in 1972, but in reality her father came to England in 1965, several years before Ugandan Asians had to start worrying about their passport entitlements. He’d emigrated to Africa from India, because his own father had hoped Uganda would offer economic opportunities, and was born in the state of Gujarat. That gives Patel a right to Indian citizenship by descent. The law she wants to extend will devalue her own legal claim to be British.

citizenship law

Comments

  • 22 January 2022 at 6:24am
    Charbb says:
    Britain, like other Western nations, will have to take measures to protect its past, present and future from being erased by excessive immigration. Strict limits on numbers is essential. Far too many have been let in. Many cities are either majority non-white or soon will be. This can't be right in any country - the native history and population being marginalised ruthlessly by incomers on a massive scale. I am myself of Ugandan Asian background. When our community, with close historic links to Britain, came in the early 1970s the scale of the immigrant influx was still small and easily managed. From the 1980s onward it became a sea. Britain ceased to be a family; too many newcomers with no links to the native history for that.
    • 23 January 2022 at 12:52pm
      Delaide says: @ Charbb
      This has nothing to do with the topic of loss of citizenship. You have nonetheless clearly expressed a point of view, ad nauseum. It’s time for you to find some other forum to bore.
    • 25 January 2022 at 12:32am
      CarpeDiem says: @ Charbb
      If you are so distressed by the sight of the UK becoming "less white", would you be so kind as to emigrate ? Would really appreciate it. Cheers.
    • 25 January 2022 at 2:28am
      Charbb says: @ Delaide
      You have not addressed a single one of the points I made. Of course immigration levels have everything to do with policies on citizenship. All you can say is that you are bored - that is, you are incapable of answering seriously.
    • 25 January 2022 at 9:41am
      CarpeDiem says: @ Charbb
      So, are you emigrating or not ?
    • 25 January 2022 at 9:48am
      CarpeDiem says: @ Charbb
      ......Of course immigration levels have everything to do with policies on citizenship....

      A bit like - the principles you claim to abide by vary and depend on the situation you are in and what is expedient for you.
    • 25 January 2022 at 3:38pm
      Rory Allen says: @ Charbb
      Suppose for a moment that we accept your premise that 'far too many have been let in.' That does not justify removing citizenship from those who already have it, which is the subject of the article. It would justify making it difficult or impossible for new immigrants to enter the UK, but this is a different question.
    • 26 January 2022 at 12:09am
      Charbb says: @ Rory Allen
      Nearly a quarter of a century ago I went on a trip by bus to Coventry from London. The bus followed a cicuitous route, the passengers being nearly all people of Asian descent, from one immigrant dominated city to another. I am a Briton of Ugandan Asian origin, but I was taken aback by how little of anything traditionally British I saw on that journey. We might as well have been travelling around Punjab. Demographic change of this extreme order brought about by massive immigration is grossly unfair to any native people. It literally takes away their past, present and future. Especially in this aggressively identity politics age where non-white immigrants often seem to be proud of repudiating any connection with British tradition or the British past. Sadiq Khan the mayor of London, has already ominously talked of sweeping changes in London street names and monuments. The London of Pepys, Samuel Johnson, Dickens, Thackeray, Marx, Wilde, Shaw, Orwell, is due to vanish. How then can Britain's heritage endure when they become the majority, as may well happen a few decades? It's a very serious problem. To save Britain's identity all further immigration should be stopped. Those immigrants already resident should be made to assimilate.
    • 26 January 2022 at 12:19am
      Charbb says: @ Rory Allen
      One other point: in general, the huger the scale of immigration and demographic destabilisation, the more rightwing European populations tend to become. They fear for their cultural survival and fall into the arms of vulgar racist demagogues. This is not surprising. To preserve the invaluable leftwing heritage of the West, curb immigration. It is unlikely that if Middle Easterners become the majority in Norway the heritage of Ibsen will survive.
    • 26 January 2022 at 11:43am
      Charbb says: @ CarpeDiem
      I made my point rather clearly below: "In general, the huger the scale of immigration and demographic destabilisation, the more rightwing European populations tend to become. They fear for their cultural survival and fall into the arms of vulgar racist demagogues. This is not surprising. To preserve the invaluable leftwing heritage of the West, curb immigration. It is unlikely that if Middle Easterners become the majority in Norway the heritage of Ibsen will survive."
    • 26 January 2022 at 7:01pm
      CarpeDiem says: @ Charbb
      So, you are not emigrating , then ?
    • 27 January 2022 at 2:44pm
      Rory Allen says: @ Charbb
      There are two possible objections to depriving people of citizenship. One is ethical, and it is possible to resist that argument, as you have done. But the other is practical. Your premiss is that we have too many immigrants in the UK. If that is the case, then removing immigrants is going to be far less cost effective in terms of manhours (sorry, person hours) than preventing immigration. Suppose you have a unit of say 100 civil servants/immigration officers. These might be able to prevent, say, I don't know, 100 immigrants per day from entering the UK, if devoted full time to that. How many immigrants will they be able to deport from the UK? Given the enormous legal complications and the length of time taken by appeals, I would guess that one a day would be an optimistic estimate.

      In practice, the number of people actually deprived of citizenship is even less than this. The actual figures - and nobody has thought to look them up through this whole debate - are 148, 73, 82, and 42 for the four most recent years for which data are available, that is 2017 to 2020. So if you are worried about British culture being overwhelmed, surely you should be arguing for all resources to be shifted from what one might call 'cure', to 'prevention'?

      Kindly note that I am not conceding your case, merely arguing that it seems to me to be self-defeating. But I admire your persistence in making it. All opinions should be open for free and fair discussion.
    • 29 January 2022 at 5:58am
      EnoahBallard says: @ Charbb
      "It literally takes away their past, present and future."

      It literally doesn't. Literally.
  • 22 January 2022 at 6:34am
    Charbb says:
    You say of Priti Pstel:

    "...her father came to England in 1965, several years before Ugandan Asians had to start worrying about their passport entitlements. He’d emigrated to Africa from India, because his own father had hoped Uganda would offer economic opportunities, and was born in the state of Gujarat. That gives Patel a right to Indian citizenship by descent."

    No it doesn't. I am of similar background. I have no right to Indian nationality. I checked. India does not give right of nationaIity to those living abroad by family descent. If India allowed nationality rights to those not born there, millions of Muslims of Pakistani descent living in Britain would be eligible for Indian citizenship. Check the facts before writing.

    In any case, even if Patel herself would suffer under the law she is introducing, what of it? That only indicates her bona fides.
  • 22 January 2022 at 10:01am
    David Lobina says:
    Not to defend the Home Office in any way, but it is simply inaccurate to state that expert opinion disagrees with the claim that Shamima Begum has a right to Bangladeshi citizenship. And obviously the statements of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Dhaka at the time were political more than anything else (a Ministry of Foreign Affairs doesn't deal with citizenship, anyway).

    The BBC got in touch with experts on Bangladeshi citizenship law when her case was in the news in February 2019 and this is what they reported:

    "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." (bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47310206)

    The treatment of Shamima Begum is scandalous nonetheless, of course.

    • 22 January 2022 at 2:38pm
      Charbb says: @ David Lobina
      In relation to British nationality, I am of similar background to Priti Patel. I have no right to Indian nationality. I checked. India does not give right of nationaIity by family descent to those living abroad. If India allowed nationality rights to those not born there, millions of Muslims of Pakistani descent living in Britain would be eligible for Indian citizenship. This chap Kadri should check the facts before writing.

      In any case, even if Patel herself would suffer under the law she is introducing, what of it? That only indicates her bona fides.
    • 22 January 2022 at 2:42pm
      Charbb says: @ David Lobina
      A woman who deliberately joined a murderous Islamist terrorist organisation is not the best candidate for claiming to be badly treated if the country which gave her everything does not want her back. Find better objects for your so-called compassion.
    • 22 January 2022 at 4:50pm
      David Lobina says: @ Charbb
      Find better comments to comment, methinks. I'm only referring to the withdrawal of British citizenship, which is harsh in the context of her case. As for anything else, that should be judged in a court of law if needed.
    • 25 January 2022 at 2:58pm
      Thomas Jones (blog editor) says: @ Charbb
      ‘A child born outside India between 26.01.1950 and 09.12.1992 shall be a citizen of India by descent, if the father of the child was an Indian citizen by birth at the time of the birth of the child.’
      https://indiancitizenshiponline.nic.in/Ic_GeneralInstruction_4_1.pdf
    • 25 January 2022 at 11:51pm
      Charbb says: @ Thomas Jones (blog editor)
      Thanks for confirming my point. My father was already a British subject when I was born and therefore I am not eligible for Indian citizenship. Priti Patel is in the same case.
    • 25 January 2022 at 11:54pm
      Charbb says: @ Thomas Jones (blog editor)
      Even if Patel herself would suffer under the law she is introducing, that only indicates her bona fides.
    • 26 January 2022 at 8:32pm
      CarpeDiem says: @ Charbb
      Her bona fides as what ? A nincompoop ?
    • 26 January 2022 at 8:33pm
      CarpeDiem says: @ Charbb
      Do you normally struggle differentiating between compassion and "not compassion" ?
    • 27 January 2022 at 7:08am
      Joe Morison says: @ CarpeDiem
      Yes, they do. They are also incapable of listening to arguments against them. They are totally ignorant of the history of this country: point out to them that we are a product of endless waves of immigration which xenophobic bigots like them have always erroneously preached will swamp our essential nature (instead of enriching it as they always have) and they just repeat the same vile nonsense while emphasising that they are themself an immigrant as if that somehow excuses their bigotry.

      They also repeat the same racist tropes. Absurdly raising the fear that ‘Middle Easterners’ might become a majority in Norway when they are currently just 3.1% of the population - point this out and they reply with one of the oldest racist lines ‘they are outbreeding us’, conveniently forgetting that the birth rate of immigrant populations always drops down to that of their adopted country in time, and intermarriage always increases.

      I see no point in arguing with someone who is incapable of honestly answering the points put to them.
    • 27 January 2022 at 1:16pm
      CarpeDiem says: @ Joe Morison
      I couldn't agree more, Joe. When I argue with with these bigots, I get dirty and they seem to like it.
    • 28 January 2022 at 11:47am
      Charbb says: @ Joe Morison
      It is a question of numbers. Limited immigration one can have no objection to, but when it reaches levels where the natives are a minority in their own capital and in other big cities, you have a grave problem. And given very low native birth rates, the immigrant population with heavy immigration can become a very big proportion, creating vast and dangerous political consequences. In countries like France we can already see a powerful swing to the far right. Pretending these problems don't exist with cheap patter about immigration in the past is purblindness.
  • 22 January 2022 at 4:12pm
    Dr Paul says:
    It seems to me that this ruling introduces double standards into British justice. Why should somebody who was born here and is a British national but, as with Ms Begum, whose parents came here from Bangla Desh, be treated differently from somebody who can trace his or her family back for many generations, if they have both been found guilty of the same crime? If the former might not only be jailed but also be stripped of his or her citizenship for his punishment, why should the latter only have to face a jail sentence, that is, receive a lighter punishment?

    This ruling also begs another question. It is often said -- how accurately I do not know -- that Britain is a country of immigrants. How far back will the basis for this ruling go? I am partially of Huguenot -- that is, overseas -- ancestry. Might this be taken into account were I found guilty of a serious crime? What about those British citizens who can claim European, Irish, Norman, Anglo-Saxon or Scandinavian or indeed Roman ancestry? All Jews have the right to Israeli citizenship: therefore any Jew found guilty of a serious crime could be stripped of British citizenship.

    One suspects that this ruling has been introduced solely to deal with violent militant Islamists, as most of them are of families who have come to Britain in the last half-century or so, and it would be a handy way of dumping them on some other country to deal with, even though their radicalisation almost certainly occurred here in Britain. It's the sort of cheap gesture that the Tories hopes will revive their flagging fortunes and distract attention from their blunders elsewhere.

    It is not out of any sympathy for Ms Begum or other violent Islamists that I raise these objections: it is the breaking of the principle of equal treatment under the law that is the crucial factor here.
    • 22 January 2022 at 5:53pm
      Charbb says: @ Dr Paul
      This law should state bluntly and clearly: it is intended to punish Islamists only. Call it the Anti-Islamist Law.
    • 25 January 2022 at 3:44pm
      Rory Allen says: @ Charbb
      I suspect that explicitly drafting a law to discriminate against Muslims would run counter to existing legislation against discrimination based on ethnic origin or religious belief. Also it would violate the European Convention on Human Rights. But perhaps you would prefer that the UK withdraw from that convention? By the way, Britain's withdrawal from the EU does not affect its adherence to the ECHR, because that is part of the Council of Europe, of which the UK remains a member.
    • 27 January 2022 at 1:27pm
      CarpeDiem says: @ Dr Paul
      I am surprised that none of these discussions ever seem to raise the issue of the other country's consent to this arrangement. Why should they accept our "rejects" ?

      If the shoe was on the other foot - would the UK accept a foreign national
      - who was born and raised in another country, and was a citizen of that country from birth and at birth
      - was judged to be an undesirable presence in that country
      - the other country *believed* that this person was eligible for UK citizenship
      - the other country set this person on a one way flight to the UK

      I doubt if the UK would accept this person in a million years.
  • 23 January 2022 at 3:10am
    Charbb says:
    Kadri clearly wants Britain to see itself as a country with no particular cultural heritage or identity, but to be shaped at will by whoever happens along. It is unlikely that he would treat his father's native land, Pakistan, in the same way.
    • 30 January 2022 at 5:21pm
      Eamonn Shanahan says: @ Charbb
      "In the name of God, go."
    • 30 January 2022 at 7:26pm
      Charbb says: @ Eamonn Shanahan
      Which is a face saving way of saying you have lost the argument. Low intellectual vitality.
    • 31 January 2022 at 11:36am
      Eamonn Shanahan says: @ Charbb
      You are the worst, Charbb - "...full of passionate intensity" as an Anglo-Irish poet put it.
    • 1 February 2022 at 10:44am
      Charbb says: @ Eamonn Shanahan
      The worst? Just for saying that no country deserves to be demographically destabilised by excessive immigration, and that immigration should be within reasonable limits to preserve the cultural heritage of a nation?
  • 27 January 2022 at 8:30pm
    nlowhim says:
    It would appear that two-tier citizenship is back on the menu in many places, to include the US. That it actually exists seems beyond problematic. One shouldn't find it hard trying to visualize a slippery slope. Nor to see what feeds it (see the comments ITT), a fear of the darker races, essentially, no matter how well they do, or how they manage to improve the places they move into. A kind of dance with the locals that is an actual example of a tide lifting all boats.

    Of course, I expect the usual talking points about culture being erased... never a definition given, of course, that would require actual thought. What is a culture? What is the definition of actually being marginalized (and where is the proof it's done by immigrants?) Or I expect to hear that the idea that social fabric has been frayed by immigrants without a look into other policies that coincided with immigration (hence the reason why more conservative types cheering on these policies tend to like the immigration scapegoat).

    Shame.

    "A new report from the Americas Society/Council of the Americas and Partnership for a New American Economy report looks at how immigration helps revitalize communities across the United States through the creation or preservation of manufacturing jobs, the increase in housing wealth, and heightened civic engagement. The data show that immigrants play an outsize role in the preservation or creation of U.S. jobs—an important measure of community vitality—and make a particularly important impact on the manufacturing sector.

    Using U.S. Census and American Community Survey data, Immigration and the Revival of American Cities: From Preserving Manufacturing Jobs to Strengthening the Housing Market finds that for every 1,000 immigrants living in a county, 46 manufacturing jobs are created or preserved that would otherwise not exist or would have moved elsewhere.

    At the same time, immigrants are injecting new life into cities and rural areas, making once declining areas more attractive to the U.S.-born population. For every 1,000 immigrants that arrive to a county, 270 U.S.-born residents move there in response, and the average immigrant who moves to a community raises the total value of housing wealth by $92,800.

    The report looks at over 3,000 counties nationwide from 1970 to 2010 to measure the impact of immigration on three leading indicators of community vitality: (1) the number of middle-class manufacturing jobs; (2) the health of the housing market; and (3) the size of the local U.S.-born population. The results are clear: immigrants are a key part of the American success story at the community level, revitalizing local areas and creating economic growth and jobs for U.S.-born workers."[1]


    [1]
    https://www.immigrationresearch.org/report/other/immigration-and-revival-american-cities-preserving-manufacturing-jobs-strengthening-hou
    • 1 February 2022 at 10:47am
      Charbb says: @ nlowhim
      It is a question of numbers. Limited immigration one can have no objection to, but when it reaches levels where the natives are a minority in their own capital and in other big cities, you have a grave problem. And given very low native birth rates, the immigrant population with heavy immigration can become a very big proportion, creating vast and dangerous political consequences. In countries like France we can already see a powerful swing to the far right. Pretending these problems don't exist with talk about immigration in the past is purblind.
Read more