The UK takes a step toward tyranny

Begum is a tough case. I am generally in favour of open borders. About the only exceptions to open borders that seem defensible (that is, the only people a state could defensibly exclude from entry) are for those who are not willing to live peacefully with everyone else. Let us call this the unreasonable persons exception to open borders. It also seems that where you happen to be born is an arbitrary moral distinction. Therefore, if the UK can permissibly exclude someone born far away from residency/citizenship because she is not willing to live peacefully with her co-residents, then it can also permissibly exclude someone born in the UK from residency/citizenship because she is not willing to live peacefully with her co-residents.

The question then is whether Begum is willing to live peacefully with her co-residents. Her lack of regret in joining ISIS makes it very hard to believe that she will a) not engage in terrorist activities if the opportunity arises and b) not raise her children to also similarly engage in terrorist activities.

That said, you are right that current UK immigration policy is too arbitrary and my libertarian inclinations make me averse to investing such a power to exclude in a ministerial position.

The UK government has given itself the power to deprive people of citizenship where this is “conducive to the public good”

See also, recent developments in Australia, where there is a mad dash to a similar policy, with similar “protections” against making people stateless.

I ran a session on immigration detention in the UK with students this week. They were uniformly shocked that such a practice existed here, and at its arbitrary cruelty. It is another key area where the immigration regime defies what we take to be basic rights under the rule of law, in that a person taken into immigration detention does not know how long they will be there, and indefinite detention is allowed; also the arbitrary suspicions that can lead to someone being taken into immigration detention can entangle a great many people. The case of Anthony Bryan, part of the Windrush generation, and who came to the UK in 1960 at the age of eight, illustrates the cruelty of a practice which, as you point out, is in danger of taking people outside of the protection of the law (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44143458).

It’s straight from Trump’s playbook, and it has a chilling effect on anyone who – let’s face it – isn’t white with generations of good Anglo Saxon stock behind them. As a naturalised British citizen I have been more than aware of this reserve card that the Home office has to deport anyone on grounds that are increasingly justifiable on populist whims. Javid’s decision multiplies that fear tenfold. How many of us will be particularly careful about what we say politically, especially given the fevered and sensationalist way in which even innocuous comments are now interpreted ? Or how far we can express some form of identification with the cultures of original provenance without being viewed as a traitor?

Very simply, this ignores the principle of “innocent until proven guilty in a court of law” to rush straight ahead to a punishment (deprivation of citizenship.) Maybe that is too US-centric an idea.

It’s worth noting that Bangladesh is not a signatory to the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction on Statelessness, art. 8(1) of which states that ‘a Contracting State shall not deprive a person of its nationality if such deprivation would render him stateless’. As such, there’s nothing stopping the Bangladeshi Minister for Home Affairs (who may well have first become aware of Ms Begum’s existence when he arrived at work this morning and found the matter waiting for him on his desk) from stripping her of any Bangladeshi citizenship she may have, rather than having to deal with her. Whether stripping her of her UK citizenship when there was a clear risk of this happening would factor in to the UK’s art. 8(1) obligations is anyone’s guess.

As @Chris says, there’s a lot of unintentional dual nationality holders out there—US citizenship works rather like an infectious disease, to the point where there is an entire Wikipedia article on the phenomenon of ‘Accidental Americans’. That’s not even getting into cases like that of Nazanin_Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the UK–Iranian dual national imprisoned in Iran (which does not recognise dual nationality and so considers her a wholly Iranian citizen).

The most fundamental level of UK government cowardice here, however, is the apparent belief that by depriving her of UK citizenship she (and, presumably, her baby) will just disappear. I’m sure Bangladesh are not thrilled to have this ball dumped in their court, and even if they strip her of Bangladeshi citizenship the Syrians/Kurds who are currently holding her (and those like her) still have to deal with her somehow. You’ve also just signalled to those last few pockets of IS fighters that they have nothing to lose so they may as well fight to the death (of themselves and as many others as possible), which is surely not ideal. Ah well, that’s the SDF’s problem.

Consider the structural failings in Britain today that led three bright, straight-A schoolgirls to consider joining the Caliphate a more appealing option than home—surely it is our responsibility to clean up after ourselves by bringing our damaged goods home, to face trial and sentencing as appropriate? To brush them out of sight and out of mind is to do nothing to address the root causes of why so many of them left, and all it will take is another al-Baghdadi to show up and we can repeat this whole, grim cycle once again.

In the Northern Ireland case it’s really the unionist population who would be vulnerable if entitlement to another citizenship were the issue (Fergus’s clarification duly noted however) as this group is made up of British citizens who are also entited to Irish citizenship (some of whom currently hold both passports). Nationalists may or may not also be British citizens (I’m not, but my parents briefly held British passports at one stage) although they’re entitled to be. It strikes me that in the event, however far down the road, of a united Ireland coming to pass, this alarming power to strip Britons of their citizenship could become an issue.

All that aside, Javid’s action is a particularly nasty example of playing to the mob.

“It may be Irish citizenship (the entire nationalist population of Northern Ireland!).”

Just a quick technical note – Irish persons are not considered ‘foreign’ under the 1949 Ireland act, hence our ability to vote in parliamentary elections etc. That is – if an Irish-British citizen was stripped of their British citizenship, as a matter of law it probably wouldn’t make any practical difference to their legal rights.

That’s not to say this whole thing isn’t atrocious, which it is.

It seems clearly wrong that ‘serious criminality’ should be the standard for stripping someone of citizenship, regardless of whether this makes them stateless or not. But if the crime is itself philosophical commitment to and participation in violent opposition to the state itself I think this is both fair and also extremely narrow in application. I don’t know whether it is the best policy, but I would not find it objectionable. But if that is the approach the state wants to take, the narrow standard should be appropriately formalized, not administered by whim of the relevant administrative body. And, of course, due process rights should always exist for any process that strips rights from an existing citizen. A lesser standard might be justified for non-citizen immigration cases, but certainly not in the case of an existing citizen.

Ugh. Why do governments have to get so tricky? Just let her into the country and arrest her. There are all sorts of perfectly normal ways of dealing with this.

A stunning and abysmal development.

In France we have the same problem (or maybe “problem”, as it is a problem only if you abandon the most basic tenets of humanity and the rule of law) with children born in Daech-controlled area of French jihadist parents who are now jailed in Iraq (though of course they committed no crime, as they are infants or very young children).

Ugh. Why do governments have to get so tricky? Just let her into the country and arrest her. There are all sorts of perfectly normal ways of dealing with this.

The idea is probably that it is unclear what she would be convicted for, for how long a term and especially and that there might be public outcry (stirred up by right-wing media) after her eventual release. Perhaps people will just forget about her if she remains long enough in an isolated hellhole.

Call that the Guantamo way to deal with a problem, if you wish.

The US, at the behest of Trump, is taking a similar position in regard to an American woman who joined ISIS by claiming she never was an American citizen. Ms. Muthana had an US passport, renewed at least once, and was born in New Jersey to Yemeni parents. The US is claiming that because her father had been a Yemeni diplomat she did not acquire US citizenship at birth. It does appear, however, that the father had given up his diplomatic status prior to her birth. So, off it goes to the courts. https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/20/politics/hoda-muthana-state-department/index.html

Chris, I appreciate your making this post.

As an immigrant to America, and a patriot, I was initially pretty angry at both Ms. Begum and esp. Ms. Muthana. In both cases, I felt like: “a minimum requirement of citizenship is that you don’t make war against your country, ffs”. But due to this post, and also reading the words of many people in The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/20/what-do-experts-think-of-revoking-shamima-begums-citizenship ), including (amazingly) George Osborne (yes, -that- George Osborne!) I realized that this is a wrong position.

When natural-born-citizen white supremacists are stripped of their citizenship for their crimes, and expelled to who-knows-where — maybe put on a raft and pushed off into the Pacific? — maybe we can start talking about stripping these natural-born citizens of their citizenship. But until then, these are *natural-born citizens*, and if citizenship means -anything-, it mustn’t be stripped from such persons.

I myself am naturalized, and have always understood that my citizenship is conditional: part of my oath includes that, if called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, I will appear. But this is not the case for the natural-born, and …. again, unless there is equity in the way these cases are handled, what’s happening is rank injustice.

As for the risks to the polity, I take those -very- seriously. It’s possible that we will need to invest significant resources in monitoring, education, etc. It’s possible that we will need to insist that their children are raised by others (certainly for Ms. Begum, who seems unrepentant, that seems wise). I don’t know. But as an American, I know that the vast/vast/vast majority of terrorism in my country is perpetrated by white men, right-wing nutjobs, and *nobody* talks about stripping them of their citizenship.

@ RichieRich “As I understand it, according to Section 11 of the Terrorism Act 2000, membership of a proscribed organization such as ISIS carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. Is there some doubt that she could be imprisoned for a lengthy spell under the Act?”

I’m no lawyer, but there would seem to be quite a lot of doubt. Whilst journalists who make a living out of being outraged are outraged, there has been a distinct lack of Lawyers spelling out exactly how Begum is to be brought to justice. In The Guardian article linked to above the Barrister Lord Anderson says “we don’t know how serious this woman’s criminality was in Syria, if indeed she broke UK law at all.”. Tory MP Tom Tugandhat has called for new laws, so presumably he thinks the current laws aren’t sufficient. And if we are to infer motivation from behaviour, then Javid is behaving as if he thinks he lacks the legal means to lock her up.

Which is not to say Javid’s decision is right. It seems to create many problems whilst not solving any. Getting public sympathy to swing behind someone who openly justifies bombing children at a pop concert would seem to be a difficult challenge, but he seems to be managing it.

Were Bush, Clinton, and Blair fazed by the 500,000 Iraqi children who died as a direct result of their sanctions? Or my the mass murder of Palestinian children by Israeli soldiers with sniper rifles.

Please, don’t pretend that ISIS is violent and inhuman and that the West isn’t ten times as violent and inhuman.

37. BobbyV

LMFAO:

Rubenstein was a defender of the Unification Church and served on its advisory council,[1] as well as on the board of directors of the church-owned Washington Times newspaper.[6] In the 1990s, he served as president of the University of Bridgeport, which was then affiliated with the church.[7] Rubenstein said about the church’s founder Sun Myung Moon:

I especially appreciated Rev. Moon’s commitment to the fight against Communism. From his own first-hand, personal experience and out of his religious convictions, he understood how tragic a political and social blight that movement had been. I had been in East and West Berlin the week the Berlin Wall was erected in August 1961 and had visited communist Poland in 1965. Unfortunately, many of my liberal academic colleagues did not understand the full nature of the threat as did Rev. Moon. I was impressed with the sophistication of Rev. Moon’s anti-communism. He understood communism’s evil, but he also stood ready to meet with communist leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev and Kim Il Sung in the hope of changing or moderating their views.[8]

Dipper@39: [from the link you posted]

If Begum did come back and was at large, officials fear that she would become a lightening rod for extremists on both sides: jihadis who would venerate her, and EDL types who would use her case to rally support. She would not spend long behind bars. Living in ISIS-land in itself ought to have been enough of an offence to merit prosecution, but that law was only passed a few weeks ago. It doesn’t apply retrospectively.

Interesting. If indeed this person is such an attractor of bad elements, one would think that the security services would just bug every single communication, and harvest all the product. There aren’t many such people, after all. And sure, maybe there ought to be laws passed to criminalize joining up with “bad guy terrorists out to hurt our country”, and perhaps (perhaps) even specifying that one of the punishments would be revocation of citizenship rights. If these laws are to have any justice to them, they would need to be applied uniformly — so people in the UK (whether of Irish descent or not) who might participate in IRA bombings (or, heck, Unionist bombings) ought to be treated like ISIS members and supporters. It could get interesting there — somebody who gives aid and comfort to ISIS supporters — how are they different from some person in the UK who provides aid and comfort to IRA bombers? — but regardless, unless these laws are enforced equally, they’ll cause untold grief.

And of course, there had better be some serious education so that people understand the consequences of supporting “enemies of the nation”.

Just to be clear, *instinctively* I’m pretty pissed-off at people who wage war against my country. I’m a patriot, after all. But I can recognize that those people include [here in the USA] Timothy McVeigh, Dylann Roof, and Robert Dear. Any “law” that treats these people differently than Hoda Muthana, is unjust.