In early 1900, many countries considered dual citizenship undesirable.
It was common for Australian women to be stripped of their citizenship if they married a foreign man, and Americans could be revoked to simply vote in a foreign choice.
But over time, politicians have come to understand the harmful effects that losing citizenship can have on a person even if they are still citizens of another country.
Courts both in the United States and in The idea that losing citizenship is severe punishment and should not be applied arbitrarily.
In more recent years, dual citizenship has become popular among many Australians who use their ancestral links to ensure foreign passports, which allows them to cross immigration lines at airports and work in other countries.
Despite their appeal, some politicians have been eager to take energetic measures against dual citizens, even in Australia, as a way of blocking undesirable people to return to the country.
This week, opposition leader Peter Dutton raised the idea of To change the Constitution, the ministers could eliminate the Australian citizenship of a national dual if they committed certain crimes.
While current laws allow a minister to request that citizens be eliminated from an individual, it is the Court who makes the decision and only does so during the sentence for specific crimes such as terrorism or betrayal.
Australia is not the only country that reassess the loyalty they expect from its citizens.
Technological billionaire Elon Musk faces calls so that his Canadian citizenship feels stripped of his supposed efforts to “erase” the sovereignty of the nation as part of the government of the president of the United States, Donald Trump. .
The Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, is the main advisor of US President Donald Trump. In a publication now eliminated in X, he mocked a petition that requested that his Canadian citizenship be revoked, saying: “Canada is not a real country.” Fountain: AAPA / JAE C HANG/AP
More than 300,000 people have signed a petition to relieve Musk, a double Canadian national of their Canadian citizenship.
Meanwhile, in He wants to change the Constitution to strip the citizens of anyone considered a “threat to public order.”
The amendment is part of a broader anti -immigration campaign of the authoritarian government of Orbán, aimed at the multimillionaire philanthropist George Soros, who is a double national and prominent defender of liberal causes and civil society in his homeland.
The privilege of citizenship
Unlike those born in the United States, people born in Australia do not have automatically granted citizenship.
The Constitution of the United States enshrines a right to citizenship in its 14th amendment, but in Australia, it is politicians who dictate eligibility.
Those who have taken the way to citizens can attest that it is often very required, which requires years of life in Australia with limited financial support, even if the person is married to an Australian.
Once it becomes a citizen, people have the right to vote in the Australian elections, obtain an Australian passport and enter and remain in the country.
In return, they are asked to lend an oath to “promise my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and freedoms respect, and whose laws I will keep and obey.”
The value of citizenship has also been tested when Australians get into trouble abroad. The government hasincluding Julian Assange, Cheng Lei and Sean Turnell.
The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, returned to Australia in June 2024 after walking free from an American court. Fountain: AAPA / Rick Rycroft/AP
These days, it is difficult to strip someone from their citizenship, but historically, this has not always been the case.
Helen Irving, Emerita Professor of Constitutional Law at Sydney University, says: “Australian women who married foreign men automatically lost what it was [then] His British citizenship, simply by the act of marrying a foreign man. “
This had a “hard and harmful” effect on the lives of many women, she says.
In the United States in the 1940s, Irving says that all kinds of behavior could lead to the elimination of citizenship, including life in another country for five years or occupy a government post in a foreign state.
But in the 1960s, the understanding of the character of citizenship had changed, and the United States Supreme Court ruled that depriving citizenship was such an extreme measure that was equivalent to punishment.
Losing citizenship is a very severe loss’
Australia has also confirmed the opinion that losing citizenship is equivalent to punishment.
In recent years, Australian politicians have tried to strip citizens of those who traveled abroad to join terrorist groups such as the self -proclaimed group of the Islamic State in Syria.
The laws introduced in 2020 allowed the relevant minister to strip the citizenship of someone who had been convicted of a crime and sentenced to at least three years in prison if they were convinced that the person had repudiated his loyalty to Australia and was contrary to their public interest to remain a citizen.
But those radical powers have been moderate since then: an appeal presented before the Superior Court of Australia in 2022 found that politicians did not have the power to eliminate citizenship once it had been granted.
This is due to the predominant opinion that stripping citizenship is a punitive act and, therefore, must be determined by a judge when sentencing criminal crimes.
You effectively lose your right to return to your country, and rightly so, the court says that this is a very severe loss.
EMERITA HELEN IRVING TEACHER
“Being banished, exiled from the country itself, which means losing the meaning of its place in the world, as well as its association with your family and education, that very close, important and existential link that a person has with their own country.”
In recent years, the New Zealanders who have been forced to abandon Australia due to the controversial visa changes in 2014 have talked about the isolation they felt by not being able to live in the country they called home for decades.
Larice Rainnie, 72, was deported in 2019 after her visa was canceled after an 18 -month prison sentence for a drug -related crime in Finland. He had previously lived in Australia for 55 years.
“I don’t feel that you belong anywhere. Limbo,” ” .
Larice Rainnie spent most of her life in Australia, but was deported to New Zealand in 2019. Fountain: SBS news / SBS News/Amelia Dunn
In 2023, the Australian government And now considering the time they have lived in Australia before canceling their visas.
But in other countries such as the United Kingdom, government officials have the power to eliminate a person’s citizenship if they consider it conducive to the public good.
Separation of powers
In Australia, changing the Constitution to allow ministers to revorate citizens, as Dutton has proposed, could give political additional power to politicians.
One of the bases of the Democratic Constitutional System of Australia is the separation of powers between the Legislature (the Parliament), the Executive (Prime Minister and Ministers) and the Judicial Power (the Courts).
Irving says that this system protects people from being arbitrarily punished because accused of crimes are blamed determined by a judge or jury, “not in the saying of powerful individuals.”
If we had the government capable of appointing people as ‘guilty’ and imprisoning them or treating them as they would like, the freedom that people enjoy would be greatly reduced.
While Dutton’s proposal has opened the debate on the rights of dual citizens, former Immigration official Abul Rizvi does not believe that no government will restrict double citizenship.
“It is likely that the two largest cohorts of dual citizens are British and Kiwis. No government will want to get angry,” he tells SBS News. “Now we live in a very mobile world where people like to have two or more passports. It is more convenient.”
Census data show that more than half of the population in Australia are born abroad or has at least one father born abroad.
A spokesman for Amnesty Australia has described Dutton’s proposal as an “extreme and reactionary proposal that will have serious and high -range consequences”, pointing out that he is emblematic of Dutton’s For personal political gain.
“Dutton’s deportation plan would be particularly dangerous for citizens who have fled the war, persecution and conflict and have found asylum in Australia.”
– Additional reports per AFP
