
In America, Naturalized Citizens No Longer Have an Assumption of Permanence - aaronbrethorst
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/in-america-naturalized-citizens-no-longer-have-an-assumption-of-permanence
======
AnimalMuppet
I think there are two issues in play here.

First, if you lie on your application for citizenship, and the country
(doesn't matter which one) finds out that you lied after granting you
citizenship, I don't see a problem with them un-granting your citizenship,
since the basis on which it was granted was false. (The lie must be material
for this logic to hold, that is, a lie where if you told the truth,
citizenship would not have been granted.)

Second, though, I see that this could be a lovely way to harass and persecute
naturalized citizens if someone in power had a grudge against them (either as
an individual or as a group).

~~~
eesmith
While I have a problem with revoking citizenship of naturalized citizens.

I don't see why there can't be other effective means to persecute someone who
gained citizenship fraudulently.

The article give an example of the problem with the argument that "The lie
must be material for this logic to hold, that is, a lie where if you told the
truth, citizenship would not have been granted."

In the 1980s, immigration law prohibited people with "sexual deviation", and
homosexuality was considered a sexual deviation. Suppose I were a homosexual
man in the 1980s, and I lied about it in my application, and gained US
citizenship. Now it's 2018, and homosexuality is no longer considered a sexual
deviation that could keep someone from emigrating to the US.

Why should that lie - which would have kept citizenship from being granted in
the 1980s - mean that I should be stripped of citizenship now?

------
cascom
The phrase "the devil is in the details" comes to mind here.

~~~
eesmith
The phrase "WTF?!" comes to mind here.

US immigration policy under Obama was already horrid - he had the well-
deserved nickname "Deporter-in-Chief".

Now it's just sadistic.

This isn't really about details. To quote the article:

> It’s the apparent underlying premise that makes this new effort so
> troublesome: the idea that America is under attack by malevolent immigrants
> who cause dangerous harm by finding ways to live here.

> ... The President calls immigrants “animals.” The Attorney General presumes
> that everyone crossing the border—or at least the southern border—is a
> criminal.

Throw justice and humanity out the window, and sure, a lie told to an
immigration officer about one's homosexuality in the 1980s can become cause to
denaturalize an American citizen in the 2010s.

That's putting the devil in charge of the detail.

~~~
cascom
It’s clear you disagree with US immigration policy - ok - but like it or not
it’s duly enacted law.

On the one hand, I’m not sure how you can rationalize people earning
citizenship based on falsifying their application.

On the other hand, clearly a policy of stripping people of the citizenship
based on trivial inconsitiencies or impossible to achevie standards is not
within the spirit of the law.

Hence my comment indicating that where one draws the line between those two
ends is where the issue lies.

~~~
eesmith
Yes, the US has duly enacted many laws which were unjust, cruel, and hateful,
and which I disagree(d) with.

I see no reason why stripping one's citizenship is required in order to be
able to effectively prosecute someone who gained citizenship fraudulently.

That is, I see no reason for there to be a line at all.

Consider Jakiw Palij, an actual Nazi war criminal who got US citizenship
fraudulently and was stripped of citizenship as a result. Yet he still lives
in the US because no other country will accept him.
[https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-wont-deport-the-last-
nazi-...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-wont-deport-the-last-nazi-war-
criminal-in-america)

He's still a free man living in Queens.

Still, there is a line. Let's talk about that line with the concrete example
of Baljinder Singh. His horrid crime was that "he failed to indicate that he
had once been ordered deported, and that he had originally been admitted into
the United States under the name Davinder Singh, rather than Baljinder Singh"?

Is that were the line should be?

We know the "duly enacted law" can be horridly racist. Bhagat Singh Thind was
stripped of citizenship about 100 years ago because the Supreme Court decided
that he, an Indian man, "lied when he claimed to be a “free white person” as
defined by the Naturalization Act of 1906." While Aryan and Caucasian,
according to the anthropological definitions at the time, he wasn't
sufficiently 'white'.

His citizenship was stripped twice before finally becoming a US citizen for
the third time.

