From my archive of press clippings:
New York Times
Bill Targets Citizenship of Terrorists’ Allies
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and CARL HULSE
Published: May 6, 2010
WASHINGTON — Proposed legislation that would allow the government to revoke American citizenship from people suspected of allying themselves with terrorists set off a legal and political debate Thursday that scrambled some of the usual partisan lines on civil-liberties issues.
Read the whole article here.
Snippet(s):
"The Terrorist Expatriation Act, co-sponsored by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, would allow the State Department to revoke the citizenship of people who provide support to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda or who attack the United States or its allies."
"Identical legislation is also being introduced in the House by two Pennsylvania congressmen, Jason Altmire, a Democrat, and Charlie Dent, a Republican. The lawmakers said at a news conference that revoking citizenship would block terrorism suspects from using American passports to re-enter the United States and make them eligible for prosecution before a military commission instead of a civilian court.
Citing with approval news reports that President Obama has signed a secret order authorizing the targeted killing of a radical Yemeni-American cleric, Anwar Al-Awlaki, Mr. Lieberman argued that if that policy was legal — and he said he believed it was — then stripping people of citizenship for joining terrorist organizations should also be acceptable.
Several major Democratic officials spoke positively about the proposal, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Noting that the State Department already had the authority to rescind the citizenship of people who declare allegiance to a foreign state, she said the administration would take “a hard look” at extending those powers to cover terrorism suspects."
&
"The proposal would amend an existing, although rarely used, program run by the State Department. It dates to a law enacted by Congress in 1940 that allowed the stripping of citizenship for activities like voting in another country’s elections or joining the army of a nation that is at war with the United States. People who lose their citizenship can contest the decision in court.
The Supreme Court later narrowed the program’s scope, declaring that the Constitution did not allow the government to take away people’s citizenship against their will. The proposal does not alter the requirement of evidence of voluntariness.
That means that if the proposal passed, the State Department would have to cite evidence that a person not only joined Al Qaeda, but also intended to relinquish his citizenship, and the advantages it conveys, to rescind it."
Monday, May 17, 2010
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2 comments:
I find the idea of the government taking away citizenship to be a bit scary, primarily due to the idea of the slippery slope (take it away for terrorism one day, a decade or two later, it's for jaywalking). Also, I'm not quite sure what the point would be. I assume any crime worth taking away citizenship is also worth a lifetime prison or death sentence. And what do you do with newly non-citizens, drop them in a boat in the Pacific?
The government already can take away your citizenship, but you have to have committed an expatriating act. This proposal adds another sort of expatriating act.
The devil is always in the details. And this is the sort of change that could be in the courts for years getting ironed out.
Personally, I'm not opposed in principal to adding being a terrorist against the U.S. to the list of expatriating acts, so long as there's a high bar legal bar (as in conviction in a court of law of specific federal statutes) that has to be met. Otherwise it has the potential to be a political meat cleaver for whatever party is in power.
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