Even without considering any of the mitigating factors here, it is insane that British courts upheld the decision to stripe a citizen of their citizenship.
If she’s committed a crime then repatriate her, arrest her, and try her in a court of law for whatever crime she’s alleged to have committed.
Frankly, everyone involved in the decision to strip her citizenship should be arrested and prosecuted, irrespective of whether or not she’s ever found guilty of any crimes.
While I’m not enthusiastic about the idea of stripping citizenship as a general principle — so many other legal rights rest upon that — the UK doesn’t have constitutional restrictions on doing so the way the US does:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroyim_v._Rusk
Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that citizens of the United States may not be deprived of their citizenship involuntarily.[1][2][3] The U.S. government had attempted to revoke the citizenship of Beys Afroyim, a man born in Poland, because he had cast a vote in an Israeli election after becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen. The Supreme Court decided that Afroyim’s right to retain his citizenship was guaranteed by the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vance_v._Terrazas
Vance v. Terrazas, 444 U.S. 252 (1980), was a United States Supreme Court decision that established that a United States citizen cannot have their citizenship taken away unless they have acted with an intent to give up that citizenship.
…and in fact has law explicitly permitting the Home Secretary to do so if he wants:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationality,_Immigration_and_Asylum_Act_2002
Deprivation of British nationality
Under amendments made by the act to the British Nationality Act 1981, British nationals can be deprived of their citizenship if the Secretary of State is satisfied they are responsible for acts seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the United Kingdom or an Overseas Territory.[3] This power is restricted to individuals who have dual citizenship.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration,_Asylum_and_Nationality_Act_2006
The Act contains several provisions empowering the Home Secretary to deprive a person of British citizenship (or Right of Abode) if it is considered that such deprivation is “conducive to the public good”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationality_and_Borders_Act_2022
It can also remove British citizenship from dual nationals without notice.
In Begum’s case, there was particular controversy, because the UK is signatory to international treaties that it will not strip a single national’s citizenship, and it was very questionable whether Begum was a dual national; the UK took the position that she was, whereas Bangladesh, which was supposed to be the country of which she was a dual national, did not consider her to be a Bangladeshi national. My own view is that countries should be considered authoritative on whether-or-not a person holds citizenship there; doing otherwise would lead to all kinds of legal problems, like being able to deny consular access to foreign nationals (“you aren’t really a citizen of that country”) and such, so the UK should have accepted Bangladesh’s position on Begum’s nationality.
But there’s also the broader question of whether a government should be able to strip citizenship at all. In the US, the answer is “no”, but, well, that ain’t how the UK presently works.
the UK doesn’t have constitutional restrictions on doing so the way the US does
That’s because UK doesn’t have a constitution.
neither does the US, clearly
wonder who’s the idiotic twat who downvoted you. you’re 100% correct.
saying “the UK lacks constitutional restrictions” is such a daft thing to say.
like saying “I didn’t meet with the United States prime minister”
Off topic but you can check upvotes and downvotes here:
like saying “I didn’t meet with the United States prime minister”
It’s a lot closer to saying “the USA lacks the problems associated with hereditary monarchy which the UK has”. The worst you could say is that it’s slightly redundant.
(Plus of course the UK has a constitution, it’s just not codified in a single document. But that has no bearing either way)
UK does NOT have a constitution and “unwritten” thing is an utter nonsense.
I’m not sure why you’ve put “unwritten” in quotes, given that neither of us said it, but this recent document from the commons library lays out fairly comprehensively how the UK does have a constitution, most of it written down.
From the introduction:
It is often said that the constitution of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is “unwritten”, or even that it does not exist. In fact, and as the Law Wales website notes, “most of the laws, conventions and understandings relating to the constitution are written down”, it is just that “they cannot be found conveniently written down all in one place”.
I’m not sure why you’ve put “unwritten” in quotes,
Send me a copy so I can read it since it is not unwritten.
Law Wales website notes, “most of the laws, conventions and understandings relating to the constitution are written down
Complete nonsense. This is not what a constitution is.
Constitution is a set law with the mechanics to amend it which needs higher threshold than an ordinary law, thus protecting the fundamental principles from a potential radical irresponsible parliaments.
UK does NOT have a constitution, it merely have constitutional conventions. If you don’t believe me, belive Lord Nuremberg, the President of UK supreme Court:
Unlike every other European country, we have no written constitution and we have parliamentary sovereignty. Indeed, it may be said with considerable force that we have no constitution as such at all, merely constitutional conventions, and that it is as a consequence of this that we have parliamentary sovereignty.
When a country has a constitution, parliament of the day cannot change the law at will. It must change the constitution first or to ensure any changes are in line with existing constitution.
Scotland is a prime example. UK Parliament may decide tomorrow to remove any existing Scottish autonomy and to dissolve Scotland’s Parliament. That wouldn’t be the case if Scotland’s autonomy was protected by the constitution.
The same goes for human rights BTW. Fascists of all kinds want to remove UK from ECHR because this is the only thing which can override the will of Parliament of the day. That wouldn’t be the case if human rights were protected by the constitution.
UK does not have any constitution. It has conventions which, unlike any civilised country do not even ensure proper separation of powers.
You can either have a sovereign parliament, ie parliament which can decide literally anything (“let’s remove rights we don’t like!”) or you can have a constitution - but you cannot have both as the constitution is above a parliament.
an “unwritten” constitution is like my Canadian girlfriend, shes real. you just can’t see her
🤣🤣🤣
that would be, “King of America fails to appear”, he simply isn’t there.
I’m way out of my comfort zone here and not in an area I know much about, but I should imagine there’s no single universal register of who is a citizen of where. Each country keeps their own records and rules. I do wonder what the process is though. Would the UK home secretary speak to the ambassador, or is it based on assumptions. It kind of feels like there was no communication between the two countries, not one both agreed on anyway.
Frankly, everyone involved in the decision to strip her citizenship should be arrested and prosecuted, irrespective of whether or not she’s ever found guilty of any crimes.
That doesn’t work, because they haven’t done anything illegal.
The good news is that the current home secretary could decide that it would be for the good of the country to strip them all of their citizenship, and do that.
Agree. Looking at your username, are you a political commentator?
Christ, this is an old topic. It was pretty horrific that any government could be so blase about making someone stateless.
Irrespective of her character or crimes I didn’t think it was allowed by UN convention to strip someone of their last citizenship. The article claims she is now stateless, which if true definitely contravenes my understanding of the conventions the UK have signed.
Yeah, apparently if the British government think someone has Bangladeshi citizenship, then they have it, regardless of the Bangladeshi government’s opinion.
Wow. I don’t even know what to say.
Don’t worry, it’s only a “maybe” that they’ll be allowed to get away with this. There’s a decent chance they’ll be told in no uncertain terms just how illegal this is, and that’ll be that, and certainly won’t spark a media circus culminating in our leaving the ECHR.
And rightly so. The decision to make her stateless was unlawful as hell.
Strip Tommy Robinson of his citizenship. Let’s him claim Irish nationality via his mother. That cunt is a proper terrorist.
Oh the government only want to strip brown people of their nationality. Understood.
shows how much the terfs care about women that they’re attacking a grooming victim with the full force of government
