Canadian Government challenged on right 2 revoke citizenship of "dual" Canadians http://t.co/zw9FQTgR8h – Creates #FATCA like 2nd class Cdns
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) June 26, 2014
This article is generating a number of comments. Good place to do some education. The article should be read along with this Globe editorial:
It is one thing to revoke a Canadian citizenship that was obtained by fraud or false pretenses; that is a long-standing part of our law, and should be. The Harper government, however, is proposing to strip citizenship from people found guilty of some serious crimes, in cases where the offender is a naturalized citizen – an immigrant to Canada – or even someone born in Canada, but who for whatever reason also holds the citizenship of another country.
The classes of crime in question are serious: treason, terrorism and specific military crimes such as spying for the enemy in time of war. But however serious the offence, when someone is born here, or has been accepted into this country legally and fairly, he or she is Canadian, for good or ill.
The Charter of Rights is very clear: “Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.” The principle is so fundamental that the Charter’s notwithstanding clause cannot be used to override this section.
It would be invidious to send into exile a foreign-born citizen who committed a crime as a Canadian, while imposing a prison sentence on a natural-born Canadian found guilty of the same crime. Canadian law should treat Canadians, including Canadians who break the law, as Canadians.
Stripping a citizen of citizenship is characteristic of a totalitarian regime such as the Soviet Union, which banished dissidents, including the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1974. It’s not a model for Canada to emulate.
Andrew Thompson, a political scientist at the University of Waterloo, has rightly pointed out how easily the proposed new citizenship-revocation law could have condemned Maher Arar, a dual Canadian-Syrian national, suspected of terrorism by Canada, to a life of imprisonment and torture in a Syrian prison. The amendments now before Parliament would have afforded him little opportunity to defend himself.
If you were to peek into the immigration internet forums, you would see that this is a topic of concern and one that is beginning to generate a fair amount of fear and paranoia, which is interesting given that the citizenship process itself is already fraught with angst, frustration and confusion.
Although I can see where the two-tiered fear comes from, it seems to me that this is a backhanded way for the Canadian govt to force ppl to be Canadian only. The govt of Canada (like many Canadians) has no great love of dual citizenship because of the legal difficulties it can produce. They saw a way to force ppl to choose and took it. Doesn’t make it right or fair but it is what it is.
There is mention of a Dutch victory over a bank for discrimination here:
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21605911-americas-fierce-campaign-against-tax-cheats-doing-more-harm-good-dropping
The article is very negative on FATCA.
@Neill
LOVED that article. The part about the ashes and the last line that America might be worse than the tax havens it is seeking to address is priceless! Wish that many many more journalists would get it so right.
@Polly,
They have another I noticed out today. Nice picture of octopus America strangling it’s citizens abroad (with it’s eyes closed).
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21605907-americas-new-law-tax-compliance-heavy-handed-inequitable-and-hypocritical-fatcas-flaws
@Neill
The Economist is a pretty serious paper, isn’t it? They obviously seem to be on our side. ( But it isn’t really about “sides”- its more about truth and human rights. It is just killing me how little the US constitution matters anymore.
@Polly,
The economist has very big influence. This is bad news for America to get this kind of article.
We are filling out N-400 and I was worried that I would have to embrace the current policies. I am asked to embrace the constitution.
I believe in American exceptionalism as a natural consequence of the constitution and the freedom it gives to people. I see the current and previous policies chipping away at that. I see them bullying with waning power.
This same stuff happened to Britain. We need Mrs. Thatcher in the US.
And then we have a terrible article from Fortune. I have never read this magazine so I don’t know what it’s like. This is a truly terrible article.
http://fortune.com/2014/06/25/foreign-tax-evasion-law/
@Neill
Re that Fortune article. Sounds like Robert Stack goes by the pen name of Chris Matthews.
Well the news is that China is in on FATCA. That’s the end folks. America wins. Sorry. I paid my Obama taxes. Everyone else has to as well now.
http://kelo.com/news/articles/2014/jun/26/us-treasury-says-reaches-foreign-tax-law-pact-with-china/
I wonder what China gets in the way of reciprocity from the U.S. and U.S. banks? The article doesn’t seem to mention anything about that concept!
And how many Chris Matthews are there? The Fortune article is Chris R., then there is a writer Chris M., also the MSNBC fellow.
A China IGA? Hmmm that’s interesting, and I’m somehow thinking this might be a good thing if as I’ve read elsewhere about the best deal any country gets shall apply to all other deals. I know China ain’t going to put up with an annoying debtor telling it what to do. I want to hear more.
The UK has revoked the citizenship of several of its citizens while they were abroad so that American government agent could then assassinate them. Another angle on this may be for the Israeli Mossad to do it.
Some of you may recall the case of the Canadian-American artillery scientist, Gerald Bull. He was considered to be so valuable in his field that “in 1972, Bull was rewarded with his own Congressional bill, sponsored by Senator Barry Goldwater, Republican of Arizona, making him retroactively eligible for a decade of American citizenship and high-level American nuclear security clearance.” (NY Times) “He was only one of three people ever granted citizenship by an Act of Congress.” (Wiki)
But, in 1990, after becoming a renegade through his work with Iraq, it is thought that the Israeli Mossad assassinated Gerald Bull outside his residence in Brussels, Belgium. The NY Times reported at the time: “if Mossad is a prime suspect, there are many others who might have wanted to kill Bull: the Iraqis, the British, the Americans, the South Africans or even the Chileans.”
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