Just a quick one. My views on the revocation of the citizenship of Shamima Begum (the "ISIS teen" or "ISIS bride"*) are very simple: it should not have happened.
In fact, we should not strip anyone of their citizenship.
Currently, the UK government can only remove citizenship from a person if it would not make them stateless. This means that the only people who can have their citizenship revoked are dual citizens. Which means that the law is not applied consistently.
A foundational principle of modern democracy is that the law is applied consistently to everyone. If two people commit the same crime in the same circumstances, they should receive the same sentence. In principle, your wealth, social status, gender, ethnicity, membership of the ruling body or number of collectible beanie babies will not affect what consequences you experience for breaking the law.** In practice, of course, most of these things will absolutely affect the consequences you experience. However, this happens because they affect the human elements of the system - eliciting more or less sympathy in a judge or jury, or allowing you to acquire a more persuasive lawyer. And we try our hardest to eliminate these inequalities with careful jury selection and the provision of legal aid.
But here, the inequality is written into the law. People with single citizenship can never be stripped of their UK citizenship, but those with dual citizenship can be. So two people could commit exactly the same crime, but one would no longer be a citizen as a result.
But what should we do with dangerous people? People who join terrorist organisations and are a threat to national security? Well, there must be a process, because there must be some way that we deal with homegrown terrorists. So we should simply apply this to everyone, regardless of other citizenships (and certainly not without determining whether they have another citizenship at all).
And of course, we should not forget that dual nationality is wrapped up with ethnicity, and that anything that disproportionately affects dual citizens will, of course, disproportionately affect people of minority races and ethnicities.
One objection you may have is that by the same token, presumably we should treat non-citizens in the same way as citizens, which would mean we couldn't deport foreign criminals. Now, I think this is a perfectly reasonable stance, and that we should find a way to make things work without telling people they're not allowed on this bit of damp land just because they weren't born nearby. However, it is a fact that under the current system, it is generally agreed that governments get to treat citizens and non-citizens differently.*** This is why making someone stateless is unacceptable - being part of a state affords you protection. Thus, we can decide not to revoke the citizenship of dual citizens without stepping on to a slippery slope where we're never allowed to deport anyone (as much as I personally would prefer it).
In this particular case, if Shamima Begum is unable to return to the UK, what does this mean for national security? She will not be able to live openly in the UK, but she could return secretly (people from Syria do occasionally enter the UK without going through a border control, after all). If her whereabouts were known, anyone she attempted to recruit could be surveilled. If her whereabouts are unknown, and she is able to use the narrative that her own country rejected her because of her beliefs, I'm sure she could recruit many more people. And what of other UK citizens who are in the same situation? If they legitmately fear that they will be exiled by their home country, they have more motivation to stay with the group that recruited them. I'm sure no-one believes that militant groups will completely disappear from
Or another possible situation is that she might rejoin her family, raise her child, not make any plots or do any recruiting (or have all her attempts thwarted due to the fact that her location will be known), and eventually grow up and realising that running away at 15 to join a terrorist organisation was not actually a good move.
But all this is speculation. Really, the compelling argument is that the UK, as a democracy, is meant to hold equality under the law as paramount. Our votes count the same, and so do our crimes. Citizenship, once granted, should never be revoked.
There's a reason we left exile behind in the last millenium. Let's not let fear tempt us into bringing it back.
*as far as I can tell she married at 15, which makes her a child bride as defined by UNICEF, and referring to child marriages as if they were legitimate is unethical. it is the name given in some news articles, which is why I refer to it here
**in fact, these things shouldn't affect what you're allowed to do under the law at all, including whether you can engage in a legal process. turns out gay marriage is part of the foundations of democracy.
*** the other, more logical, criterion to treat people differently under the law is capacity for understanding, which is why we have age limits and power of attorney.
