Can a country revoke/cancel the nationality of a dual national?

O Canada!

Canada is the most recent country to pass legislation which allows it to remove its (Canadian) citizenship from people with more than one nationality. The legislation, bill C-24, passed June 11th of this year (2015), is called the "Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act". It's a broad bill, covering many portions of Canadian nationality. For example, one of the things it does is make it a little harder to become Canadian by naturalization. For example, you must now spend a total of 365 × 4 (=1,460 or four years; three with permanent resident status and be physically present in the Dominion of Canada for 183 days [about 6 months]) total days in Canada. The previous law required 365 × 3 (= 1,095 or three years; two with permanent resident status) days in Canada.

Bill C-24 also made easier to give Canadian citizenship to some people who thought they were legally Canadian but discovered they weren't: such as those born out of wedlock many decades ago or those who took are children of a spouse who took another citizenship long ago when the laws were different. These people are sometimes called "Lost Canadians".

However, in addition to adding legislation to make it easier to give citizenship to those that never had it, the law also makes it easier to take away Canadian citizenship from those who are dual nationals.

Target: Terrorists, not "Canadians of Convenience", "Double Dippers" or "Astronaut's Family"

There have always been critics who have felt that Canadian citizenship was too easy to obtain by people whose ties to Canada are minimal. "Canadians of Convenience" is a term, coined by some Canadian politicians, which refers to those who stayed in Canada only long enough to obtain its nationality (as a second nationality), then returned back to their home country — only to exercise their Canadian citizenship during times of overseas crisis (often at great expense to the Canadian homeland taxpayer) — such as evacuation.

Immigration "Double Dippers" are those who use the possession of two passports as two separate identities, either to double the amount of benefits they receive (when they should only be receiving a single benefit: for example, Working Holiday Visas) or to escape debt and bill collection.

Biometrics, such as fingerprint scanners, which are used by Japan, at immigration and/or embedded in e-Passports, are primarily used to prevent double dipping; taking just the prints from one's index fingers and not all ten fingers is useful for linking a person using more than one name or more than one passport, but is not very useful for domestic crime forensics.

"Astronaut Families" are those where the breadwinner of the family stays in another country and works under a different tax system without declaring their income to Canada while the rest of the family lives in Canada, supported solely from money coming from abroad. In reality, most "Astronauts" (usually Chinese nationals) would want Canadian permanent residency or citizenship because Canada requires a visa for PRC nationals — yet they don't stay in the country long enough to qualify or hold on to permanent residency. Instead, some Chinese have resorted to using dodgy Passports-of-Convenience (such as St. Kitts and Nevis) where nationality can be bought instantly with cash to bypass Canada's visa requirements. In response to this abuse, Canada has revoked visa-waiver privileges from the Caribbean island of just about 50,000 actual physical residents. Hoping for leniency, St. Kitts & Nevis now prints birthplaces on its passports, so other countries can easier tell the difference from jus soli natural-born citizens and naturalized Citizens of Convenience.

Kids! We're home! Whoa! You've grown up! I feel
like I was in a black hole like "Interstellar"!

While the term "Astronaut families" was coined from a Cantonese word 太空人 {taai hùng yàhn} (a Chinese word pun: can be interpreted to mean "astronaut" or "man without a wife") due to the original trend setters being Hong Kong families fleeing around the time of the handover to the PRC and the Tiananmen Square Incident, some mainland Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Japanese do this family living arrangement. In Japan, the breadwinner working and living far from the spouse and children and home also happens and is called 単身赴任 {tanshin funin}; although in the Japanese case it often happens as part of a career with a big corporation, and being assigned to remote offices is more common for domestic locations within Japan than international locations overseas.

However, the conditions laid out in C-24 for revoking Canadian nationality make it clear that the intended target for nationality stripping is those who wish to use Canadian Nationality in order to facilitate high crime.

Criminal and terrorist elements know that possession of certain nationalities attracts attention from immigration authorities and the police more than other nationalities.

Thus, terrorists and other criminals often try to obtain an additional passport that is considered to be:

• easy to obtain; Canada is considered to be open to immigrants
• does not invite scrutiny; Canadians are considered to be low risk when it comes to committing immigration violations or participating or abetting in violent illegal crime.

Of course, one solution that nations can use is to simply cancel the passport of criminals or terrorists on the run to restrict their international movement so that the only place they can go easily is their home country. This is what the United States did to Edward Snowden.

Not. Fooling. Anybody.

There's a reason why some Americans affix Canadian flags on their backpacks when traveling in foreign countries. Canada is considered to be a peaceful country and has few enemies. It's not necessarily because the backpacker is a fan of curling and lacrosse.

Passports-of-Convenience (POC) are not just sought after by criminals and terrorists or the very wealthy individual who is looking for a foreign tax shelter. Honest hard working and law abiding middle & upper class people, who just happen to hail from countries who statistically present high risks of illegal immigration, also desire passports that allow for easier visa-free travel.

Unfortunately, bad elements too would like to lessen the scrutiny they get as well. Having a Canadian passport allows them to travel with less restriction and examination of their activities. When it comes to international travel, not all passports/nationalities are considered equal.

Not all passports are equal. It's one thing to have a passport from a small Pacific (ex. Tonga, Samoa, the Marshall Islands, Vanuatu and Nauru) or Caribbean (ex. Commonwealth of Dominica and the Federation of St. Kitts & Nevis) island that is obviously selling their nationality to anybody. These passports automatically draw suspicion because authorities know the nationality can be had with little effort, loyalty, commitment, or proper vetting of the person. A passport from a G-7 country, on the other hand, is trusted and allows visa-waived travel to much of the world.

The intent of the revised law is to strip Canadian citizenship of those who have more than one nationality besides Canadian nationality AND they have been caught committing or have committed an act of terrorism. Skeptics of the bill, however, are concerned that the language is loose enough that it could be abused to allow the stripping of citizenship from people who are not really dangerous terrorists.

In almost all United Nations member countries, the requirement for stripping of the citizenship of a country usually requires that you possess more than one nationality.

Of course, as a matter of sovereignty, a country can only strip its own citizenship from people.

Canada post-9/11 nationality law revision dealing with terrorists abusing multiple nationalities is said to have been inspired by the United Kingdom's revision of its nationality laws concerning terrorists abusing dual nationality.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

The reason the Canadian law (and many other nationality laws) that strip people of citizenship only apply to dual nationals is because of the United Nation's UDHR, a document ratified in 1949 by eighteen countries and chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt — four years after her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, died.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Democratic Party has
often been on the wrong side of history with
respect to Japanese relations.

As an interesting ironic side note, Eleanor Roosevelt's husband was responsible for Executive Order 9066, which violated the human rights of many U.S. nationals of Italian-American, German-American, and especially Japanese-American, decent in 1942 — about 70,000 of the 110,000 ethnic Japanese that were detained were legal U.S. nationals. U.S. President Gerald Ford officially rescinded EO 9066 thirty four years later in 1976. U.S. President Ronald Reagan approved the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 that would lead to a formal apology, via letter, to those who were affected by EO 9066. President George H.W. Bush signed the apology letters which provided reparations ($20,000/person), eventually providing redress to over 80,000 people.

A key provision in the UDHR which gives less protection to multi nationals than it does to one's final nationality is Article 15:

1. Everyone has the right to a nationality.

The key phrase in Article 15 is "a nationality" (singular); it does not say "one's nationalities" (plural). In other words, having ONE nationality is recognized as a human right / a fundamental freedom. Having additional nationalities is a not; while having more than one nationality is not a universal human right or fundamental freedom (meaning the right exists regardless of country) as recognized by the UN, it may be a right protected by individual states as a matter of sovereign decision.

Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness

The world wars of the 20th century caused a lot of nation-states to simply vanish and disappear. When this happened, the former peoples of the country did not necessarily get new nationalities to replace the nationality of the state they used to belong to.

These stateless people were recognized as a huge humanitarian problem because those who lacked a nationality lacked access to welfare and protection from a nation-state.

Thus, an international treaty was set up so that basically everybody in the world can receive a nationality, and states agreed not to remove the nationality of anybody if it would cause them to be stateless — unless the nationality was obtained fraudulently. From the Convention:

5. If a law entails loss of nationality, such loss shall be conditional upon the person acquiring another nationality. This only applies to loss by marriage, legitimation, divorce, recognition or adoption. A child that loses nationality by recognition or affiliation shall be given opportunity to reacquire by written application under terms not more rigorous than provided by Article 1(2).
6. If a law entails loss of nationality by a spouse or child by virtue of the loss of nationality by the other spouse or a parent, such loss shall be conditional on the person's possession or acquisition of another nationality.
7. Laws for the renunciation of a nationality shall be conditional upon a person's acquisition or possession of another nationality. (Exceptions: not to frustrate freedom of movement of nationals within a country, not to frustrate return of nationals to their country, not to frustrate a person's ability to seek asylum)
8. Contracting States shall not deprive people of their nationality so as to render them stateless. (Exceptions: where otherwise provided in the Convention; where nationality has been acquired by misrepresentation or fraud; disloyalty to the Contracting State).

However, for Article #8, in practical application, even those who obtained a nationality fraudulently do not usually have that nationality revoked if it's their only citizenship. For cases of discovered naturalization fraud where the applicant has already shed their other nationalities, the state will usually punish (by fine or imprisonment) the naturalized person via other local laws related to fraud.

The 2014 British Nationality Act 2014

The United Kingdom, post-9/11, has been one of the most aggressive nations in the world with respect to revoking British nationality from those suspected of terrorism, and the conditions and intent in the new Canadian C-24 bill resemble that of the 1981 British Nationality Act, section §40(2):

2. The Secretary of State may by order deprive a person of a citizenship status if the Secretary of State is satisfied that deprivation is conducive to the public good.

It first came into effect in 2006, and since 2010 the United Kingdom has removed the British citizenship of an additional 16 nationals, on top of the 37 denaturalized Britons since 9/11. This includes not just people that acquired British nationality post-birth via naturalization, but natural-born British dual nationals. The removal of citizenship almost always occurs when they are outside of United Kingdom territory, so no deportation occurs.

Once you lose your citizenship, the revoking
country can officially claim that they didn't
kill one of their citizens or nationals.

Two of these exiles have since been killed by United States drone strikes while they were in terrorist conflict zones. Another was sent to the United States for prosecution via rendition.

Similar to the current Canadian law, the old 1981 British law, section §40(4), says:

4. The Secretary of State may not make an order under subsection (2) if he is satisfied that the order would make a person stateless.

This section of the law was put to the test by the United Kingdom's Supreme Court in 2013. The U.K. was attempting to strip a man, who was born in Iraq with Iraqi citizenship, came to England as an asylum refugee, and naturalized in the year 2000. The man had been caught fighting with terrorists against U.S. and coalition forces in 2004. He has been living not in Great Britain, but in Turkey, with his third wife and four children, ever since.

The U.K. tried to remove his British citizenship. He challenged this in the high court, saying that because the 1963 Iraqi Citizenship Law No. 43 caused him to automatically lose his Iraqi citizenship upon the voluntary acquisition of another citizenship, removing his British nationality would effectively make him stateless, which was illegal.

When governments change, so do nationality laws.

However, as the government and laws of the Republic of Iraq under Saddam Hussein had been toppled, the new Iraqi (in the Transitional Period) TAL, article 11(c), automatically/involuntarily gave (new) Iraqi nationality back to him.

The Court ruled against the state, saying that because dual nationality did not exist at the time of deprivation, he effectively only had one citizenship.
In response, the U.K. revised its nationality act in 2014 with section 66, making sure that such a loss to a challenge could not happen again:

4. But that does not prevent the Secretary of State from making an order [deprivation of citizenship] under subsection (2) to deprive a person of a citizenship status if—
   1. the citizenship status results from the person's naturalisation,
   2. the Secretary of State is satisfied that the deprivation is conducive to the public good because the person, while having that citizenship status, has conducted him or herself in a manner which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the United Kingdom, any of the Islands, or any British overseas territory, and
   3. the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds for believing that the person is able, under the law of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom, to become a national of such a country or territory.

Critics of the 2014 bill's revision to British nationality policies were concerned that by aggressively removing undesirable's British citizenship rather than dealing with them directly, the United Kingdom would just encourage them to go elsewhere (such as Canada or another European country like Austria).

A New View on "Boomerang" and "Safety Net" Citizenship Laws

The 2014 British Nationality Act, section §66 4a(c), is controversial because it attempts to exploit a clause in many countries' nationality laws. Many countries have provisions intended to lessen the commitment one of their nationals must make to other countries should they choose to expatriate and naturalize to a country which does not allow multiple citizenship. They do this in one or more of the following ways:

• They do not allow their citizens to lose their citizenship. This is actually in contravention to the UDHR Article 15.2, which says that the ability to change one's (not merely "add an additional") nationality is a human right:

  2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

  Many countries in South America do not allow or make it almost impossible for a natural-born citizen, especially born jus soli, to renounce or relinquish their nationality. Interestingly, their nationality laws usually consider naturalized citizens as a lesser form of nationality in that they will allow a person who acquired their nationality via naturalization to lose their nationality. Many countries in the Americas treat naturalized citizens as lesser citizens (including the United States, which does not allow naturalized citizens to become President).
• Instant or almost instant resumption of citizenship laws. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom and France, have systems that allow you to essentially naturalize to a country that forbids dual nationality with naturalization while allowing you to almost effortlessly restore your original nationality — essentially keeping your original nationality as a "safety net". Two countries that allow this are the United Kingdom (requiring a mere completion of form RS1 — which can be done online and paid for with PayPal! — and a £823 fee) and France.
  
  The United Kingdom also has a provision in its laws that allow for one to automatically regain citizenship should one renounce it for the purposes of naturalization and for some freak reason fail to acquire a new nationality.
  
  Even Japan has Re-acquisition of Nationality procedures in its Nationality Law for those who failed to do the Choice of Nationality in time or those who were entitled to natural-born citizenship but their parents never reserved their Japanese nationality as a minor. Article 17 of the Japanese nationality law explains:

  1. A person under twenty years of age who has lost Japanese nationality in accordance with Article 12 [reserving the Japanese nationality of a child born overseas] may reacquire Japanese nationality by making notification to the Minister of Justice if he or she has a domicile in Japan.
  2. A person who has received a notice under paragraph 2 of Article 15 [Choosing Japanese Nationality as an Adult] and has lost Japanese nationality under paragraph 3 of the said Article may reacquire Japanese nationality by making notification to the Minister of Justice within one year after he or she has become aware of the fact that he or she has lost Japanese nationality, if he or she fulfills the condition set forth in item (5) of paragraph 1 of Article 5 [Willing to lose all other nationalities]. However, in the case where he or she is unable to make notification within the period due to natural calamity or any other cause not imputable to him or her, such period shall be one month after he or she becomes able to do so.
  3. The person who has made notification in accordance with the preceding two paragraphs shall acquire Japanese nationality at the time of the notification.

Easy Resumption of Nationality ability = de facto dual nationality?

If you have a net, you care less about consequences.

The interesting and controversial part of the United Kingdom's new nationality law is that it's basically saying that if they believe, due to the nationality laws of another country, that you can acquire or re-acquire that nationality with little chance of rejection (in other words, a "safety net" nationality to catch you if you should fail with your other nationality), then they will treat you like somebody that has more than one nationality from a United Nation's UDHR perspective, and they will not hesitate to strip you of your acquired U.K. nationality.

The new 2014 British Nationality Act specifically states that for this case, they will only target those who acquired British nationality through naturalization, not natural-born British citizens who acquired another nationality.

Natural-born citizenship = Naturalized citizenship

The Canadian C-24 Bill, while it will not strip those without at least two (2) nationalities of citizenship, unlike the British Act, does not differentiate between naturalized Canadian citizenship and natural born citizenship.

In other words, if you were born Canadian, then acquire another country's citizenship, then commit terrorist acts — the Canadian government can legally strip you of the citizenship you were born with.

While many countries in the world treat naturalized citizens as being less than natural-born citizens (often by excluding certain public office or servant roles for them), neither Canada nor Japan legislatively discriminate against how one obtained their citizenship.

Austria and the Citizenship Act

Austria doesn't have a problem
with its citizens serving as the
Governor of foreign states
comprising of over 37M people.

Austria is following Canada and especially the United Kingdom with similar legislation that targets dual nationals (because they can, according to the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights) that are engaged in terrorism.

Austria has a unique problem, considering the small size of its country, in that almost 100 people with Austrian citizenship are known to be self-proclaimed jihadists and are fighting in Syria's civil war.

They are debating modifying their nationality act, of which articles 32 & 33 only provide for removing the citizenship of persons serving in the public or military service of a foreign country. The problem with this outmoded article is that most jihadists and terrorists are not formally associated with any sovereign recognized nation-state's military. Austria plans to modify their nationality act to say:

Personen, die sich an bewaffneten Konflikten einer ausländischen bewaffneten Gruppierung beteiligen

which which roughly translates to "persons participating in armed conflicts in a foreign armed group".

Initially they are planning to make their law and process in compliance with the United Nation's fundamental freedoms in that they will only remove the nationality of those with more than one.

However, Austria is planning to go a step further: they believe that it is okay to cause somebody to become stateless if they do something as severe as "enters, on his own free will, the military service of a foreign state" (Article 32) or if a Austrain citizen "employed by a foreign state seriously damages the interests or the reputation of the Austrian Republic" (Article 33). The Ministry of Interior explained:

Das hohe Gut der österreichischen Staatsbürgerschaft darf durch Islamisten nicht missbraucht werden

which roughly translates to "Austrian citizenship is of great value and must not abused by Islamists".

This is actually not a flip-flip in thinking or policy for Austria, as it was one of the few countries that had officially declared reservations about the lack of exceptions for statelessness when the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness was ratified in 1972. Austria added the following to its ratification on September 22, 1972:

Austria declares to retain the right to deprive a person of his nationality, if such person enters, on his own free will, the military service of a foreign State.

Austria declares to retain the right to deprive a person of his nationality, if such person being in the service of a foreign State, conducts himself in a manner seriously prejudicial to the interests or to the prestige of the Republic of Austria.

Austria is one of the few European Union countries that will sell its citizenship to millionaire foreigners who invest in their country.

Denaturalization for Naturalization Fraud

Many countries have provisions in their naturalization laws that allow them to revoke the nationality of somebody if it turns out they did not answer truthfully or properly complete all the processes during either their naturalization application, or by extension their time prior in the country when they were a permanent resident and/or a foreign resident. This includes failing to complete required legal procedures after-the-fact such as properly giving up other nationalities.

Countries that have procedures or laws for administrative denaturalization include:

• United Kingdom
• United States
• Israel
• Australia
• Austria
• New Zealand
• Spain
• Japan

Of these countries, the country that does the most administrative denaturalizations is the United States. This makes sense statistically, as the United States naturalizes more people than the rest of the world combined.

The vast majority of present day administrative denaturalizations that America does usually follows the following pattern:

1. Naturalized American is arrested and convicted for a serious drug (usually distribution) offense.
2. This arrest uncovers prior arrests that were overlooked, not declared, or misstated, when the applicant originally applied for U.S. citizenship.
3. The person has another citizenship (which is normal, because the United States recognizes dual nationality and natural-born Mexicans as well as many natural-born citizens of South American countries are not permitted to give up their birth nationality even if they naturalize and they want to.
4. The person is deported after serving time in U.S. prison.

As of this date, Jose Suarez (Mexican nationality, acquired U.S. LPR in 1978, naturalized to U.S. citizen in 1998, arrested on drug charges a few months later, then stripped of U.S. citizenship in 2011 and deported) is the latest U.S. national to be denaturalized.

The second most common cause of denaturalization in the United States is when one is discovered as having committed World War II war crimes.

Difference between "Denaturalization" and "Administrative Denaturalization"

"Denaturalization" is when they remove your citizenship for something you did after you legitimately acquired your citizenship (either through naturalization or being born with it).

"Administrative Denaturalization" is a sub-type of denaturalization which is similar to annulling a marriage (as opposed to divorce): it is a recognition that the citizenship should have never been given to you in the first place, due to an oversight: you lied on an immigration or naturalization or permanent resident form, or you failed to complete all the requirements of naturalization yet they gave the nationality to you anyway. Administrative denaturalization is as though it is completely erased - legally, it declares that the acquired nationality never technically existed and was never valid.

Summary

It is not clear if what these countries are doing is a trend. What is clear, however, is that the policy of removing citizenship from people that have more than one is not considered controversial at the international United Nation's level from the perspective of human rights.

Some Canadians are upset with Bill C-24 because they have said that it means that not everybody's Canadian nationality is considered equal. From a domestic point of view they are correct. From an international modern human rights point of view, however, those with more than one nationality have never had the right to have all of their nationalities be considered irrevocable.