Country Stripping

From the Globe and Mail:
"Government challenged on right to revoke citizenship"

A Toronto lawyer is challenging the Conservative government’s right to revoke the citizenship of Canadians with dual nationality, including those born in this country, if they commit serious crimes such as terrorism here or abroad. Rocco Galati filed the challenge in Federal Court on Wednesday, citing two cases from the turn of the 20th century in which the government of British Columbia tried to deny certain rights of citizenship to Chinese and Japanese immigrants and their Canadian-born children. He says that nothing in Canada’s 1867 or 1982 Constitution allows Parliament to revoke the citizenship of the native-born. “They don’t have the constitutional authority to touch this,” he said in an interview. “Certain things can’t be touched.” The government did not respond directly to the issues raised by the challenge on Wednesday. The Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, which became law this month, allows the government to revoke the citizenship of dual nationals convicted of crimes such as terrorism, treason and espionage, or who take up arms against Canada. “We’re talking about revocation of dual nationals, wherever they’re born, for very rare and very serious crimes,” Mr. Alexander has said. (Citizenship can also be taken away if people lie, or commit fraud, on their application.) Britain passed a law last month that goes even further, allowing the government to take away citizenship from those with only one nationality, leaving individuals stateless. The country has stripped 42 people of their citizenship since 2006, under a previous version of the law.

^ I think a country should be able to revoke the citizenship of something who is a naturalized citizen of that country (ie someone who too a test to be made a citizen), but not of anyone who is considered a native-born citizen of that country regardless if they are also a citizen of another country. I am considered a native-citizen of both the US and Canada (as are hundreds of thousands of others) While I am interested in learning all that I can about Canada I admit I considered myself an American first (mostly because from the time I was born until 2009 I was not considered a Canadian citizen by the  Canadian Government due to their discriminatory citizenship laws that lasted until 1977 and weren't changed to include those whose relatives or themselves were stripped of their citizenship before 1977. I'm sure had I grown-up knowing I was a dual citizen I would have tried to learn about both countries equally.It seems the Canadian Government is simply moving their citizenship laws to the old discriminatory pre-1977 ways. Of course I don't like terrorists, criminals, etc but just because I don't like them or what they stand for doesn't mean I think a Government should give itself Carte Blanche to do whatever it wants to do (especially when you consider that it would mostly affect ordinary people or those with minor abuses (vs terrorism) ^

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/government-challenged-on-right-to-revoke-citizenship/article19345551/