2017] Citizenship Stripping Laws in the UK, Canada and Australia 39 security objectives. Each country had extensive pre-existing laws directed towards the same set of problems. While governments in all three countries asserted that citizenship stripping laws were needed to supplement and fill gaps in these existing laws, no reasoned argument was made for why this was the case, or what specific value the new laws would add to the national security toolkits of the three nations. Moreover, the use of the laws in each country shows that they have not, in practice, served as a useful national security device. This conclusion flows in part from the fact that the laws themselves have been so little used, despite the fact their breadth means they could be very broadly applied. In Australia, the laws have only been used once, against an individual whose whereabouts are unknown and who has been reported dead. In Canada, the laws’ sole use while in force was against an individual who posed no foreseeable security threat because he was serving a sentence of life imprisonment. In the UK, denationalisation laws saw very infrequent use for several years but since 2010 have come to be much more regularly employed. Despite this, documented examples showcase a number of instances in which invocation of the Home Secretary’s revocation powers has had insignificant or negative effect. Several of the citizenship stripping cases in the UK showcase protracted and expensive legal battles that can take years to resolve.203 These cases demonstrate that citizenship stripping efforts can be frustrated when foreign governments take steps to divest a person of their second citizenship or deny the existence of this citizenship.204 Moreover, the UK denationalisation laws have predominantly been used against persons outside the UK, whose return to the UK could have been prevented or at least managed via other measures, such as TEOs and passport cancellation orders. Collectively, the experiences in the three countries suggest that the new citizenship revocation powers have done little to meaningfully enhance national security. Indeed, several commentators, including those who adopt the view 203 See, eg, Hamza (n 51); Al-Jedda (n 61). 204 See, eg, Hamza (n 51); Pham (n 91);. While the introduction of a power to revoke UK citizenship even where a person does not have a foreign citizenship mitigates this, it does not resolve the question of where a denationalised person goes, in practice, if no foreign government is willing to accept them: Goodwin-Gill, ‘Deprivation of Citizenship Resulting in Statelessness and Its Implications in International Law’ (n 90) 7, quoting United Kingdom, Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 30 January 2014, vol 574, col 1081 (Pete Wishart). Advance Copy