RAMADAN v. MALTA JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINION 41 and work in Malta, the loss of his Maltese passport and the loss of his second wife’s “exempt person status”57. 21. Nevertheless, the majority argue that the applicant is not threatened with expulsion from Malta and that the applicant’s two sons from his second marriage have not lost their Maltese citizenship, nor have there been any attempts in this respect by the national authorities58. Apart from signalling to the national authorities not to call into question the Maltese citizenship of the applicant’s two sons from his second marriage and not to threaten him with expulsion, this line of argument suggests what the majority expect to happen next: the applicant may apply for a work permit and subsequently a residence permit, which could eventually again make him eligible for citizenship59. The majority’s obiter dicta speak loud and clear in favour of the freezing of the applicant’s legal situation until his status is regularised in Malta. 22. I have a principled reservation to this tortuous way of thinking. As in other cases, the Court falls into the temptation of an argumentum ad ignorantiam: the lack of certainty about a future expulsion has been used to justify the present deprivation of a Convention right 60. Although the Government left the applicant in utter limbo and put his entire private, family and professional life in abeyance, the Chamber showed an inadmissible degree of tolerance towards this state of legal uncertainty. State citizenship being a core element of a person’s identity, the assessment of any decision pertaining to the acquisition, change, denial or revocation of citizenship should not depend on the degree of the risk of expulsion, still less on the Court’s speculation about such risk and about the maintenance or withdrawal of a work or residence permit. Although work and residence may impact upon an individual’s identity, they do not exhaust it. The identity of an individual is determined by much more than his or her place of work or residence. The quintessential question of a person’s 57. As the applicant himself put it, in his complaint, he and his family “are living in the constant terror that the Government will take action to expel them from the country”. Moreover, he has even suffered financially because his work has been severely affected. He used to travel abroad as part of his job, but he now cannot do so freely, because he cannot be sure that once out of the country he will be allowed to re-enter freely. On the other hand, it cannot be expected of the applicant’s family, including his two children who are Maltese nationals, that they should abandon their country of origin and leave Malta for some other foreign country, simply because their father has been deprived of his Maltese citizenship. 58. See paragraph 90 of the judgment. In Hendrick Winata and Son Lan li v. Australia, Communication No 930/2000, 26 July 2001, the Human Rights Committee held that the decision to deport two parents and to compel the family to choose whether a dependent child – a citizen – either remained alone or accompanied his parents, constituted an interference with their family life. 59. See paragraph 91 of the judgment. 60. The Court has occasionally used this fallacious argument: see my separate opinions in Biao v. Denmark [GC], no. 38590/10, 24 May 2016, Chiragov and Others v. Armenia [GC], no. 13216/05, 16 June 2015, and S.J. v. Belgium, no. 70055/10, 19 March 2015.