CITIZENSHIP: FROM RIGHT TO PRIVILEGE > the precarious and conditional nature of dual nationals’ citizenship ‘create[s] … a second category of citizen, [breaching] the fundamental underlying principle of equality of all her Majesty’s subjects’; 25 > it ‘equat[es] dual-national British citizens with foreign nationals’; 26 > it means that ‘Like Roman Catholics in previous ages, immigrants (sic) are obliged to go on proving their loyalty even after citizenship has been granted’;27 > ‘The message … is that British citizenship is some kind of commodity, not a matter of birthright, that Ministers can take away on political grounds’;28 > ‘In the 21st century, misdemeanours by a citizen should be dealt with by prosecution rather than exile … It cannot be necessary to remove the nationality of a minority ethnic national but not that of a majority ethnic national’;29 > ‘The status of citizenship, as the grounding principle of state membership, simply ought to be a status which admits of no gradations or rankings … the UK’s new denationalisation provisions … treat dual nationals as inferior citizens’.30 As noted above, the vast majority of those deprived of citizenship since 2003 have been British Muslims. As Arun Kundnani said in 2014, ‘… the equal citizenship of Muslims is, in practice, precariously dependent on their being able to prove their allegiance to ill-defined Western values.’31 Colonial legacies The hierarchy of citizenship created by the deprivation powers recalls the British state’s treatment of its former colonial subjects in earlier times. The ‘Kenyan Asians’ scandal of 1968 demonstrated the ruthlessness as well as the racism of a former colonial power in stripping ethnic minority citizens of residence rights and devaluing their citizenship. In 1968, 200,000 British passport holders, residents of Kenya, of Indian heritage, who had opted to retain UK & Colonies citizenship instead of becoming Kenyan citizens on independence, were suddenly deprived of their right to enter their country of nationality on racial grounds: > When the Kenyan government adopted an ‘Africanisation policy’ and began expelling UK & Colonies citizens of south Asian heritage, they tried to come to the UK; > The British government pushed through an Act in days, which decreed that only those citizens whose ancestors were from the UK, rather than a colony, had entry rights to the UK;32 25 Immigration Bill, Report stage, HC Deb 30 January 2014, vol 574, col 1086. 26 HL Deb 19 January 2006, Vol 677, col GC269. 27 ‘It’s wrong to strip Abu Hamza of his citizenship’, Independent, 3 April 2003 (reissued 8 December 2013). 28 Lord Lester, debate on Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill, HL Deb 8 July 2002, vol 637, cols 500501. 29 Memorandum to the Joint Committee on Human Rights from the Society of Legal Scholars (Immigration and Refugee Law section), JCHR 17th report of 2001-02, Appendix 8. 30 ‘Should citizenship be conditional? Denationalisation and liberal principles’. 31 Kundnani, The Muslims are coming! p88. 32 Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968. 11