UNMAKING CITIZENS: THE EXPANSION OF CITIZENSHIP REVOCATION IN RESPONSE TO TERRORISM response to contemporary forms of terrorism.22 The Act “recognises that Australian citizenship is a common bond, involving reciprocal rights and obligations, and that citizens may, through certain conduct incompatible with the shared values of the Australian community, demonstrate that they have severed that bond and repudiated their allegiance to Australia.”23 It defines: (1) the Australian state’s ability to revoke citizenship; (2) a citizen’s actions that may warrant revocation; (3) legal procedures for revoking citizenship; and (4) to whom revocation may apply.24 It applies to dual citizens, regardless of how they obtained Australian citizenship, whether by birth, naturalization, or other means (e.g., marriage). Additionally, the Act applies to individuals as young as 14 years of age and provides that once citizenship is revoked, there will be no chance of renaturalization. According to the Act, citizenship revocation may apply to individuals who engage in an array of activities that are legally understood to be national security threats. Individuals with dual citizenship who engage in such acts renounce their citizenship “by conduct.”25 This means that if an individual does something that equates to terrorism or an act against the state, he or she effectively renounces citizenship. According to the Act, “a person who is a national or citizen of a country other than Australia renounces their Australian citizenship [emphasis on dual nationals] if the person acts inconsistently with their allegiance to Australia.”26 While there are eight specified activities or actions that warrant revocation, each is related in some way to terrorism.27 These include, but are not limited to engaging in armed military-like activities with a declared enemy state or terrorist organization outside of Australia and conviction of terrorism and other criminal offenses.28 The Act remains controversial and because it is relatively new (2015), there is limited scholarship on the law and its immediate impacts on Australians or its implications for the Australian legal landscape. Prior to the Act’s enactment, between 1948 and mid-2015, only 16 individuals had their citizenship revoked by the government based on older legislation (Sales, 2015).29 Since its enactment in December 2015, there has been only one example of citizenship revocation.30 As of 2017, the Turnbull government continued to push this policy forward and is attempting to make it even more difficult to obtain citizenship through naturalization.31 Canada Canada’s citizenship revocation policy is reflected in the Citizenship Act and Bill C-24 Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act of 2014. This Act and its immediate predecessor C-425 (Shory Bill) were part of the Harper government’s push for more security-influenced policies on citizenship and migration, which became major 22 Tim Vines, “The ‘allegiance to Australia’ bill: arguably unconstitutional, definitely questionable,” The Guardian, June 24, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/24/the-allegiance-to-australia-bill-arguably-unconstitutional-definitelyquestionable; Sonawane, “Australia Passes Law To Strip Terror Convicts Of Citizenship.” 23 Ibid. 24 Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Act 2015 (Cth) (Austl.). 25 Id. 26 Id, s 33AA. 27 Id. 28 Id. 29 Leigh Sales, “Not making someone stateless ‘most important’ says Peter Dutton on terrorism-related laws,” Australian Broadcasting Corporation, June 1, 2015, http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4246600.htm. 30 Rayner Thwaites, Report on Citizenship Law: Australia (Florence, Italy: European Union Democracy Observatory on Citizenship, 2017); Jane Norman and Caitlyn Gribbin, “Islamic State fighter Khaled Sharrouf becomes first to lose citizenship under anti-terror laws,” Australian Broadcasting Corporation, February 10, 2017, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-11/islamic-state-fighterkhaled-sharrouf-stripped-of-citizenship/8262268. 31 Gareth Hutchens, “Peter Duttton pressures Labor to support Coalition’s citizenship crackdown,” The Guardian, June 11, 2017. Center for Migration Studies of New York | 4