Haitian descent. Yet it was less widely reported that the transformation did not happen overnight, and that rather, as may be observed in the United States today, assaults on the stability of citizenship for the population of Haitian descent began many years earlier, with low-level denials of the authenticity of birth records. This case study mirrors in unsettling ways the denial and deprivation of proof of citizenship faced by communities like MexicanAmericans living along the U.S.-Mexico border and Yemeni-Americans living in Yemen. The United Kingdom began implementing an aggressive nationality deprivation program as a national security measure during Theresa May’s tenure as home secretary in the early 2000s, following the attacks of September 11, 2001. These practices are linked with other exceptional measures instituted to supposedly safeguard national security in the context of countering terrorist threats, such as exclusion of nationals from returning to the United Kingdom and an elaborate regime of secret evidence in national security cases. In the United Kingdom, deprivation of nationality is disproportionately exercised against citizens with dual nationality. This has resulted in gross disparities in the vulnerability of ethnic and religious minorities, in particular British Muslims, to insecure citizenship, and in a growing sentiment that they hold second-class status in society. In Canada, changes to the nationality law that would allow deprivation of nationality resulting in statelessness were recently overridden, and efforts to institute a “fast-track” administrative process to speed up citizenship revocation in cases of suspected fraud were struck down in the courts. These changes occurred in the context of concerted national civil society resistance to measures that threatened to diminish the status of citizenship as a right, not a privilege, and that conflicted with Canada’s international legal obligations to avoid the creation of statelessness. Following this contextual overview, the specific policies and practices at play in the United States will be presented and analyzed, informed by insights drawn from this chapter. Citizenship and Its Deprivation in the United States: A Brief History Foundations: The Constitution, Citizenship, and Equality The United States Constitution articulates principles of individual freedom, including rejecting the concept of “fealty to blood.”15 These political ideals are deeply embedded in the founding myths and historical record of the United States.16 Those with aspirations to serve as Members of Congress, for example, need only hold American citizenship for seven years to be eligible for the office. As one scholar has noted, “[T]he framers of the Constitution understood [age, alienage, property and religious restrictions] as forms of political oppression. The door to the United States was meant to be open.”17 As U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall plainly stated in 1824, a naturalized American is “distinguishable in nothing from a native citizen, except so far as the Constitution makes the distinction.”18 20 UNMAKING AMERICANS