Thread by @JolyonMaugham

Next week we will publish advice from @RazaRazahusain and Eleanor Mitchell, instructed by @LeighDay_Law, on the removal of citizenship provision in the Nationality and Borders Bill.

In the meantime, I want to make some points about what that clause does. THREAD

The brilliant @WindrushLives account has tracked the extension over time of the power to remove citizenship but, as matters stand, the Home Secretary can remove citizenship if she is satisfied that doing so is "conducive to the public good". /1

That account has also explained how the power to remove citizenship can sometimes be exercised even if the consequence is that it will leave someone without citizenship of anywhere or "stateless". /2

Clause 9 of the Bill marks yet a further extension: the Home Secretary doesn't even need to tell the person who is being deprived of their citizenship of that fact where she thinks it's not in the public interest to tell them. /3

What I want to focus on is the world those provisions create - with one legal regime applying to people who have no relevant links to countries other than the UK (who I will call 'Indigenous citizens') and another regime for people who have those links ('Contingent citizens'). /4

The first and most obvious point to make is that Indigenous citizens will be overwhelmingly white and Contingent citizens - obviously I call them 'Contingent citizens' because their citizenship is contingent - will be disproportionately black or brown. /5

So the world those provisions create will be a world that will have disproportionate impacts on those who are black or brown. That is one reason why people - including me - are describing the provisions as "racist". /6

The other reason why the provisions, I think, are racist is this.

A real world constraint - not one which is in the law but one which is nevertheless real - on the use of the provisions is how much social capital is possessed by the person who is the subject of their use. /7

I have citizenship of New Zealand and it's not at all difficult to imagine a Home Secretary concluding that in her opinion my continued residency in the UK is not conducive to the public good. But she would never dare use those powers against me because of my social capital. /8

But social capital - like most other forms of capital - is not distributed neutrally across different skin colours. So, for example, a black campaigner would not have the same non-legal protections against use of the powers as I have. /9

So what I've tried to show is that the world created by the provisions is a racist world with different impacts for Indigenous citizens (who are very likely to be white) and Contingent citizens (who are much more likely to be black or brown).

But what are those impacts? /11

If you are a Contingent citizen the provisions will cast a shadow over everything you do.

Will you, for example, feel able to exercise your right to protest if it may have as its consequence the removal of your citizenship? /12

The provisions don't even have as a precondition for their exercise that you committed a criminal offence.

For example, not so long ago (theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/m…) large numbers of people faced deportation after lawfully amending their tax return. /13

The provisions create a racist regime for Contingent citizens - which is not controlled by rules of evidence; for 'misconduct' which is nowhere specified; which has no safeguards; and which carries the sanction of statelessness for those the Home Secretary deems 'wrongdoers'. /14

Many will assert - I understand it to be what the Government is briefing - that this is scaremongering and the provisions would never be used improperly.

To them I would say two things: first, if it is not intended that they be used widely why draw them so widely?

Second, even if you are sanguine about how Priti Patel might use the provisions, how can you know how a future Home Secretary, one more extreme than she is, might use them to control the conduct of, or punish without safeguards, Contingent citizens that they dislike? /ENDS