Thread by @allthecitizens

🚨Over 100 British organisations have signed a joint letter to the House of Lords opposing the government’s controversial Nationality and Borders Bill. 🧵

The letter calls for an amendment protecting the rights of ethnic minority citizens in Britain, in the face of the proposed new ‘blanket’ powers to revoke citizenship without notice.
thelondonpost.net/over-100-briti…

The Bill, which enters its second reading in the House of Lords today, has been widely condemned as ‘overtly racist’, and that it would render many British citizens of African, Caribbean and Asian descent “second class citizens”.
independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…

The specific amendment to the Bill, clause 9 - “Notice of decision to deprive a person of citizenship” - was quietly added earlier on its journey through parliament, with the proposal enabling government to strip people of citizenship without notice if “reasonably practicable”

To-date, over 300,000 people have signed a petition calling for the removal of clause 9, with the addition to the bill currently risking the security of 6 million Brits of dual citizenship, building on previous legislation introduced in 2006 and 2014.
newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…

Prior to clause 9, the government had also been granted powers to remove the citizenship of those it believed could claim for it elsewhere, with the new additions meaning that notice in certain instances would no longer need to be given.

While the powers to remove citizenship already existed, the amendment is likely a reaction to the D4 case, where the High Court that a Home Office decision to revoke citizenship without notice was overturned as it was considered unlawful.
theconversation.com/stripping-brit…

The Bill has also been accused by human rights lawyers of breaching international and domestic law in at least 10 ways, unfairly targeting people who travel to the UK by irregular means and representing “the biggest legal assault on international refugee law ever seen in the UK”.

Proposals set out would criminally penalise those asylum seekers entering the country through unsafe means, entitling them to fewer rights while, it is argued, failing to protect lives, strengthen routes or protections, clear backlogs, or deter entry.
amnesty.org.uk/nationality-bo…

Critics have also pointed out there are no safe ways to claim asylum, rendering anyone who does subject to the effects of being criminalised by the Bill, and further that government has failed to provide safe routes, instead focussing on criminalising those forced to seek asylum.