Value of British Citizenship under threat

Xmas party gets attention while bill threatening citizenship rights is largely ignored

By Ricky Browne

While the UK media remains fixated on whether or not there was a Christmas party at 10 Downing St on December 18 last year – there are actually things of greater importance happening, that few people seem to be paying attention to.

One is increasing alarm over the newest Covid-19 variant – Omricon – which is looking like it could be more serious than the previous Delta, and could see a million new cases per day.

That is getting some attention – but what is not is the move by Home Secretary Priti Patel to pass a the Nationality and Borders Bill which would increase the power of the state to remove British citizenship from any individual, particularly those who were born abroad.

It doesn’t matter if the person has another citizenship – an individual could go on holiday and on his return find out that he is denied entry because he is no longer a British citizen.

The suggested move is atrocious, and is the kind of move that countries in Africa,– such as Uganda under Idi Amin – dropped on their citizens of Indian descent.

One would imagine that Priti Patel, whose parents came to this country from Africa, would have some understanding of the negative repercussions of such a move.

Under the proposed policy, people like her parents, could be first in line to risk having their citizenship removed. Indeed, the same could be said of the parents of at least three other members of the Conservative parliament – including Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi.

All are first generation British citizens, with parents who originated elsewhere. And they aren’t the only ones.

The move would also affect yours truly. I am British, with British roots that go back perhaps a thousand years and more — but I was born elsewhere. Am I now a second rate British citizen, relying on the good graces of the government to not deny me my rights?

This move works as an excellent way of preventing prospective immigrants from looking to starting a new life in this country.

That is the point. But if this move had been in effect in the 1960s, the parents of several members of the current government may have tried instead to move to the United States or Canada or Australia or somewhere in Europe.

The target, of course, is those first generation British citizens who have betrayed their country by joining ISIS or other terrorist groups.

But this is could be the thin edge of the wedge, which opens the door for a much wider group.

Why doesn’t the UK media get excited over this, instead of this Xmas party. This policy would lose the Conservatives the support of thousands of first generation British people. In a tight election, it could be enough to give Labour power, if that party does not support the move.

The UK needs to own its citizens, all of them, even those who are traitors – and deal with them accordingly by law. That means putting first generation British terrorists through the law process, so that they may be locked up if found guilty – whether they are British with roots going back a thousand years, or first generation British with roots in Bangladesh, the Caribbean or Ireland or wherever else.

To remove British citizenship from its own citizens, the government would make the UK a less popular location – not just for wanna-be terrorists, but also tech-entrepreneurs and future billionaires who admire this country for its liberty and rule of law.

The fact that the media would rather get excited over an Xmas party, with undercurrents of the Prime Minister (who became a new father again today) being forced to resign – is the kind of navel gazing, fiddle playing  issue that prevents the population from realizing that Rome is burning.

It would put the UK into the same category as Idi Amin’s Uganda – though even Amin at least gave citizens of Indian descent some warning before removing their citizenship. The UK at that time opened its arms for thousands of those people, just as it is now opening its arms for many of the threatened citizens of Hong Kong.

If the UK goes down this route, it will lose thousands of future immigrants who don’t desire to swap the uncertainty of life in their home country for uncertainty of second-class citizenship in the UK – Brexit or not.