The U.S. Wants to Seize Your Passport…Here’s What You Can Do About It
By Nick Giambruno
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a talented Russian writer and outspoken critic of the Soviet Union’s totalitarianism. He helped raise global awareness of the Gulag forced labor camp system.
For his efforts, the Soviet government stripped him of his citizenship in 1974. It did the same – and worse – to many other people it considered internal enemies.
The Nazi government revoked German citizenship from people it deemed undesirable, like the Jews.
After Castro came to power in Cuba, his government made Cuban citizens apply for exit visas before leaving the island. It did not grant them easily.
In recent years, many of the Persian Gulf monarchies – not exactly bastions of individual liberty – have passed laws making it easier to revoke the citizenship of anyone working “against the interests” of the state or of anyone who has who failed “the duty of loyalty.”
In recent years, these Arab monarchies have used these laws to strip hundreds of people of their citizenship. Most of these people were advocates of political reform. Some even lost their citizenship because of mere social media postings.
All of these Arab monarchies are close allies of the U.S. government. Keep that in mind next time you hear a pundit or politician advocating U.S. military intervention ostensibly for the sake of protecting human rights or promoting democracy. But that’s a story for another day.
The point here is, arbitrarily revoking citizenship and forcing people to stay where they are have always been hallmarks of an authoritarian regime. When a government starts these outrageous practices, it’s usually a harbinger of things to come.
Unfortunately, these practices are becoming more common in so-called liberal democracies for increasingly trivial offenses.
Here are a few recent examples of this disturbing trend:
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