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Comment by candiodari | Hacker News Reader

Look at the changes in immigration laws. 15 years ago citizenship within 5 years was an option in a bunch of places. Now 10 years at 100% (not 95%) employment is the minimum, despite labor shortages. And, more worrying, now just about every country has laws about taking away citizenship from people, even people born in the country.

Sparingly used so far, but in a bunch of places these laws could be applied very widely without changes to the law (ie. it would not require a 2/3 majority or anything like that, just an executive that changes a few judges around). The next Trump (probably "Le Pen" - remember that name, you'll be hearing it a lot) will make that happen, and she's probably got 40-45% of the vote (right now it might even be 60%, but that's mostly because everyone hates Macron). We are one election away from that happening.

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Being born in a country is not grounds for citizenship in most of Europe. Jus Solis is only common in the Americas.

While I don't agree with a lot of the far right rhetoric, I can understand the reason why people are fed up with immigration. Skilled labor is mostly excluded from all the laws on immigration. The intended target of the policies are people of MENA origin. 40 years of mostly failures with integrating them into the work force and picking up the tab for them leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

I mean that citizenship can now be taken away, in most of Europe, from people who have it and were born in the country and don't have any other citizenships (which is a direct violation of Human Rights: it's not allowed to take someone's last citizenships. Only double citizenships can be taken away)

Also, I doubt very much that worldwide competition for skilled labor is a real problem for voters of right-wing parties. Or left-wing parties for that matter. Skilled labor is just not a sufficient percentage of the population to matter for voting.

As an Italian the government can’t really take away my citizenship (there are only 2 cases in which it can and both involve working for a foreign government and refusing to cease to work for it). And with my citizenship I can work everywhere in the EU. In fact I have been living for the past 15 years in France and I have no intention to get the French citizenship.

I'm not sure about Italy. But right now in France the situation is that the French government certainly can take away anyone's citizenship, without much justification. They just, at the moment, don't do it. You have to be an "enemy of the state", but there is no definition what that means. I find it very hard to believe this is merely an oversight.

And like I said, all it would take is a change in the executive.

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