Comment by logicallee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by logicallee | Hacker News Reader

Below is my personal opinion on this matter. I'm a U.S. citizen.

America is one of the countries that grants the most rights to its citizens. This is enshrined in the constitution.

The constitution has always been a thorn in the side of anyone who wants to establish a top-down dictatorship in America.

Imagine a case where such a person or people decide to target certain Americans.

If it is possible to renounce citizenship and the rights it comes with, people might target them with demands that they do so, hence depriving them of their constitutional rights and protections.

The entire bill of rights only applies to U.S. citizens.

For these reasons and to avoid this possibility, in my personal opinion in order to safeguard liberty, it should not be easy, or even possible, to renounce citizenship and the rights it comes with.

If it is possible to renounce constitutional protections, someone could force people to do so.

Hypothetically, imagine if a police officer broke into your home and handcuffed you to a radiator until you were willing to renounce your citizenship.

I personally feel that this is not a scenario that should be possible.

To avoid this scenario, I think that it should not be possible to renounce U.S. citizenship and the rights it comes with.

Not everyone want to be american: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_American

That what courts and police are for. I am pretty sure it would be invalidated if you proved that it was under duress. But i have never heard about anyone forcing citizenship renounciation. But some people have legitimate reasons to do so, e.g. bojo: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/08/boris-johns...

Perhaps part of why you haven't heard of anyone forcing citizenship renunciation is that renunciation is difficult and uncommon. I think that is a good thing and it should stay that way.

"I am pretty sure [the renunciation] would be invalidated if you proved that it was under duress."

I'm curious about your thinking on this point. Could you list the forms of evidence a person who renounced citizenship under duress could adduce to prove the renunciation was done under duress?

I'm pretty sure an audio tape of "Tell you what. Since you hate me and America so much, denounce your citizenship and I'll let you go live a peaceful life back wherever you came from" while the person is chained to a radiator would not count, even though under the circumstances this is a form of duress.

I don't think you are correct that any court would overturn it, regardless of any evidence introduced.

For this reason, I personally feel that it should not be possible to renounce citizenship, specifically to prevent this possibility from happening.

Clearly a police officer breaking into your house to force you into renouncing your citizenship has no regard for the law, so why are they bothering?

"no regard for the law, so why are they bothering" - police and other members of law enforcement go in front of judges all the time, it's very common for them to be in court.

I think you missed the point. It's not very common for them to imprison you in your own home until you renounce your US citizenship. Any police officer who did so is by that action demonstrating no regard for the law. In particular, they can't expect that your "decision" to renounce citizenship will be recognized as valid in court of law.

Why does it matter that they go to court all the time for other things? For this thing, were it to happen, the court would not recognize the validity of their actions.

I assumed that when you renounce your citizenship, there is no judge involved, it is automatic.

In that case, preventing coerced renunciations is easier than allowing anyone to renounce their citizenship but trying to allow the renunciation to be overturned and the citizenship reinstated afterward if it was based on coercion.

"There is no judge involved"? Seems likely.

"It is automatic"? Depends on what you mean by "automatic".

In the hypothetical situation, a cop is holding me prisoner in my house until I say the magic words "I renounce my US citizenship", I'm pretty sure that nothing actually happens when I say those words. For example, my passport does not get revoked. (For that to happen when I say those words would require someone monitoring listening devices in my house, 24/7. We aren't there yet, fortunately.)

No, my passport would not be revoked until someone fills out and submits a form. (And some time after that, if I know bureaucracy.) Well, who fills out the form? The cop? Are the passport people going to accept the form from some random cop who recorded me saying the magic words?

Even if they accept the form from the cop... what am I going to be doing while the bureaucratic process does its thing? I'm going to be talking to my buddy the attorney, and my buddy the cop, and my buddy the retired cop, and my buddy the retired FBI agent. And somewhere along the way, someone is probably going to say something like: "Hey, he was trying to get you to renounce your citizenship - you should make sure that he didn't start something moving along those lines. And if he did, you should make it clear to them that it was under coercion, and therefore is not a valid request." And if I have to get a judge involved somewhere along the way, under the circumstances, I can probably do so.

So, it may be "automatic" - but it's not all that automatic.

Disclaimer: I don't work in citizenship law. I am just some rando on the internet. I say what I think, but I don't actually know how this would play out.

The Bill of Rights is not just for US Citizens but for immigrants as well, I think.

And I don't think American citizens living in other countries are protected by the second amendment...

I thought rights were inalienable rather than granted by the state

Within the philosophical viewpoint that led to the Declaration of Independence, yes. Almost all governments aren't operating within that philosophy, though. (In fact, the US isn't, either[1].) So in practice, most governments do not grant to their citizens the same rights that the US does, no matter whether or not people should have those rights simply by virtue of being human.

[1] "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights..." That is, God gave us certain rights, and nobody - not king or president, not parliament or Congress - has the legitimate authority to take them away. The US government does not operate on the basis of God-given rights; it operates on the basis of Constitution-given rights. It has done so, I think, ever since the Constitution.

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