Unmaking Americans: Insecure Citizenship in the United States
In the United States, citizenship is a unifying force built around a core set of commonly agreed ideals, including the inherent equality of all people. Yet U.S. citizenship law and practice are marked by gaps, weaknesses, and opportunities for arbitrary decision-making. Today, those gaps and weaknesses are being exploited to take U.S. citizenship away from members of marginalized groups.
This report and corresponding fact sheet document three techniques currently being used to attack the identity and sense of belonging of U.S. citizens:
- denaturalizations, which is the stripping of U.S. citizenship from naturalized Americans
- denial and revocation of U.S. passports, which is the discretionary deprivation of Americans' proof of citizenship
- political attacks on citizenship by birth, which has normalized policy proposals that would fundamentally alter American society by denying U.S. citizenship to children born in the U.S. to non-citizens
Unmaking Americans looks at the costs of these initiatives, providing first-hand accounts from affected U.S. citizens. The report also shows how current efforts to destabilize the security of citizenship for certain groups fit within historical patterns of politicians seeking to manipulate xenophobia for political gain, and offers recommendations for reform that would prevent further abuse.
Unmaking Americans: Insecure Citizenship in the United States—Fact Sheet
This fact sheet outlines how existing gaps in citizenship protections increase the vulnerability of citizens because of their race, national origin, religion, political opinion or a combination of factors.
A New Report Warns of Looming Threat to U.S. Citizenship, Calls for Moratorium on Denaturalizations
A new Open Society Justice Initiative report warns of a looming threat to U.S. citizenship due to the Trump administration’s effective renunciation of longstanding norms and constitutional protections.
A Looming Threat to Equal Citizenship in America
A new report by Open Society Justice Initiative argues that three techniques are currently being used by the U.S. government to attack the identity and sense of belonging of U.S. citizens.
