The New Precariousness of Naturalization
This topic is of personal interest to me, because I have several friends who are naturalized citizens. In past years, the revocation of naturalized citizenship has been a rare event, generally reserved for the concealment of serious crimes in one's past. Most of those cases related to people who had been involved in mass persecutions and genocides, particularly those related to the Third Reich.
In the last several years, denaturalizations have become much more common. Instead of being the result of having concealed one's past as a guard at an extermination camp or the like, it is increasingly a matter of relatively small concealments, or even ordinary errors in paperwork.
This parallels an increasingly harsh enforcement of border controls, often against tourists who just wanted to quick visit a sight on the other side of the border. In past years, if you were turned away at one point of entry, it was common to go to another and see if the Border Patrol at it would be in a better mood. Now, with everything computerized and in a central database, going to a second point of entry is treated as attempted fraudulent entry, and can get a person banned from the US for years, or even for life.
And very little of it is making any actual difference in the number of people crossing illegally on our southern border, or the number of people entering legally, then overstaying their visas and working under the table (which is the case with most of the Irish and Polish immigrants here illegally). Often it's cracking down on honest people making an honest mistake because they're the easiest to catch and aren't apt to attack Border Patrol officials.
In the last several years, denaturalizations have become much more common. Instead of being the result of having concealed one's past as a guard at an extermination camp or the like, it is increasingly a matter of relatively small concealments, or even ordinary errors in paperwork.
This parallels an increasingly harsh enforcement of border controls, often against tourists who just wanted to quick visit a sight on the other side of the border. In past years, if you were turned away at one point of entry, it was common to go to another and see if the Border Patrol at it would be in a better mood. Now, with everything computerized and in a central database, going to a second point of entry is treated as attempted fraudulent entry, and can get a person banned from the US for years, or even for life.
And very little of it is making any actual difference in the number of people crossing illegally on our southern border, or the number of people entering legally, then overstaying their visas and working under the table (which is the case with most of the Irish and Polish immigrants here illegally). Often it's cracking down on honest people making an honest mistake because they're the easiest to catch and aren't apt to attack Border Patrol officials.