christinahust asked this question on 3/23/2000:

should the US be able to take the second citicenship away from people who commit a crime? sould we be able to kick these people out of the country and not allow them to have the priviledges of an american citizen?

clarka gave this response on 3/23/2000:

A "should" question calls for personal opinion. There are the following "pros and cons" to allowing the criminal justice system to revoke citizenship from dual-citizenship offenders:

pro: deterrence, incapacitation of multiple-citizenship offenders (through deportation)

con: relatively small number of "dual citizenship" offenders, Federal involvement required for such proceedings (where most crimes are tried in state courts), additional expense of sentencing for such offenders

Note that citizenship is granted by birth or naturalization; i.e. those born in the United States have no other citizenship except in special cases (such as dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship), and naturalized persons generally give up their birth country's citizenship, or perhaps never had one (as is the case with refugees or "stateless persons"). Dual citizenship is rather rare for this reason.

In practice the U.S. holds in custody alien felons who have not yet been deported, sometimes because their country of origin will not take them back and sometimes because they would merely re-enter the U.S. and reoffend (particularly across the Mexican border, which sees significant "illegal" crossings which are in practice vital to border state economies.) Perhaps it would be better to resolve their fate before focusing on dual-citizenship felons.

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