# Can A Non Naturalized US Citizen Have His Citizenship Revoked? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 20, 2011, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-non-naturalized-us-citizen-have-his-citizenship-revoked/593450 "2011-08-20T18:33:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-non-naturalized-us-citizen-have-his-citizenship-revoked/593450/21 "2011-08-21T09:35:04Z")
> [@Peanuthead](#): > > To further the OP, what happens if one revokes, voluntarily or otherwise, citizenship? Are you deported? To where? Can you be doomed to life at sea a la Phillip Nolan? (from the short story “Man Without a Country”? Or are you just denied the normal rights of citizenship? Voting, etc. Someone that doesn’t have any citizenship of any country is “stateless” and is in a world of pain. > **[Statelessness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_person)** > > In international law, a stateless person is someone who is, “Not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law". Some stateless people are also refugees. However, not all refugees are stateless, and many people who are stateless have never crossed an international border. At the end of 2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees published an estimation of 4.4 million people worldwide as either stateless or of undetermined nationality, 90,800 (+2%) more tha The... Presumably the only reason that the US would in practise revoke citizenship is for fighting for a foreign army, in which that person would have the citizenship of another country and thus not end up stateless. It seems that recently the US did try and revoke citizenship of one person that fought for the Taliban in Afghanistan and the courts overturned it. In the end they did a deal where he voluntarily renounced his citizehship in order to be released: > **[Yaser Esam Hamdi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaser_Esam_Hamdi)** > > Yaser Esam Hamdi (Arabic: ياسر عصام حمدي; born September 26, 1980) is a former American citizen who was captured in Afghanistan in 2001. The United States government claims that he was fighting with the Taliban against U.S. and Afghan Northern Alliance forces. He was declared an "illegal enemy combatant" by the Bush administration and detained for almost three years without charge. On October 9, 2004, on the condition that he renounce his U.S. citizenship and commit to travel prohibitions and oth... ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-non-naturalized-us-citizen-have-his-citizenship-revoked/593450/22 "2011-08-21T12:54:10Z")
I know one person who did renounce US citizenship in 1969. He lived in Detroit. Draft notice in hand, he crossed the river to Windsor, got on the first train to Montreal and went to the US consulate to renounce his citizenship. (It was real easy to get a Canadian immigration visa in those days.) Even then, someone counseled him against it and he had to sign all sorts of papers. Until he could become a Canadian citizen, he had to travel on something called, I believe, a Nansen passport, which required him to get visas for any country he visited. He was under indictment in the US, although that was eventually dropped and he travels freely to the US and other countries. Even then, it was not so easy to renounce. Even becoming a citizen did not automatically result in renunciation. It helped that Canada did not require renunciation of other citizenships. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-non-naturalized-us-citizen-have-his-citizenship-revoked/593450/23 "2011-08-21T13:58:55Z")
So, the answer to OP is that the law says the US government can NOT “revoke” birth citizenship of its own initiative: \* the individual\* has to act in such a manner as to _give it up_, and _then_ the government can officially point out that s/he has done so; and it’s not easy. In real-world terms the various laws and requirements many countries impose to affirm that you renounce other allegiances in the process of claiming theirs are often viewed as something of a ceremonial formality, because a whole lot of other countries simply chose to disregard them and continue to consider you a citizen anyway. Problem is, it’s the respective Foreign Offices that make that determination, not the citizens. After the Terrazas case, as mentioned, new rules were issued that the US will disregard _“routine”_ oaths of allegiance, and a renunciation of citizenship has to be\* directed to the US government\*, not to the other country’s. And even then they reserve the right to look into what is it you actually DO, to determine if it sticks. ---
**Author:** ![Capitaine\_Zombie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@Capitaine\_Zombie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capitaine_Zombie)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-non-naturalized-us-citizen-have-his-citizenship-revoked/593450/24 "2011-08-21T14:00:29Z")
Herbert Hoover, deported “back to their country” several thousands Mexican Americans (born Americans with Mexican origins). I dont know if they lost their American citizenship in the process, but they were treated as if they didnt have any. From Hoover’s wiki page ( [Herbert Hoover - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover#Civil_rights) ): > [@](#): > > In 1929, Hoover authorized the Mexican Repatriation program to combat rampant unemployment, reduce the burden on municipal aid services, and remove people seen as usurpers of American jobs. The program was largely a forced migration of approximately 500,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans to Mexico, and continued until 1937. See also the Mexican Repatriation: > **[Mexican Repatriation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Repatriation)** > > The Mexican Repatriation was the repatriation or deportation of between 300,000 and 2 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans from the United States during the Great Depression between 1929 and 1939. Forty to sixty percent were citizens of the United States, overwhelmingly children. > Although repatriation was supported by the federal government, it was largely organized and encouraged by city and state governments, often with support from local private entities. However, voluntary repatriation ... ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-non-naturalized-us-citizen-have-his-citizenship-revoked/593450/25 "2011-08-21T14:24:51Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > As I think about it, how would treason charges ever stick under this law? Take John Walker Lindh, for example. Wouldn’t it follow that when he signed up for the Taliban he renounced his U.S. citizenship, and therefore owes no loyalty? > > Any person accused of treason could say that. “Yes, under law, I conspired with the Canadians in their assault, conquest, raping, pillaging, and enslavement of the population near and on the American Falls in Niagara Falls, New York, and by doing so I renounced my U.S. Citizenship. I was therefore not a citizen and owed no allegiance to the United States anymore. I move for dismissal.” I don’t think so. Take a look at 8 USC § 1481.7 above. It seems to say that loss of citizenship for committing treason only becomes effective after the person is convicted of treason. So: 1. Commit Treason against the United States. 2. Get arrested. 3. Be convicted. 4. Lose citizenship. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-non-naturalized-us-citizen-have-his-citizenship-revoked/593450/26 "2011-08-21T14:28:43Z")
Remember also that treason is the only crime with high burden of proof stipulated in the Constitution itself. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-non-naturalized-us-citizen-have-his-citizenship-revoked/593450/27 "2011-08-21T15:22:18Z")
There does remain the question as to what citizenship a person then has. Clearly the majority of the above cases are about someone electing to become a de-facto citizen of another nation. But not all. In some ways this reflects the modern political landscape. The advent of organisations that attack sovereign nations that are not themselves nations is not something that the system seems well set up to cope with. You can commit a lot of offences against the US as a single acting person, or member of a non-sovereign nation organisation. If you avowed that you did so with intent to lose citizenship - well it looks as if you might become stateless. Something that the world in general doesn’t cope all that well with. Indeed, imagine you lost citizenship, to where might you be deported? Or indeed, it you did go somewhere, and you committed some other offence, and got yourself deported, where would they send you? I bet back to the US. Who would be in a curious situation. (Not so curious as you however.) ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-non-naturalized-us-citizen-have-his-citizenship-revoked/593450/28 "2011-08-21T15:36:08Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > Indeed, imagine you lost citizenship, to where might you be deported? Or indeed, it you did go somewhere, and you committed some other offence, and got yourself deported, where would they send you? I bet back to the US. Who would be in a curious situation. (Not so curious as you however.) That’s why we have Gitmo! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-non-naturalized-us-citizen-have-his-citizenship-revoked/593450.md?page=1)