I was watching a movie and an American, someone born in the United States moved to Australia. He had lived there for 25 years. He commited a crime in Australia and served a five year sentence and release. Not on parole, but finished and released.
He wants to go back to America and his friend tells him, “You have a criminal record, you’re not gonna be able to go back to America.” He says, “I have my passport, other people sneak into America, I could do it.”
This was shot in the 80s, but I wonder, is that right? I know movies are often loose and wrong with laws.
I was wondering in real life could this happen? I mean I could see if the man was released from an Australian prison on parole, how Australia could be holding his passport, while he is on parole. But he wasn’t.
I’m pretty sure that citizenship provides a guaranteed right to go home. One of the advantages of applying for citizenship as soon as possible seems to be to remove the possibility of being deported for crime - it seems that once you’re a citizen, you can no longer be excluded.
What they might do is make your life miserable by searching you endlessly and questioning your paperwork “uhh, this passport photo is smudged, go get a new passport”.
The rule is not as strict as that, but having a criminal record means that a foreigner cannot enter on the visa waiver program, and that it may be more difficult (and in some cases impossible) to get a visa to enter as a tourist.
The border guards can refuse entry to any foreigner if they feel he might be a danger of “moral turpitude”, which includes any run-in with the law. They ask not “have you been convicted” but “have you been arrested”? Based on what they hear, they can be dicks and not let you in. A criminal conviction could (does not necessarily) mean they will not let you in. If you are refused entry (a friend of mine was warned) do not try a different broder crossing. That will earn you a charge of attempting to enter illegally and you WILL be barred. All you can do instead is write to the embassy and hope that within a few months they recertify that you are indeed not at risk of corrupting their fine citizens with your charcter of moral turpitude.
The border guards also have a connection to the Canadian police database; in the news recently (Drudge Report mentioned it too) a Canadian was denied entry because she was deemed “mentally unstable” because a few years ago she attempted suicide. Her partner called for help and the police call was in the database, although no charges were laid or arrest made (suicide is not a crime). Maybe the border guard did not like lesbians.
OTOH, a US citizen CANNOT be denied entry into the USA. This is what “a citizen” means. You have the right to be there.
They may hold you while they determine if you really are the person on your passport, but really, all they would have to do is take your fingerprints and compare them to Australian records; and if it shows you really are John Doe, then the only question is “THAT John Doe, the one born in the USA?” Presumably you have your original passport from the USA, including picture, or the Australians have the dcumentation allowing yo into their country long ago. How much more definite can you get?
If they try to send you back to Australia, then presumably Australia would be smart enough to say “no, he’s not ours, you keep him.” The news in Canada has the occasional story about someone who arrived here at an early age, never got their citizenship, and now is being deported back to a country they do not know for being a career criminal.
As several earlier threads have discussed, it’s pretty difficult to become not a citizen of the USA. Even being a naturalized Australian would not stop it.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau was once refused entry to the US (on suspicion of being a commie sympathizer–this was the McCarty era). He never said that that was the reason Canada was so hospitable to draft dodgers, but he never said it wasn’t either. He was no more a commie sympathizer than I am, but he worked for a liberal paper (or something like that). From this story, I infer that border guards can refuse non-citizens entry for any reason at all–just because they don’t like their looks.
The last time I crossed the border (with US passports for me and my wife) the guard decided it sounded unlikely that anyone would want to visit Boston for 6 days and gave me a hard time. She was terminally stupid. But how do you get intelligent people to ask the fatuous questions they do all day. As I was getting ready to leave, I put my sunglasses on and she screamed at me that sunglasses are not permitted within the customs area. This happened after she cleared me to leave.