Citizenship sales become a growing trend as people chose to quit one nation for another
 As the international migrant crisis makes plain, there are many in the world who would prefer to be the citizen of another country.
Since 2013, Malta has been selling citizenships by running its Individual Investor Programme that grants Maltese citizenship without residency requirements for a payment of EUR1.15 million (US$1.24 million)."
Ten years later, the EU's unelected governing body, the European Commission, brought action against Republic of Malta for maintaining a policy and a practice of naturalisation despite “the absence of a genuine link of the applicants with the country", in exchange for payment.
To Malta, immigration is a states-rights issue, in which the commission has no decision-making role. This, of course, ignores the fact that Maltese citizenship confers de facto EU citizenship, allowing holders access most rights in the 28-nation trade bloc. The commission's response to that is to say "each member state has to act in matters of nationality with “due regard to Community Law”.
But Malta denies that the commission has any competence in matters of nationality (in reference to the Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union), while the commission can claim that, since the case Micheletti (1992), each member state has to act in matters of nationality with “due regard to Community Law.”
This has become the focus of discussion on Berlin's Verfassungsblog, an online forum on constitutional law about which Patrick Weil, senior research fellow at the Sorbonne's French National Research Centre and a former visiting law professor at Yale, has an expert opinion.
In the eyes of the commission, Malta undermines the essence and integrity of Union citizenship in breach of Article 20 [right of assembly] and in violation of the principle of sincere cooperation enshrined in Article 4(3) [duty of sincere co-oper
In the Verfassungsblog, Weil argues that the EU and its court are fully competent because Malta violated article 1 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights which holds that “Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected.”
"Specifically, I argue that selling nationality violates human dignity because nationality confers legal subjecthood, which is a central condition for guaranteeing the human dignity of European citizens," said Weil.
One is reminded, he says, that when one is born, "one is named, situated in a lineage, and a place and date of birth to become a subject of law, bound –sub-jectum: thrown under – by words which tie us to others. That is a core function of nationality, to provide and guarantee by a kind of seal - in the form of documents of identity - a legal subjecthood, a legal status that binds us to other nationals and through them to a common humanity. Nationality connects us and fulfils the anthropological function of instituting human beings as subjects of law.
While citizenships are changeable, multiple, and often precarious in nature, nationality has become a fundamental and quasi universal right for two reasons. When a person lacks a nationality or the functions it plays in ensuring an individual’s protection by a nation-state, the international community must provide a proxy nationality through the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness ensures that children are provided with a nationality at birth and prevents the deprivation of citizenship to the extent that an individual cannot be rendered stateless. Signed by a majority of European states, it has limited the possibility of denaturalisation - a prospect revived in Europe following 9/11 terror attacks but meant to apply ‘only’ to bi- or multi-nationals.
The worldwide migrant crisis spiking in America and Europe is the most obvious example of one's desire to drop one nationality for another.
Qui bono? Who benefits? Of course, the migrants themselves do having quit places where prospects were poor and were bound for - by hook or by crook - some place better.
Such is the supply. What of the demand? We can see that in Maltese case, that in the fussing over the birth right and human dignity that citizenship confers, derives from whatever the powers that be desire.
Under normal circumstances, national governments whatever they desire in immigrants may change as indeed the type of migrants and the numbers they face will change. Post-World War I Canada, wanted uncomplaining eastern European farmers to bust prairie sod and send their kids to teachers' college. And after World War II, the demand was for non-communist DPs (displaced persons) Poles, Czechs, Italian, Greeks to build the depressed commercial sector in western Europe.
But in the last 10 years in America, the effort of the powers that be, the centre-left parties of the western world, it appears they are committed to bring down the patriarchy, which is very nearly of all that western civilization produced. To do that, they have encouraged as many useless mouthes to cross the border and enervate society, keeping Wall Street on side by wasting money to pay off student loans.
Undoubtedly, the unelected European Commission backed by its unelected courts will side against Malta, which wants to sell its citizenship. Recognizing there is a problem of Maltese citizenship being a de facto extention of EU citizenship, one can see the EU getting a cut on the action as a modus vivendi.
Or one might forbid purchased Maltese passports of having the same rights was other Maltese passports rather in the way the UK Overseas Passport confers some rights upon holders by not all.
What it all boils down to is a general agreement is the the commodification of citizenship. Disagreement exists on which party has the right to do it. It seems that the North America and western Europe is about to confer citizenship on masses of migrants - or face the gargantuan task of deporting millions.
As gargantuan as that task would be, involving Nazi-like transit camps, and no place to send them as they will likely claim statelessness the best way to stay where they are. Confering citizenship will likely become the line of least resistance.
If sovereignty over one's citizenship becomes a tradable commodity to be bought and sold by a lesser sovereignty like Malta, then why not have entire nations be bought and sold by individuals through referenda.
Worried about Russian subs in the North Atlantic, Donald Trump when he first occupied the White House, suggested the US acquire Greenland. "Preposterous!" chorused the Deep State and its friends and relations.
But they did not look at the feasibility of the proposition. Greenland, technically a Danish colony of 2.1 million people, is likely to gain full independence next year. If empowered to do so, it might well vote have the United States assume sovereignty in exchange for a US$1 million dollar per Greenland with US citzenship thrown in.
Nor is such a development unprecedented. In 1917, the United States bought the US Virgin Islands from Denmark for US$25 million in 1917, fearing the island might be used as a submarine base in World War I.
So what can be done once can be done again, except that these days, such decisions can be taken at a macro or micro level, with a tendency increasing towards the micro as time goes on. |
