Category talk:Former United States citizens

Issue with Category Name

Given the stated intent of the category to include those who renounce or relinquish US citizenship, I believe the category would be better named something along the lines of "Former United States citizens." "People who lost United States citizenship" implies the individual did not have a choice, which is not the case for those renouncing or relinquishing their citizenship. Eastshire (talk) 16:54, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Legally speaking, all these things referred to as "loss of nationality", but I see your point. Should I make a new category and move them all over? Is there a bot that could do this for me or do I have to go back and do it all manually? There should probably be some common supercategory which holds both the new category and Category:Loss of United States citizenship by prior Nazi affiliation‎, though. Thanks, quant18 (talk) 17:30, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I am not wise in the ways of bots. I don't know if one exists which would be helpful, but I would guess there is. Likewise, I'm not really good at categories. My guess is that you would need a new category, move the articles, then RfD this category. Would a better solution be to add subcategories to this category for relinquishing and renouncing? Eastshire (talk) 17:48, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree that the current name of this category seems poor. In ordinary language, it implies that the elimination of citizenship was involuntary. If someone has actively renounced citizenship, it actually seems rather POV to say that they "lost" their citizenship when they did that. From their perspective, they have actually gained something (e.g. freedom from the legal obligations that are imposed on citizens, or an identity different from one they consider undesirable). I believe the proper way to rename a category is to bring up the topic at WP:CFD. But we don't yet seem to have a clear idea of what should be done, and it might be a good idea to develop a more concrete idea of what should be done before taking the discussion there. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:22, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for reminding me of this discussion. I kind of got sidetracked trying to figure out the mysteries of CFD nominations, and then forgot about it entirely. Anyway, after some thoguht I was leaning towards Eastshire's suggestion of "Former United States citizens". That avoids any of the mess about trying to classify people as "voluntary" or "involuntary", which I realised gets pretty confusing (especially prior to Vance v. Terrazas). Any better suggestions? Cheers, quant18 (talk) 18:06, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

The one possible ambiguity about "Former United States citizens" is whether it should include those who became former citizens by dying. But I don't think I have a better suggestion at the moment. I wonder whether there are any analogous categories relating to other countries. There do not seem to be any other examples of "Category:People who lost [anything]" or "Category:Former citizens of [anywhere]". Perhaps we should just break up the category into separate categories distinguished by whether the separation was voluntary or involuntary. Actually, creating subcategories for that purpose would probably be a good idea, regardless of what we do about the top-level categorization. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:33, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

The trouble is that "voluntary" or "involuntary" is a very hard distinction to make in practice for cases more than a quarter of a century old. Back before Vance v. Terrazas, lawyers had the hilarious idea of a "voluntary but unintentional" loss of citizenship [1]. For some of those people, a finding of loss of citizenship was involuntary, and they fought it tooth and nail (e.g. Perez v. Brownell). Others were probably relieved that they'd triggered that finding, or even triggered it deliberately (e.g. the Vietnam War protesters who moved to Canada).

So in practise the only distinction we'll be able to make consistently based on the evidence is between relinquishment/renunciation and denaturalisation. (Even some of the denaturalisation cases look a bit dubious; Solomon Adler, for instance, but otherwise it's generally pretty clear whether we're dealing with a deported ex-Nazi or a guy trying to run for parliament in Jamaica). Another option, of course, is to delete the category entirely and leave it to lists; otherwise we have to deal with these kinds of legal quirks in another 192 countries in order to figure out how each of their former nationals should be subcategorised, and it probably won't be consistent at all between countries. quant18 (talk) 02:34, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Opportunity for additions

A substantial number of articles could be added into this category by reviewing the entries in the list of denaturalized former citizens of the United States and the list of former United States citizens who relinquished their nationality (e.g., I notice Nada Nadim Prouty and Kelbessa Negewo). —BarrelProof (talk) 20:28, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Copied from User talk:quant18

I saw this page. A category page is not a place for an article. Yes an article would be place for your work. At a category page it don't belong, and your work is going to be buried aka hard to find unlike a list article....William 23:37, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

BTW, I asked an administrator for an opinion. He agreed[2] with my decision....William 00:59, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Category pages sometimes include short notes about the criteria for inclusion. This one happened to grow: I tend towards loquaciousness, and User:BarrelProof added citations. In general it indeed seems that no one bothers to read these things and just add any old crap to the category regardless of what the note says. (That could probably be remedied if more automated editing tools actually displayed the category page contents when a user tried to add pages to the category, but that's a discussion for another forum). Oh well. quant18 (talk) 02:09, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Lost versus Renounced

This category seems to include a bunch of folks who "renounced" their US citizenship. That doesn't seem right. Using the word "lost" seems to infer that citizenship was given up unwillingly. Would anyone support a motion to rename this category? NickCT (talk) 14:49, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, "loss of citizenship" is used by reliable sources (e.g. [3]) to refer either to voluntarily giving up citizenship or involuntary being stripped of it; indeed, that's why the document which the State Department issues you after you give up citizenship is called a Certificate of Loss of Nationality. In contrast, "renounce" is not an accurate general term: in the U.S. it only refers to 8 U.S.C. § 1481(a)(5), and there are many other voluntary & involuntary ways to stop being a US citizen.

A rename to "Former United States citizens" might avoid the issue entirely. Deleting the category would also avoid the issue entirely; the topic area seems to be adequately handled by lists which can give greater detail & nuance about each individual case. quant18 (talk) 23:33, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Henry Channon

also renounced his citizenship and became a Brish subject.--80.157.2.254 (talk) 10:37, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Opposed speedy move request

• Category:People who lost United States citizenship to Category:People who lost American citizenship – C2C: Per Category:People who lost citizenship Rathfelder (talk) 14:50, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

  Oppose "American" is not synonymous with the "United States". UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:01, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

  Oppose per UnitedStatesian. -- Euryalus (talk) 05:48, 24 July 2020 (UTC)