A Senate Republican wants to dramatically expand the federal government’s ability to denaturalize a citizen with legislation built to withstand challenges in court.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., plans to introduce his Stop Citizenship Abuse and Misrepresentation (SCAM) Act to develop a series of wide-ranging legal triggers for the denaturalization process in the wake of the Minnesota fraud scandal.
Schmitt’s legislation is designed to bolster the government’s ability to strip a naturalized person of their citizenship, but it does not stop at targeting just fraudsters.
The SCAM Act creates a 10-year window, post-naturalization that, if a person were to hit a series of triggers, would lower the threshold for the federal government to strike their citizenship and begin the deportation process.
Among the acts that would fall under the scope of Schmitt’s legislation are whether a person defrauded a federal, state, local or tribal government of $10,000 or more, committed espionage, committed an aggravated felony, or is affiliated with a foreign terrorist organization.
The lawmaker argued that people who trigger those requisites ‘must be denaturalized because they have proven they never met the requirements for the great honor of American citizenship in the first place.’
‘The rampant fraud uncovered in Minnesota must be a wakeup call,’ Schmitt said. ‘People who commit felony fraud, serious felonies, or join terrorist organizations like drug cartels shortly after taking their citizenship oaths fail to uphold the basic standards of citizenship.’
Schmitt’s legislation specifically targets the ‘good moral character’ factor in the naturalization process, which requires a person to engage in moral and ethical conduct for up to five years before applying for citizenship.
The bill would automatically and retroactively undermine that key step in the naturalization process and contends that the aforementioned acts committed post-naturalization act as proof that a person never qualified for citizenship in the first place.
It also has a built-in mechanism to deal with challenges to the legislation in court, specifically to automatically switch out the 10-year window — if found unconstitutional — with a five-year window.
His legislation also has the backing of the White House and was lauded by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and President Donald Trump’s Homeland Security advisor.
Prosecutors digging into the sprawling Minnesota fraud scandal estimate upward of $9 billion in stolen funds and have charged several native-Somali residents in connection with the boondoggle.
‘The Somali fraud scandal is one of the greatest financial scandals in American history,’ Miller said. ‘All Somali refugees, or any other immigrants, who have committed fraud against the United States must be immediately denaturalized and deported.’