On deportation of returning ISIL members

Svensk version kan hittas här: https://joakimhenberg.blogspot.com/2019/02/angaende-utvisande-av-atervandande-is.html

There’s been a lot of talk recently about deporting citizens who fought for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also called Daesh. Today one such discussion occurred at the place I work just as I was leaving, which left me thinking about it all the way home. So here’s what I think about it: it would be a bad idea for several reasons.

Firstly, revoking people’s citizenship and deporting them would be a racist policy. This might not be obvious at first glance. I mean, why should we have to take care of people, not even born here, doing horrible things? Do they even deserve citizenship? Why should that be our problem?

Those are legitimate concerns, but they are also a slippery slope which can lead you into a trap making your arguments racist. Wanting bad people to be punished is all well and good, but we need to be careful exactly how they are punished. Say some immigrant with citizenship commits some awful crimes: murder, rape, robbery and other horrible things. We don’t want him or her here, do we? Well, no. But say that person isn’t an immigrant. Take for example Breivik. Should the Norwegian government have deported him? To where?

And there you go. If the immigrant is deported then we have different laws based on country of origin, perhaps even ethnicity, no matter if you’re a citizen or not. All immigrants would then be second class citizens, which would be racist.

Secondly, deporting people is a bad punishment. But we want good folks here. People we can count on, who contribute to society. Those are the kinds of people we want as citizens, right?

It’s not wrong. But consider this: moving to another country is hard. You have to get a home and a new job quickly. Then you also have to learn the language as fast as possible, create an entirely new social network and deal with people who are suspicious of strangers. But is it worse than spending years in court and prison?

If you want your fellow citizens who support ISIL to be punished, great, but is forcing them to move really the punishment you had in mind? Wouldn’t it be better, more just even, to make them take responsibility for their actions before the law?

Thirdly, it would be poor foreign policy. Keeping good foreign relations is not a bad idea. It eases trade, lowers ethnic violence, secures peace, creates alliances, and probably a myriad of other nice reasons.

So what happens to those relations if we start sending war criminals and terrorists to other countries? Would you want more of those in your country? No? Well, other countries don’t want them either. Why should they accept the people we deport?

Hardly anyone likes ISIL, I don’t, and you likely don’t. But Swedish citizens returning after fighting for ISIL is a Swedish problem, so let Sweden deal with it. Make them face the law.