U.S. sanctions logic quietly restructured Canadian citizenship by nationality and descent

Evidence

Confronted with the possibility of an imminent terror threat, few protest such erosions of citizenship. Barely a murmur arose, for example, when it emerged that Canadians born in Syria and Iran who were working on U.S. defence contracts awarded to Bell Canada were fired from their jobs or reassigned owing to a U.S. stipulation that such workers cannot be employed on projects that involve the construction of American strategic military weapons. In the same vein, when Canada’s largest bank initially agreed to prohibit Canadians with dual citizenship in countries under American sanction (Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Sudan, North Korea, and Myanmar) from opening U.S. dollar accounts, few saw in such penalties an ominous sign of the racial structure of citizenship. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 27

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the layered citizenship/identity work of The Namesake and the second-class citizen theme in The Reluctant Fundamentalist.