Donald Trump may be grabbing all the headlines with his thoughtful plan to revoke the citizenship of Americans born in this country to at least one illegal-immigrant parent, but he is not the only 2016 presidential candidate to advocate one of the most severe—and rare—punishments the federal government can mete out: taking away your passport and all the privileges that come with it.
* Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) last year introduced the Expatriate Terrorist Act, which strips the nationality from Americans deemed to have given "material assistance" to organizations designated as terrorist.
* Hillary Clinton, while secretary of state in 2010, made cooing noises about the very similar Terrorist Expatriation Act:
Several major Democratic officials spoke positively about the proposal, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Noting that the State Department already had the authority to rescind the citizenship of people who declare allegiance to a foreign state, she said the administration would take "a hard look" at extending those powers to cover terrorism suspects.
"United States citizenship is a privilege," she said. "It is not a right. People who are serving foreign powers — or in this case, foreign terrorists — are clearly in violation, in my personal opinion, of that oath which they swore when they became citizens."
(Note that the vast majority of Americans, including Hillary Clinton, me, and probably you, took no such "oath" when they became citizens, as that happened on the day they were born.)
* Ben Carson wrote last year that "Anyone caught involved in voter fraud should be immediately deported and have his citizenship revoked." Though in fairness, that proposal might not make any actual sense, since the column in which it appeared is all about illegal immigrants.
I am confident there are other examples of 2016 candidates wishing to strip Americans of citizenship; please leave them in the comments and I will update as necessary.
