CANBERRA, Australia -- Australia plans to strip citizenship from Australian-born children of immigrants who become Islamic State fighters in its crackdown on homegrown jihadists, a minister said Thursday.
The government wants to change the Citizenship Act to make fighting for the Islamic State extremist group in Syria and Iraq a reason for losing citizenship, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said.
The government wants to adopt the British legal model by revoking the citizenship of extremists who are Australian-born children of immigrants or are immigrants, forcing them to take up citizenship in the birth country of their parents or parent, Dutton said.
Dual citizens also could lose their Australian citizenship, while Australians without claim to another nationality could not.
"The principle for us, which is very important, is that we don't render people stateless," Dutton told Sydney Radio 2GB.
Australia currently can revoke citizenship only in cases of fraud in the citizenship application or cases in which an Australian citizen joins the armed forces of another country to fight Australia.
Because the Islamic State movement is not recognized as a state, membership is not grounds for losing Australian citizenship, Dutton said
"I can hardly walk down the street without people saying: 'Why do you let these people back into our country? They come back more radicalized,'" Dutton said.
"They are a huge threat to Australian citizens. We should act, and that's what the government is doing," he added.
George Williams, a University of New South Wales constitutional law professor, said the Parliament could probably change the law on revoking citizenship without any constitutional obstacle. The Australian Constitution makes no mention of citizenship and contains no protections for its citizens like the U.S. Bill of Rights does.
But critics argue that Australia should prosecute and imprison its terrorists rather than shunt them to other countries.
Many Australians charged with or suspected of terrorism crimes are the Australian-born children of parents who fled conflicts in Lebanon and Afghanistan.
The 17-year-old son of a Syrian-born doctor arrested at the family home in Melbourne city two weeks ago became Australia's latest terrorist suspect. Police allege he had three pipe bombs concealed at the house and was planning an attack soon.
The teen, whose name cannot be released, became the 23rd suspect charged with terrorism-related offenses in Australia since September when the national terrorism threat was elevated to the second-highest level because of the Islamic State danger. A third of the terrorism charges in Australia filed since the al-Qaida attacks on the United States in 2001 have come since September.
Islamic State militants have had conspicuous success in recruiting in Australia, which has 24 million people. The majority are Christian while 2 percent are Muslim.
The London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence estimates that between 100 and 250 Australians have joined Sunni militants in Iraq and Syria. The center estimates only 100 U.S. fighters have arrived from an American population more than 13 times larger.
Counterterrorism units were posted at Australian airports after the terror alert was raised in September. The government said Thursday that 288 passengers had been prevented from leaving Australia on security grounds since then.
A Section on 05/22/2015