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Comment by robocat | Hacker News Reader

How about countries provide citizenship for refugee status if someone is being politically targeted?

If not done officially, but everyone knows that by being a political activist you can get foreign citizenship, you have just motivated people to fight!

Edit: dual-citizenship for an activist puts a China into a catch-22. China can’t complain if the optics are that the activist is just a normal person asserting their rights. If China does attack the activist, then the other country can rightfully argue that the activist is a political refugee, and as a citizen of their country they can defend them properly.

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> If not done officially, but everyone knows that by being a political activist you can get foreign citizenship, you have just motivated people to fight!

No, I think you'd end up motivating more to flee: a lot of people won't fight unless their backs' are against the wall.

You'd also probably end up stabilizing a bunch of nasty regimes by giving them someplace to dump their dissidents without inviting much backlash.

Political asylum is a very common cause for immigration though, so isn’t this already the case?

I think people view political asylum as a last resort, though, and it's generally not all that easy to get, at least in the "more desirable" countries.

It's certainly not trivially easy, but it's also not that hard, and even if you get denied, you will generally be allowed to stay unless you're from a small set of countries. Deportation is rare in Europe.

The UK's general refugee/asylum policy is, to describe it generously, not designed to project an international image that it's easy to get in. In 2016, we accepted 28% of applicants.

Would you punch a policeman if told "if you punch that policeman, there's a 28% chance we'll stop you getting in trouble for it" ? I think that's not an offer that's going to convince many people.

> How about countries provide citizenship for refugee status if someone is being politically targeted?

They do, just not immediately. All (most? are there any exceptions?) Western countries have a road to citizenship for accepted asylum seekers.

It's called asylum law and exists in many countries, including all EU countries.

This is a beautiful idea.

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