The Regulation of Protests by Non-Citizens

This chapter examines the regulation of protests relating to immigration, citizenship and refugees and focuses on two key legal issues in this area. First, the use of protests by refugees as a claim-making act and the ways in which law has been used to regulate these actions (using case studies from Australia and India). Second, how protest by non-citizens may be restricted by states through the use of visa cancellation and deportation powers (using recent case studies from the USA). The chapter analyses these forms of non-citizen protest against Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee’s General Comment 37 on the right to peaceful assembly. Although international human rights law affirms that the right to peaceful assembly applies to all people, regardless of immigration status, this chapter shows how precarious protest is for non-citizens. This is especially evident in recent developments in the United States, where immigration enforcement has been used as a sanction against protest.