'Second class citizens': Senator Sam Dastyari hits out at Trump Muslim crackdown

Iranian-born NSW Senator, Sam Dastyari, fears he and members of his family may be among those caught up by the Trump administration's freeze on visitors from seven Muslim nations, as confusion reigns around the world in the wake of the US order.

Senator Dastyari, who migrated to Australia at the age of five with his parents and older sister Azadeh

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The ban also applies to those with dual citizenship, the Wall Street Journal reports, which includes the great majority of Australia's 65,000 or so Iranian-born citizens.

Senator Dastyari said he had taken steps to divest himself of Iranian citizenship prior to his entering parliament, but the process was complex and expensive ( costing up to $20,000 employing lawyers in both countries) and most Iranians did not have the resources to undertake it.

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"At the end of the day the decision [to accept renunciation of Iranian citizenship} sits in the hands of a handful of clerics who hate so much what the Australian-Iranian community stands for, which is democracy, tolerance, freedom"

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http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/second-class-citizens-sena...

Surely money is no problem for Sam. All he has to do is put the bite on his Chinese mates.

It is quite instructive to consider the Constitution when dealing with a person's right to sit in our parliament as an MP. It makes no mention of costs, clerics or complications when a person is trying to renounce the citizenship of another country.