The Right to Remain

Authors

Timothy E. Lynch

Abstract

Article 12.4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states, “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.” Citizens clearly enjoy Article 12.4 rights, but this article demonstrates that this right reaches beyond the citizenry. Using customary methods of treaty interpretation, including reference to the ICCPR’s preparatory works and the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee, this article demonstrates that Article 12.4 also forbids States from deporting long-term resident noncitizens—both documented and undocumented—except under the rarest circumstances. As a result, the ICCPR right to remain in one’s own country is a right that should be particularly valuable to the many people in the world who have lived in, and established a relationship with, a country which is not their country of citizenship—including lawful permanent residents, long-term refugees, Dreamers and other long-term undocumented residents, and people born in countries without birthright citizenship. These people cannot be deported from the countries they call home.

First Page

315

Cover Page Footnote

Associate Professor of Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law; M.B.A., Kelley School of Business, Indiana University; J.D., Harvard Law School; B.A., University of Chicago. Please send correspondence to the author at lynchte@umkc.edu. This article can be found at http://ssrn.com/author=969133. This article is a revised and updated version of one section of an article by the same author entitled The ICCPR, Non-Self-Execution, and DACA Recipients’ Right to Remain in the United States, published in 2020 in the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal. 34 GEO. J. IMMIGR. L. 323 (2020).

Recommended Citation

Timothy E. Lynch, The Right to Remain, 31 Wash. Int’l L.J. 315 (2022).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wilj/vol31/iss3/3