Second-class citizen

A second-class citizen is a person who is systematically and actively

Typical conditions facing second-class citizens include but are not limited to:

• disenfranchisement
  (a lack or loss of voting rights)
• limitations on civil or military service (not including conscription in every case)
• restrictions on language, religion, education
• lack of freedom of movement, expression, and association
• limitations on the right to keep and bear arms
• restrictions on marriage
• restrictions on housing
• restrictions on property ownership

The category is normally unofficial and mostly academic, and the term itself is generally used as a pejorative by commentators.

Governments will typically deny the existence of a second class within its polity, and as an informal category, second-class citizenship is not objectively measured, but cases such as the Southern United States under racial segregation and Jim Crow laws, the repression of Aboriginal citizens in Australia prior to 1967, deported ethnic groups designated as "special settlers" in the Soviet Union, the apartheid regime in South Africa, women in Saudi Arabia under Saudi Sharia law, and Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland during the Parliamentary era are all examples of groups that have been historically described as having second-class citizenry and being victims of state-sponsored discrimination.

Historically, before the mid-20th century, this policy was applied by several European colonial empires on colonial residents of overseas possessions.

A

Relationship with citizenry class

Examples

• Adults under the age of 21 in many places in the United States are not legally allowed to purchase certain goods or services, including but not limited to hotel/motel rooms, tobacco, cannabis, alcohol, firearms, and use of casinos.
• Proposals for a U.S. guest worker program, which would provide legal status to and admit foreign workers to the U.S., but provide no path to citizenship for them, have been criticized on the ground that such a policy would create second-class non-citizens.^[4][5][6]
• Estonian non-citizens
  are in a similar position.
• New Zealanders receive automatically a "Special Category Visa" upon entering Australia, which presents no pathway to Australian citizenship. New Zealanders are denied access to Centrelink, to name just one of the services. This means that if, for example, a New Zealand person came to Australia to live with their Australian spouse, and that spouse committed domestic violence upon them, the New Zealander could not then turn to Centrelink to provide them with funds to leave the abusive spouse.
• In Malaysia, as part of the concept of
  healthcare and housing.^[9]
• Mainland Chinese citizens who are settling in Hong Kong or Macau by means of a
  one-way permit do not have citizenship rights (such as obtaining a passport
  ) in both the mainland or the SAR after settling but before obtaining the permanent resident status, effectively rendering them second-class citizens.
• unable to vote in Japanese elections
  .
• Meiji 4 (1871), this discrimination was officially ended by kaihourei (解放令), many people resisted it and continued treating them as burakumin. Today, fewer people are discriminate towards burakumin, however, the term burakumin is still recognized as a discriminating word while there are certain amount of recent young generations who do not even know the term and idea of burakumin. Also, in some cases, people still happen to be discriminated against, especially when they get a job or get married.^[11]
  These cases often reported as problems.
• The
  British Nationals (Overseas) (BNO) class was satirized as "British NO" by some Hong Kong media.^[12]: 40 Despite its status as a British national, holders do not have the right of abode in the United Kingdom, with its application and status similar to a general Commonwealth citizen
  of other sovereign countries.
• Black Africans. This segregation included having separate events for those of different races, separate walkways and modes of transportation, separate hospitals, Blacks being banned from voting, and compelling those of separate races to live in separate townships. The international condemnation of apartheid that led to its end largely began in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre
  , in which 69 protesters were killed and more than 175 were injured when police opened fire on a crowd of thousands on March 21, 1960.