Is it illegal for an American to go to North Korea? Is it illegal for US citizens to travel to North Korea? It may currently be impossible and probably a very bad idea, but is it actually illegal?
Short Answer Is it illegal for US citizens to travel to North Korea? Yes (but see the &quot;fine print&quot; below). Long Answer There is: a US travel ban to North Korea for American citizens, as of July 2017. Now, Americans wishing to travel to North Korea must obtain a Special Validation Passport from the US Department of State, only issued under very specific circumstances, such as for journalists covering the region or for humanitarian aid workers. The Biden administration extended the ban, initially established by the Trump administration, on traveling to North Korea on a U.S. passport absent special approval: The ban makes it illegal to use a U.S. passport for travel to, from or through North Korea, also known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or the DPRK, unless the document has been specially validated. Such validations are granted by the State Department only in the case of compelling national interest. The U.S. State Department confirms that this ban is still in place. It states that: Travel to, in, or through North Korea on a U.S. passport without this special validation may justify revocation of your passport for misuse under 22 C.F.R. § 51.62(a)(3) and may subject you to felony prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 1544 or other applicable laws. The maximum criminal penalty if you use a U.S. passport to go to North Korea and then return and a charged with a crime under 18 U.S.C. § 1544 are quite serious. You could be sent to prison for up to ten years for a first or second offense, or up to fifteen years if you have two prior convictions under this statute, and/or fined, even if you weren't a terrorist or drug dealer, although the actual sentence would probably be milder, if you were charged with a crime at all. The criminal statute reads as follows (with the pertinent parts in bold): Whoever willfully and knowingly uses, or attempts to use, any passport issued or designed for the use of another; or Whoever willfully and knowingly uses or attempts to use any passport in violation of the conditions or restrictions therein contained, or of the rules prescribed pursuant to the laws regulating the issuance of passports; or Whoever willfully and knowingly furnishes, disposes of, or delivers a passport to any person, for use by another than the person for whose use it was originally issued and designed— Shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 25 years (if the offense was committed to facilitate an act of international terrorism (as defined in section 2331 of this title)), 20 years (if the offense was committed to facilitate a drug trafficking crime (as defined in section 929(a) of this title)), 10 years (in the case of the first or second such offense, if the offense was not committed to facilitate such an act of international terrorism or a drug trafficking crime), or 15 years (in the case of any other offense), or both. There are also many other North Korean sanctions (and keep in mind that North Korea is legally an &quot;enemy&quot; of the United States with which the U.S. is officially still at war and does not have diplomatic relations). The most recent of those, from 2017, prohibits ships and aircraft owned by a &quot;foreign person&quot; which have been in North Korean in the last 180 days from entering the United States. The ban does not prohibit a dual citizen from traveling to North Korea on a passport from the person's other country of citizenship, nor does it prohibit U.S. citizens from entering North Korea without using a passport (although entering North Korea without a passport or visa probably violates North Korean law). Of course, North Korea also regulates entry of people into North Korea under North Korean immigration laws. I do not know whether or not it is legal under North Korean law for people to enter it with a U.S. passport. But, given that the only U.S. citizen to enter North Korea without a special U.S. visa authorizing the trip in the last seven years was arrested immediately after crossing into North Korea this week, it would appear that this is illegal under North Korean law as well.
Did the President have to commute or pardon the Russians in US prisons, or is there an existing statutory basis for releasing some prisoners? As far as American law is concerned, in this particular case, it was a &quot;simple&quot; deportation. The defendants pleaded guilty and were sentenced to time served, based on submissions from the prosecutors and the defendants, which are usually followed by the judge. Alternatively, if the judge had sentenced someone to real prison terms, a commutation may be required. If they want, the prosecutors can also withdraw the charges before sentencing. Obama commuted Iranian citizens in a spy swap deal. In another Iran-USA prisoners exchange, charges were dropped for Masoud Soleimani. Then as &quot;free&quot; men and women who are foreign nationals, they can still be inadmissible to the United States and be deportable aliens under the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S. Code § 1182 - Inadmissible aliens, § 1227 - Deportable aliens). In this case, there are so many potential grounds to choose from: conviction of a crime of moral turpitude, misrepresentation, national security, foreign policy, etc. The Secretary of State can also revoke their visas at the Secretary's discretion and make their presence unlawful. They have the right to contest deportation if they are considered &quot;free&quot; as far as the criminal law is considered. But, they usually want to go home. The US may choose to prosecute them for other potential crimes if they contest. Then if they are deportable and there is no stay on the proceedings due to judicial or administrative intervention, they can be removed from the United States. Is there a formal agreement in international law between the US and UK? I do not believe the United Kingdom was involved directly to the exchange itself. The prisoner swap was done in Vienna. Agreement needs to be obtained from the Austrian government regarding entry conditions etc. UK revoked Anna Chapman's British citizenship. Igor Sutyagin and Sergei Skripal moved to UK. But those are not really international matters legally. The UK alone determines how its citizenship works and who can enter and stay in the UK.
In general the act must be a crime in both countries for an extradition to proceed, but the extradition treaty between countries A and B likely has more specific provisions as well. C's involvement is generally limited to consular assistance, but there have been instances where countries have offered to incarcerate their citizens for convictions in other countries. The country of citizenship certainly does not have priority to extradite or try its citizens, and it is unlikely that the country seeking to prosecute would have much interest in another country taking over the case.
You have the right to withhold this information; they have the right to withhold a passport. You do not have a right to a passport; it is a privilege and that privilege may be withdrawn at the discretion of the State Department for all sorts of reasons. As a US citizen you have a right to travel within the US; you don't need any papers for this. However, if you wish to cross an international border then both the country you are departing and the country you are arriving in will decide the circumstances under which you can.
Legally speaking, very many nations grant asylum, and religious persecution is one of the most basic grounds for granting asylum, following the 1951 Refugee Convention. This newspaper article compares asylum statistics in Ireland versus other parts of Europe. The Irish immigration authorities spell out the details for an asylum application. Note that you must already be in Ireland, to apply for asylum in Ireland (you should apply when you enter the country). One could also apply to Norway (almost an English-speaking country), but again you have to be in Norway to do so. There is a generic solution to the "what if I'm not in country" problem via the UNHCR, which can propose resettlement into various countries. I need to add that getting a visitor's visa from certain countries can be extremely difficult. To take an example, Norway (which is fairly open to refugees) is pretty up-front on the chances of getting a visa, based on country. To take a random example, they are not very optimistic about visitor's visas from Iran, and they say "we consider how probable it is that you will return to your home country or the country you live in when the visit is over. We consider the situation in your country and your own situation", "If we believe that it is unlikely that you will return, your application will normally be rejected" and "If you plan to visit Norway as a tourist, you will normally not be granted a visa". This is the fundamental problem that refugees face, the problem of getting there. One country that allows visa-free admission from Iran is Turkey. This guide (which is in Farsi so I can't comment on) provides practical information on the UNHCR asylum process "the political asylum process for Iranians in Turkey": that may indicate that apostasy is a different matter. Other evidence suggests that this option is worse than staying put. Only for the sake of discussion, Svalbard is a theoretical possibility. Svalbard (next to the North Pole) is part of Norway, but Norway treats it as being somewhat outside of Norway. It is outside the Schengen visa area, and it is a visa-free zone, meaning that nobody requires a visa to visit or live there. This is due to the Svalbard Treaty whereby Norwegians and treaty nationals have equal rights to the islands, and while most nations are not treaty signatories, it has been policy to extend those rights to everybody. The Governor does have the power to expel anyone who is a burden on local society (e.g. unemployable). Normally one would have to get a Schengen area visa to get there, which would be an obstacle, but it is apparently possible to get a same-day visa-free transit at Oslo Airport, if travelling non-stop to Svalbard (I cannot find a definitive policy statement on this matter, but I also am not sure where exactly to look). There are some air routes from outside Schengen where the first Schengen stop is Oslo. The Governor's office gives appropriate warnings about local problems (ridiculous prices, housing shortage, work shortage, more polar bears than people, really cold).
There may be a purpose to have laws which are impossible to follow. (I'm neither a lawyer nor a politician, following points are what I like to call qualified hearsay - they come from qualified people I know personally but were given as a remark or during a chat over a cup of coffee and therefore are not easily substantiable with rigorous sources. You can treat them as a hypothetical ideas for your thought experiments.) Everybody is implicitly guilty Confident citizens and transparent law is the worst enemy of totalitarian regime. You learn to live with ingrained feeling that there surely is something you are guilty of. Merely being addressed by police makes you nervous and malleable; should you stand up against oppression, it is easy for the state apparat to detain or convict you of one or more default offenses. A good example would be the law present in many, if not all, socialist bloc countries saying that knowing of a comrade having commited an offense or merely planing to and not reporting it to authorities is an offense in itself. Whether you did or did not know would be determined by the authorities. Make your laws very strict with a hope thay they will be followed at least to a degree Not laws in themselves, but standards (technical norms) regarding nuclear power stations in the former Soviet Union were strict to the point where they were technically impossible to follow given the state of the art. For example the standards for manufacture of high pressure pipes would state very low level of material impurities that when the actual manufactured material contained twice the level of impurities the pipe will still be very safe to operate. In a centrally planned economy with ever more ambitious production projections and declared zero need for contingency this was one of several ways how to create a bit of a wiggle room. (Source: I once worked for a nuclear power research institute supporting Soviet technology and was told this by an expert on stainless steel.) So there you have a bit of an illustration what may happen if a law is intentionally impossible to follow. Since you labelled your question 'United States', I believe the follow-up question is why would anyone want to propose such a law.
There is no law governing the 'number' of the president. Common sense suggests that a person can't be 45th and 46th; there must be someone in between having the presidency and they will become the 46th president. In the extremely unlikely scenario that a foreign power occupies the United States this year, eliminates the office of President, and a few years later the US is liberated and Donald Trump is re-elected, I guess people could name him the 45th and 46th President, but it makes no sense to speculate about this.
It's not possible to marry the US citizen until the first marriage is terminated, and the F-2 status ends when the marriage is terminated. It's not the F-2 status that prevents the marriage to the US citizen; it's the continued existence of the previous marriage. It might be possible to file for change of status (to B-2 perhaps) in anticipation of the termination of the marriage, but it seems unlikely to be accepted by USCIS. It would certainly be unwise to attempt anything like that without the advice of an immigration lawyer.