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U.S. LAW LOOKS THE OTHER WAY ON DUAL CITIZENSHIP
WASHINGTON -- Americans can now be "dual citizens" of countries across the world -- and even vote in foreign elections, fight in foreign armies and serve as the leaders of other countries, including those that are deeply antagonistic to the United States.
Americans may take their historical oath of allegiance and citizenship, in which they dramatically pledge loyalty to the union and duly "abjure" any loyalty to a foreign country or flag, but that doesn't mean much anymore. American law doesn't really permit any of this, but bypassing the idea of one citizenship only is prevalent today because "the law" refuses to act against it. In fact, the United States is the only country in the world in which citizens, natural or naturalized, can vote, fight, lead and pledge allegiance in two countries.
Most Americans, reading these statements, might find them outrageous and most probably untrue, but they are all too true. Ours is a nation that just won't come to grips with the endlessly complex ways in which its unity and the principles behind its unique success are being shredded.
At a recent conference presented by the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation on immigration and citizenship issues, the discussion on dual citizenship surprised many of the experts there, especially when it focused on how to regulate something that to many already seems inevitable.
As Dr. Stanley Renshon, the respected psychoanalyst and professor of political science at the City University of New York, suggested: "Perhaps the U.S. should just regulate it. For instance, don't allow dual citizens to vote in any other elections in the world except the U.S. Or don't allow them to serve in the armed forces of any other country. No dual citizen should really be in the position of giving political advice.
"There is something very important in people making a commitment to a country. It becomes an investment. If you ask people to do little, they'll think about the subject very little. Citizenship becomes simply a no-cost citizenship."
Next, the pro-dual citizenship contingent at the meeting, held at the McCormick family's Cantigny estate near Wheaton, Ill., offered its own views. In the post-Cold War world, they said, "very few national interests collide" and so it is actually "desirable to have multiple identities." Dual citizenship can even be thought of as a "democratizing agent" for the immigrant's country of origin and "not only is it possible to have two or more cultural traditions, but that culture probably has little to do with citizenship traditions."
Witness the pious naivete of men and women who could really believe that few national interests collide today (perhaps human nature has changed?). And the idea that cultural traditions have nothing to do with how one becomes and acts as the citizen of a nation might also have astonished the descendants of the English freemen who in l2l5 signed the Magna Carta, thus opening the road to the "volitionary allegiance" of citizenship under the law.
What is the scope of this seminal debate? And what does the law have to say about it?
The number of dual citizens in the U.S. is still not known. But the number of legal and illegal immigrants has almost tripled since l970, rising from 9.6 to 26.3 million today, thus providing a large pool of potential dual citizens. There are some 89 countries (including almost all of the Latin American "sending" countries) that allow multiple citizenships.
Sometimes for hereditary reasons, sometimes for capricious fancies and sometimes for tax purposes, a growing number of U.S.-born citizens are taking dual citizenship in countries such as France, Italy and Ireland.
In this age of "deconstruction," social and cultural attitudes are that "anything goes" and that any controls are unacceptably authoritarian. Meanwhile, laws have become equally permissive.
"U.S. laws have not changed," comments K.C. McAlpin, of ProEnglish, the Arlington, Va., organization devoted to preserving English as the national language. "You still have to renounce your foreign allegiance and citizenship to become a U.S. citizen. The problem is an increasing number of countries fail to recognize that renunciation as valid."
The permissive enforcement of American law started with a little-noticed Supreme Court decision of l967, Afroyim vs. Rusk, which overturned a government attempt to revoke the citizenship of American Jews who served in the Israeli Army and thus became Israeli citizens. The trend has been in that direction ever since.
And so, new immigrants come to an America presenting them with the eroding or contested principles of the culture war. They then share Americans' own conflictedness about how or whether to actually take part in the civic contract with America. And the truth about the assimilation of newcomers is not good.
Stanley Renshon asks: "Is it possible to be a fully engaged and knowledgeable citizen of several countries? Is it possible to follow two or more very different cultural traditions? Is it possible to have two, possibly conflicting, core identifications and attachments? Are they desirable?"
The logical answer in each case is, "No."
America's answer today is, "Whatever."
