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NATURALIZATION PART TWO:
MATTERS OF LOSING AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP
EVEN ON THE OFF-CHANCE THAT YOU WOULD WANT TO RENOUNCE IT,
IT AIN'T ALL THAT EASY.
IN FACT, YOU GET PENALIZED BY THE USA IF YOU TRY.
(Originally sent to Fukuzawa, ISSHO, and Friends Sun, 24 Jan 1999)
One of the main reservations expressed by readers of my NATURALIZATION
PART ONE essay (where I discussed the pros and procedures for
taking Japanese citizenship) was that I would be risking losing my
American citizenship. Although the US allows dual nationality (read
jpegs of the US State Dept's formal announcements on the subject here),
Japan doesn't, so how does that square? Won't becoming a Japanese mean
having to surrender your American passport?
Well, no. The American passport has nothing to do with Japan. The
passport of any country is the property of the issuing government, and
the Japanese government, short of formally charging you with a crime,
cannot confiscate it or deprive you of it in any way. That includes
naturalization into Japan--surrendering the passport is not part of the
procedure. Moreover, as far as the US is concerned, the renouncing of US
citizenship can only take place with a formal written request signed by
you, or if a US court convicts you of treason, espionage, or serving in
a foreign government or foreign armed forces.
Now for the news. I'm happy (kinda) to report that Americans, in fact
and in particular, have an unusually hard job giving up their American
citizenship. Fukuzawan MG FAXed me a fascinating article from the ASIAN
WALL STREET JOURNAL (Dec 29, 1998), which holds that the American
government doesn't want you to renounce, and will actually punish you if
you do.
Why? Because the US, like only two other countries in the world (The
Philippines and Eritrea), insists on taxing its citizens abroad. And if
you try to renounce (say, because you don't want to pay taxes on lands
you have in France that you would like to pass along to your French
children), they will treat you like a tax dodger, with sanctions
including blacklisting you in the Federal Registry, denying you reentry
into the US indefinitely, and taxing your projected US earnings for the
next ten years after renouncing.
Be that as it may, in regards to naturalization, the point to
American readers is that the US wants you to hold onto your passport.
And because it allows dual nationality, it will probably turn a blind
eye if you obtain a Japanese passport and keep on quietly renewing your
American.
Read on to see the whole AWSJ article.
Dave Aldwinckle
Sapporo
PS: More news has it (The Economist Jan 9, Leader, and
Fukuzawan OK) that Germany is now drafting legislation to allow Dual
Nationality for the first time. Although this does not do away with the
citizenship as a matter of "jus sanguinis" (nationality via
blood--as opposed to being a citizen of the country of your birth), it
will be part of a compromise by one of the last holdouts to make
naturalization easier. Which means that Japan, which adopted older
Germany's rules on nationality, will be the only OECD country left which
does not allow dual citizenship.
TAXING ISSUE:
HOW DO YOU QUIT BEING AMERICAN?
WITH DIFFICULTY
(Asian Wall Street Journal, Dec 28, 1998)
By BARRY NEWMAN Staff Reporter
It got harder to buy a gun in the U.S. this month - at least it did
for the lowlifes nobody trusts. Now Tanya Rose Bottygeig will have to
put up with a federal back-ground check if she ever walks into a
pawn-shop to pick up a shotgun - not because she's a known felon, or a
dope fiend, or mentally ill.
No, Ms. Bottygeig can't drive to the Kmart and buy guns with other
Americans because she is literally un-American. She has renounced her
U.S. citizenship and joined up with some other nation.
The right to expatriate is fundamental; the British subjects who
claimed their freedom in North America in 1776 cited it as a law of
nature in the Declaration of Independence. In today's America, though,
expatriates are a lot less respectable than they were then. The gun law
casts them onto a heap with the rest of America's least loved. And gun
dealers are only some of the parties newly interested in keeping tabs on
them.
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service doesn't trust them; nor does the
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Anyone else who might
consider them suspicious, moreover, will have no problem finding out who
they are: A list of their names has started showing up every quarter in
the Federal Register.
It is printed thanks to Sam Gibbons: a Florida Democrat now retired
from Congress. In 1995, he sponsored a bill to publicly identify
Americans who commit what he called "the despicable act of
renouncing their allegiance to the United States." Rep. Gibbons
imagined that the list would include "a handful of the wealthiest
of the wealthy" who give up their passports for one reason: to
dodge taxes.
So far, the lists have run not to handfuls but to hundreds of names -
from Adankus and Ahn, through Kelly and Kikuchi, and all the way to Yoo
and Zerafa. If billionaires lurk among them, they aren't famous
billionaires. True, many might have stood to save on taxes. But for many
more, a tax bill was far from the first thing on their minds; their
motives for turning into un-Americans, if you listen to them, are as
various as the roots their names recall.
Mr. Gibbons's list had its beginnings in a cloud of patriotic umbrage
that passed over the U.S. In the mid-1990s. Congress got mad at legal
aliens who use social services but don't become U.S. citizens. Less
noisily, it got mad at Americans who become legal aliens in other
countries, use services there, but decide not to remain U.S. citizens
for life.
A tax bill passed in 1996 establishes a legal presumption that anyone
who gives up U.S. citizenship and is valued at more than $500,000 (like
several million other Americans) must be doing it to avoid taxes. The
IRS will therefore tax them on all earnings it can reach for 10 years
after they give up citizenship. For renouncers who move to countries
where they have no immediate family, the law pronounces the presumption
of tax-ducking "irrebuttable:" No matter how many reasons such
people may have for snipping their American umbilicus, the IRS will hear
none of them.
ODIOUS EMIGRANTS
A month after passing this tax law, Congress came down on illegal
immigrants -and slipped into that bill a four-line clause meant to
penalize supposedly odious emigrants. It makes Americans who give up
citizenship to escape taxes"'excludable. "
That means banishment: Like terrorists and people with communicable
diseases, renouncers can be barred from setting foot in the U.S. ever
again. Even if they chip in all the taxes the IRS says they owe, the law
allows the INS to banish them anyway. Regardless of what either agency
does to them, their names will still appear on Rep. Gibbons's list.
'No one in my family, no matter how much money they made, would have
ever renounced their American citizenship.' Rep. Martin Frost, a Texas
Democrat, said at the time. "We're talking about basic patriotism
and basic fairness." And perhaps some national pique.
With the military draft long past, the thinking seems to go, what
cost can a U.S. passport entail apart from a tax bill? A lawyer who used
to work at a U.S. consulate in Africa remembers an American woman who
would come in every few months asking to turn her passport in. She was
sent away.
The law's presumptions may seem presumptuous, though, in a mobile age
when some Ameicans de-camp from Brazil to Korea the way others pull up
stakes in Vermont and head for Arizona. Some who move in tow of
multinational companies become true multinationalists. In a more
romantic day, they would be called citizens of the world. Now, exposed
in the Federal Register and faced with permanent exile, none are eager
to tell their stories. But if tax avoidance really is their motive, it
must rank with love and war as a driving force in unusual lives.
A SAGA OF CITIZENSHIP
One man's saga is recounted in a detailed letter written by a New
York accountant to the IRS as an appeal for a less-absolute judgment.
The IRS treated the letter as a "comment" on the law and
released it for publication on the Internet.
The story began 74 years ago when the accountant's client was born in
Calcutta, British India, to parents who were Chinese. They were citizens
of China, and so was their son. He grew up in Calcutta and found his
first job at the Bank of China's Calcutta office . The bank soon sent
him to its branch in Karachi, where he worked as a teenage trainee
through World War II.
In 1945, this young banker returned to Calcutta. Two years later,
with the British gone and India partitioned, the Bank of China sent him
back to Karachi, in what by then was Pakistan. He traveled, as before,
on a Chinese Nationalist passport.
Then China fell to the Communists. The Bank of China expected him to
take up citizenship of the new People's Republic. He declined. He
resigned, gave up his Chinese passport, applied for Pakistani
citizenship - and got it. He married a Chinese woman of Malayan
parentage who was also born in India. They lived in Karachi, and had
five children.
In 1954, as his accountany tells the IRS, the young banker turned
insurance man, getting a job with a Bermuda-registered insurance
company. He worked his way up. In 1965, the company sent him to Hong
Kong, and in two years made him a vice president.
But the company thought it best not to have someone from Pakistan on
its Hong Kong board. So, in 1967, he stopped being Pakistani. He became
British.
NATURAL DECISION
"I come from all different places, you see." That, he says
in a reluctant telephone interview, is what he tells strangers who ask
where he is from.
Hong Kong wasn't his last stop. In 1975, he became an assistant
treasurer in his insurance company's New York headquarters. The company
sponsored him for a permanent resident's visa - a green card -and in
1981, says the IRS Internet posting, he did what came naturally:
naturalize as a U.S. citizen.
He lived on Manhattan's East Side and in time moved to New Jersey.
His wife and children moved, too. All became Americans. But in 1988, at
age 64, the assistant treasurer began thinking about retirement and
decided on one final move: to end his days as a Canadian.
Why? Because, he says, he wanted to be safe, and New York City in
1988 wasn't safe enough. He wanted to be able to walk into a hospital
and not be asked for insurance papers or a U.S. Social Security number
or a credit card - all of which happened at a hospital in Secaucus, New
Jersey after a bookcase fell on an index finger. And, his accountant
stressed, he wanted to grow old in the company of two sisters and four
brothers. They all live in Toronto, where the streets are safe and the
hospitals free.
So, in 1991, he completed his career and entered Canada on a
retiree's visa. In three years, he applied for citizenship. At a
ceremony in 1995, he sang, "O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command." Then he wrote the U.S.
State Department to say he had finished being an American.
Did the assistant treasurer, now retired, renounce his U.S.
citizenship to save on taxes? No doubt taxes crossed his mind. He has
retirement income of $80,000 a year and a net value of nearly $2
million. Canada has no estate tax; his heirs could gain when he dies.
Had he moved to China--where his parents were born and he never
lived--the IRS would have let him put forth all his other reasons for
moving to one more new country. But his Canada ties aren't enough.
The law, passed in 1996, was made retroactive to 1995, before the
date of his renunciation. It says tax avoidance has to be a prime motive
for his desertion of the U.S. There is no arguing it.
AN AMERICAN ANOMALY
Citizenship, it seems, means more to America than to many of those
who expatriate. They preserve their identity in blood, language, clan
and family. With religion and territory added, so do many nations, from
Laos to Latvia. But countries of immigration like the U.S. have no
organic national glue. They synthesize nationhood out of ideas and a
will to belong. Citizenshlp keeps them whole.
For a thing so treasured, though, U.S. citizenship has steadily
become easier to get and harder to lose. Except for war criminals and
the like, revoking it without consent is next to impossible. And the
U.S. grants it to every baby born within its borders, even if the mother
is an illegal immigrant on a day trip. They all remain Americans whether
or not they remain in America.
When Congress cut welfare payments to noncitizens in 1996, this
cheapening of citizenship seemed to turn around. Millions applied to
naturalize. Rarely since the 1950s has so much loyalty talk been heard
in the land. The oathnew citizens take still obligates each to
"absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and
fidelity to any foreign prince or potentate. . . ."
But it takes more than an oath to alter the facts of multinational
life.
Some who naturalize may go through the motions of renouncing former
citizenships. Many more don't--and the U.S. looks the other way.
Likewise, Americans overseas who want to swear loyalty to a second
country once got dirty looks at U.S. embassies; now they can get help.
When lives overarch borders, gaining a passport or giving one up often
has as much to do with practicality as nationality.
Sirens do wail in Washington, however, when U.S. citizens overseas
hand their passports back--precisely what the letter of the law demands
of every immigrant who takes the U.S. citizenship oath.
The underlying reason is a great American anomaly: The U.S. taxes all
the earnings of all its citizens, whether they live in Duluth or
Dnepropetrovsk. Only two other countries treat their citizens that way.
One is the Philippines. The other is Eritrea.
Americans outside the country - perhaps three million - file tax
returns spottily at best. In 1994, the IRS received just 257,000 returns
claiming a special tax break for citizens overseas. But America's
passion for taxing everyone everywhere has long posed temptations to
belong to other nations.
A tax law to deter renouncers first hit the books in 1966. It was
hardly used. Yet in the next 27 years, with a blip for the Vietnam War,
fewer than 30,000 passports were turned in; through the 1980s, the
average was 300 a year. Then, in 1994, this "trend" became an
"issue." An article ran in Forbes magazine mentioning a few
big names who had sidestepped taxes by expatriating to places like the
Bahamas and Belize. They were known as "yacht people."
In Washington, the Democrats decided to sink them. President Bill
Clinton proposed an "exit tax" on wealthy ex-citizens who
would pay on capital gains as if they had sold their assets--or died.
They could then rewrite their wills, and nobody would ask why they
snubbed America.
The Republicans wouldn't buy it. They rejoined with a hardening of
the old rules that ended up as today's law.
Rather than go after the super rich alone, it casts a wide net that
can even snare departing green-card holders. It hangs on for a decade,
taxing any money earned in the U.S. In practice, that mostly means
capital gains on the sale of American assets. And the law pins a motive
of tax avoidance on any expatriate in the upper middle class.
"GET THE MOTIVE OUT"
"Sometimes I'm sorry I brought this thing up," Michael
Pfeifer says; now a partner at Ernst & Young, he devised the exit
tax while at the IRS in 1995. "It evolved from a tax on the
wealthiest two dozen people who expatriate in a year to something far
broader," he says. "My intention was to make thetax automatic.
If you go, you owe. Get the motive out."
The motive, however, is still in. A Finn born in Chicago who stays a
week and lives in La Paz for 30 years before giving up U.S. citizenship
is as much a tax dodger, under the law, as an lowa-bred billionaire who
buys a Cape Verde passport and lives in Cannes.
Mexico frowned on dual citizenship until this year; American-born
Mexicans who moved south couldn't attend Mexican colleges, for example,
without turning in their U.S. passports. Germany, which is also
rethinking its rules, still wants anyone who becomes German to give up
earlier loyalties and prove it.
Koreans who get U.S. passports and then go home will be barred from
owning property or starting businesses. But if they renounce U.S.
citizenship--the Federal Register's list of expatriates is full of
Korean names--the law will brand them as tax avoiders, as it will
another suspect minority: Americans who marry foreigners.
A New York lawyer's case file contains the tale of an American who
ships out to France in World, War II, falls in love, marries and never
comes back. Everything he owns is in France. He wants to will it to his
wife.
A citizen spouse would get it all, but in 1988, Congress decided to
tax estates left to aliens, lest they take the money and run. The
American in France hates the thought of his wife being forced to sell
their home to pay U.S. taxes, so he gives up his citizenship. His
motive, obviously, is tax avoidance.
KNEE-JERK PRESUMPTIONS
For many renouncers, the tax law does offer one way out. It gives
them a chance to refute its knee-jerk presumptions if they live in their
new country of citizenship and show strong ties to it. Sound easy? Ask
Henry Haugen.
Mr. Haugen is a maritime lawyer in Seattle, and the person he's
talking about is a relative in northern Norway. Born in the U.S., she
traveled to the old country at 19, met a man, married him, and has lived
in his town for almost 50 years.
Loyally, she filed U.S. returns; Norway's high taxes offset anything
she owed. But in her 60s, she decided to simplify her estate for the
sake of her children, Norwegians all. So she turned in her American
passport and asked Mr. Haugen to square things with the IRS.
That's when Mr. Haugen learned that to commute a sentence of tax
dodging, the IRS first must see: U.S. and Norwegian income tax returns
(translated into English) for three years into the future; theoretical
estate returns for the U.S. and Norway hypothesizing death on the date
of expatriation; and a schedule of gifts to be made in the coming
decade. For starters.
The requisite stack of details (including site of cemetery plot)
"is kind of a monstrous thing," says Mr. Haugen. He tallied
enough hours compiling it to bill $10,000. Tax lawyers say they'd charge
$25,000.
And here's the zinger: Last summer, the IRS announced in an official
notice that it couldn't decide if people such as Mr. Haugen's client
abandoned the U.S. to escape taxes. It said "the inherently factual
and subjective nature of the inquiry" made it too hard.
Renouncers entitled to a decision will stay up in the air; at any
time for 10 years, the IRS could suddenly decide to decide.
"They've lost track of common sense," Mr. Haugen says.
And even if America's tax collectors do make up their minds to impose
a tax or not, Mr. Haugen's Norwegian relative could still have something
to fear from America's gatekeepers.
POWER TO THE INS
In the 1996 illegal-immigration act, the section that bans ex-citizen
tax shirkers for life comes right before the sections on deportation for
high-speed flight and removal of alien terrorists. Sponsored by Rep.
Jack Reed, now a Democratic senator from Rhode Island, it gives the
INS--not the IRS--the power to divine the motives of renouncers and to
pronounce tax-avoiders "excludable".
"The immigration law is not about tax enforcement," says
Ann Lesk, a tax lawyer in New York. "It's about punishing people
for making money in the U.S. and then going somewhere else. It's a meat
ax."
Told of it, some scholars wonder about the law's chilling effect on
the right to expatriate. But once gone, ex-citizens have no more claim
to come back than would-be immigrants do.
The prospect of banishment isn't a pleasant one, especially for
someone like one law professor who didn't make his fortune in America
and never meant to come to the U.S. in the first place. "My name is
in the Federal Register," he says, explaining why he would rather
that a newspaper not use it.
He stems from a line of German-Jewish bankers who became Roman
Catholic late in the last century and owned a 3,000-acre estate near
Munich. The Nazis sent his grandfather to a concentration camp. His
father and mother escaped with him to England. Then his parents
divorced. His mother sailed to America, and he went with her.
They were stateless. At war's end, the family learned that its German
patriarch had somehow survived. The money wasn't returned; the land was.
But the mother had remarried in America. So, in 1947, she and her son
became American citizens.
BACK TO GERMANY
His father, meanwhile, returned to Germany. In 1950, at age 16, the
son began visiting. He liked Europe, a tug that intensified when, in
1984, he fathered a child by a German woman. In 1993, he secured a post
at a British university and left the U.S.
His father had died in 1991, bequeathing him land that had been in
the family since 1825. With a German son as his heir, the professor
realized, the U.S. would ultimately tax those lands.
Adding it all up, he decided to become German again. In 1997, aware
of the consequences, he walked into the U.S. Embassy in London and
renounced his American citizenship.
In its two years of publication, Rep. Gibbons's list of expatriates
in the Federal Register has grown no shorter; if the tax law has
dissuaded anyone from giving up U.S. citizenship, it doesn't show. If it
has raised any revenue to speak of, the IRS can't say.
Nor has the INS managed to write rules to enforce the immigration
law. In prickly consultations with the State Department and the IRS,
nobody can agree on the precise mechanics of an "official"
renunciation.
And nobody knows how Congress could have given the INS the enormous
power to brand people who give up U.S. citizenship as tax dodgers and
banish them--without appeal--when the IRS can't legally let other
agencies snoop through anybody's tax returns.
What can the U.S. tell expatriates living under this cloud?
The State Department's Mr. Betancourt says, "This is not a
paperwork issue. The consequences are very serious. I can't say
nothing's going to happen."
For now, he advises, it is probably still safe for expatriated
un-Americans to enter their forsaken land. But with their names on the
"list of shame," they would all have some explaining to do if
they ever got the urge to buy a gun .
FROM: http://www.debito.org/naturalization2.html
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Posted by Tom Rodriguez on February 02, 1997:
Can a Mexican citizen, US resident, become a US citizen without
giving up Mexican citizenship? I've heard Mexico's laws are changing
to allow dual citizenship.
Gracias!
Tom Rodriguez
Posted by BETSY on February 04, 1997:
Hi Tom;
In the past a Mexican would lose his rights as an heir if he took a
foreign citizenship. If he had or ended up with property in Mexico, he
had to dispose of it within 60 months, or forsake it in favor of the
government. The U.S. does not encourage dual citizenship, but are not
very interested in this matter, as long as you do not break any U.S.
laws. At the present time, Mexicans can take a foreign citizenship
without losing out on the family property.
There is one hitch though, you cannot vote in Mexico and in the
foreign country as well. And... how can a foreign government protect
you in Mexico, if you hold both citizenship? As you see, there are
some wrinkles to iron out. Most people suspect that this was a
political move to encourage more Mexicans to take up U.S. citizenship,
also as a way to encourage Mexicans to vote in the elections back
home. This needs further clarification, naturally.
BETSY
FROM: http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/dtdualcitizenship.html
Dual Citizenship and
American National Identity
By Stanley A. Renshon
Mexico's Dual
Citizenship Decision:
A Mix of Self-Interested Motivations
Mexico shares a long border with the American
Southwest and is the single highest sending country of immigrants into
the United States. As noted, the official estimate of foreign-born
persons, of whatever legal status, living in the U.S. as of 2000, was
28.4 million. The flow from 1980 to 2000 constitutes the largest
consecutive two-decade influx of immigrants in the country's history.
Half the foreign-born population is from Latin America, and 1999 figures
reveal (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2000, 1) that, "one-third of
the foreign born are from Mexico or from another central American
country."
In the censuses of 1960, 1970,
1980, and 1990, Mexico was just one of the top-10 countries of origin
for immigrants in the United States (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1997,
p. 13/Table 3-1). In 1980 and 1990 it was the top country of
birth, and this will no doubt be true as well for the 2000 census. In
1980, there were 2.1 millions Mexicans living in the United States.
By 1990, that figured had doubled to over 4.2 million.
By 1994, that figure had jumped to 6.6 million (de la Garza,
1997, 2). And by 1997, that figure had jumped to over seven million
(U.S. Department of Commerce, 1997, p. 12).
Mexican Americans in particular
have high birthrates. The Census Bureau estimates that the proportion of
the population in immigrant households is likely to increase in future
years given that group's relative youth and high fertility rates. So,
for example, the average foreign-born household had larger numbers of
children under 18 than native-born household (1.02 vs. .67) Or, to put
it another way, 60 percent of foreign-born households had one or more
children under 18 compared with 45 percent of native households.
Foreign-born households were more likely to have two (44 versus 36
percent) or more (16 versus 9 percent) children than native-born
households. Of families with a foreign-born householder from Latin
America, 25 percent had three or more children, and, among married
couples with householders from Mexico, this figure is 79 percent.
As Steven A. Holmes points out in
his analysis of the 1998 National Center for Health Statistics study:
Much of the increase in
Hispanic-origin births is a result of high fertility rates among
Mexican Americans, particularly recent immigrants, about 70 percent
of the babies born to Hispanic women in 1995 up from 61 percent
in 1989 were born to women of Mexican heritage...The study
provides further evidence that people of Mexican heritage have an
increasing demographic significance in American society. The study's
findings strongly imply that, as a result of high levels of
immigration and a high birth rate, people of Mexican heritage are
poised to become a major economic, political, and cultural force in
the coming decades." (1998, A12)
These facts have not been lost on
the government of Mexico. As Paula Gutierrez (1997; see also Vargas,
1996, 7-10) points out, "The dual nationality amendments [recently
enacted] radically depart from Mexican tradition and laws." The
change required that three articles of the Mexican constitution be
amended and at least 55 secondary laws be repealed or revised.
This enormous undertaking represented, "a sharp reversal
after decades in which successive governments either ignored Mexican
expatriates or referred to them as pochos, or cultural
traitors" (Dillon, 1995). What changed?
The full story of that change has
yet to be written, but it will surely entail self-interested strategies
on the part of the ruling Mexican party, the opposition party trying to
make inroads against it, and a growing chorus of Mexican-Americans who
wanted to further their economic, political and cultural claims in their
country of origin. Each of these parties had their own versions of
self-interest, but it is instructive to note that the interests of the
United States were clearly not considered by any of these parties.
This does not by itself make
Mexican dual citizenship an adverse development for the United States.
However, it does underscore the extent to which the calculations that
led to Mexico's decision to enact dual citizenship were taken with the
self interests of the three Mexican groups wholly in mind. Its impact on
the politics, economy, and culture of the United States counted for very
little, if at all, in these calculations.
And what are these calculations?
Several seem quite clear. Mexico has always depended on the northward
movement of immigrants into the United State to reduce population and
economic pressures, and the political consequences which flow from them.
Encouraging northward migration operates therefore as "safety
valve" for Mexican society and, not incidentally, for its governing
elites of whatever party.
Mexico, like other
immigrant-sending countries, benefits economically from sending many of
its nationals to the United States to work. The reason is that Mexican
nationals, working in the United States, are a key source of national
income, which itself helps to relieve economic and thus political
pressures on the governing elites.
A recent study by Rodolpho de la
Garza, Manuel Orozco, and Miguel Barona (de la Garza et al.,
1997, 1-2) on the binational impact of Latino financial
remittances found that because of "the very large number" of
new arrivals from Latin America remittances have "dramatically
increased" and "represent a substantial contribution to the
national economies of the receiving countries."26
Specific figures for Mexico cited
in this study are startling. For example, in 1990 the five countries
that the study examined (Columbia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Mexico) received over $1 billion in remittance income;
however, "remittances to Mexico account to over half of the total
amounts sent to the five countries combined" (1997, 2). As the
authors (1997, 3) point out, their use of World Bank figures are
"conservative estimates, and others indicate that Mexican
remittances account for between $2 to $4 billion." Moreover, Mexico
was one of three countries in which the increase in rates of remittances
was greater than its immigrants' income (1997, 4). Finally, the amount
of remittances to all five countries exceed the amount of official U.S.
aid, and this is true even for countries like El Salvador, which
received the largest amount of such aid in the 1980s.
From the standpoint of Mexican
economic incentives, the advantages of dual citizenship to Mexico are
clear. The more close ties to the "homeland" can be encouraged
and stimulated, the more stable the flow of remittances will be and the
more likely they are to increase over time. Recent estimates have put
this figure at $2.16 billion in the first quarter of 2001, up 42 percent
(Finley, 2001). Removing barriers that keep Mexican Americans alienated
from their home country is another plus from this standpoint.
Dual-citizen Mexican Americans can now send their money home and have
use of it when they spend time or retire there. From the self-interested
economic perspective of Mexican Americans, this is a positive
development.
However powerful economic
incentives are, and they are substantial, it would be a severe error to
underestimate the political importance of Mexican Americans to the
Mexican government. Spiro has argued (1997, 1470) that, "Mexico and
other countries would have no concrete means to use their nationals as
instruments, at least not consistent with international law..." I
am not sure what international law making use of multiple loyalties is
inconsistent with, but it is clearly part of the strategic thinking of
Mexican leaders.
In a private meeting with U.S.
Latino leaders in 1995, Mexican President Zedillo (quoted in Vargas
1996, 3)27 said that his government would
support the then-pending constitutional and other legal changes,
allowing dual-citizenship to "increase the political clout of
Mexican Americans." Why was he interested in doing that? For one
reason, because his goal was to "develop a close relationship
between his [Mexico's] government and Mexican Americans, one in which they
could be called upon to lobby U.S. policy makers on economic and
political issues involving the United States and Mexico" (Corchado,
1995a, 11A, emphasis mine; see also Vargas, 1996, 3).
Or, as Vegas (1996, 9, emphasis
mine) notes, the many recently developed Mexican government programs now
in operation28 to reach out to the Mexican
American community in the United States have a clear purpose:
The government of Mexico is
investing in Mexican Americans now and plans to collect tomorrow.
Recognizing their political and economic power in the United States,
but aware of their familial and spiritual links they continue to
maintain with Mexico, the country of their ancestors, the Mexican
government is hoping to contribute to the development of a powerful
and effective lobby ready to represent and defend the interests of
Mexico in this country (1996, 9, emphasis mine).
Speaking of the Mexican government
change in its approach to Mexican Americans, Raul Yzaguirre, President
of the National Council of La Raza, said in a 1996 interview (quoted in
Corchado, 1995b, A1; see also Vargas, 1996,7 fn 23, emphasis mine):
"For many years there was an aversion by Mexico to deal with our
community. Now they realize we represent a long term interest."
What interests are these? Writing
before the changes in dual nationality became law, Jorge A. Vargas says:
Mexicans with dual nationality
would raise an array of novel and delicate questions in the United
States. Such questions may address international law in general, and
specific areas of domestic legislation of these two countries.
Taxation, labor issues, acquisition of real estate and other
business transactions, inheritance, domicile, military service,
family law and minor's rights, deportation and other immigration law
aspects, political rights and diplomatic protection may be among the
long list of technical legal questions directly affected by this
contemplated legal change. (1996, 3)
To this substantial list, one might
add Mexican President Vicente Fox's call for essentially open borders
between the two countries. (Jordan, 2000; Thompson, 2000) Since
almost all the human traffic would go from south to north, this
suggestion would appear to be highly advantageous to Mexico. It would
ensure that more Mexican Americans send more remittances, further defuse
Mexican demographic, economic, and social pressures, and ensure
ever-larger groups of dual nationals to be mobilized on Mexico's behalf. Its
overall benefits for the United States appear economically modest.
Politically, it is potentially destabilizing.
Dual citizens and those with
multiple loyalties might be used to organize on behalf of other policies
the Mexican government might favor for example, bilingual language
policies which help to maintain and facilitate ties to the
"home" country. Or
they might be used to promote amnesty for those who enter the country
illegally (Greenhouse, 2000),
another policy that furthers Mexico's interests much more than it does
the United States'. Juan Hernandez, President Fox's advisor and director
of the new Presidential Office for Mexicans Abroad, added several more.
He wants American states to issues driver's licenses to illegal
immigrants, allow them to get in-state tuition at colleges, and have
access to pre-natal and other health care (Finley 2001). And he would
like to have Mexican Americans who have succeeded in this country invest
more in their "home country" (James Smith, 2001).
The Mexican president was quite
clear in his remarks to the Mexican Federal Congress in May 1995 (quoted
in Vargas, 1996, 5, emphasis in original): "The Mexican nation goes
beyond the territory contained by its borders. Therefore an
essential element of the Mexican national program' will be to
promote the constitutional and legal amendments designed for Mexicans to
retain their nationality..."
It is not possible to read this as
anything other than straightforward statement that Mexico considers
individuals who have emigrated, and even obtained citizenship elsewhere,
as still being Mexican nationals. President Vicente Fox "has made
it clear he intends to be president of 118 million people, a number that
includes the 100 million living in Mexico itself as well as those living
in the US." (Slambrouck, 2000)
Of course, the fact that the Mexican government considers Mexican
American citizens in this way does not mean that Mexican Americans
necessarily reciprocate the feeling. Yet, there is certainly enough
theory and evidence to support the view that many Mexican immigrants
retain an important attachment to their country of origin.
Vargas agrees, noting that one set
of "sociological" arguments in favor of dual citizenship for
Mexicans is that, "Mexicans are very proud of their culture. In
principle, any Mexican is a true nationalist. They love their history,
culture, and traditions, and especially they love their beautiful
country. Accordingly Mexicans remain Mexicans anywhere they are."
(1996, 10)
Mexican
American Dual Citizens: Ambivalent Loyalties
The issues that can arise with multiple loyalties are seen in some of
their most direct manifestations in the case of Mexican Americans. Other
research data suggest that Vargas' "sociological arguments"
have substantial real-world manifestations. As a result, they are not
just a matter of abstract controversy. Rather, they directly raise basic
questions about issues of cultural coherence and attachment in American
politics.
On many empirical measures, Mexican
Americans stand apart from traditional or even contemporary patterns of
integration into American society. Ruben Rumbaut (1994), for example,
surveyed over 5,000 children from immigrant families. Half were
U.S.-born children of immigrants, half were foreign-born children who
immigrated here before they were 12 (the 1.5 generation).
He offered each child the opportunity to self-identify by either
national origin (e.g., Jamaican, Hmong), hyphenated identity (e.g.,
Mexican American, Filipino American),
a plain American identity, or a pan-racial/ethnic identity (e.g.
Hispanic, Latino, "Black").29 He
found a definite trend of adopting a hyphenated American identity from
the foreign-born children to those born here (from 32 percent to 49
percent). These findings, he correctly states, are indicative of a
"significant assimilative trend." He notes the most
assimilative groups appear to be the Latin Americans, "with the
very notable exception of Mexicans. Among the U.S.-born less than 4
percent of Mexican American-descent youth identified as American (the
lowest proportion of any group)..."
(1994, 765, emphasis mine).
Moreover, among second-generation
Mexicans, "a very substantial number identified as Chicano,
virtually all of them U.S. born and all of them in California; in fact a
quarter of all Mexican-descendant second generation students
self-identified as Chicano, a historical and problematic identity unique
to that group..." In other words, compared to other
second-generation immigrant children, Asians for example, Mexicans were
far more likely to select a pan-racial/ethnic identity that did not
include some American component.
The same kinds of difference showed
up in language use, one of the key elements of integration into a new
society. Rumbaut measured facility by relying on self reports, a method
ripe for methodological errors like those brought about by social
desirability factors.30
Even so, he found a Mexican difference:
Three quarters of the total
sample preferred English, including substantial majorities in every
group...the single exceptions are the Mexicans, who are the most
loyal to their native tongue, although even among them 45 percent
preferred English. More than one-third speak English only with their
parents, although, interestingly, a smaller proportion speak English
only with their close friends (who are also children of immigrants)
(1994, 767, emphasis added).
And finally, when one examines the
rate of naturalization for those qualified to seek it, Mexicans again
stand out. The proportion
of naturalized citizens among the foreign-born population in 1997 was 53
percent for those from Europe, 44 percent for those from Asia and 24
percent for those from Latin America. Why are the Latin American
naturalization rates so low? Primarily, "because of the low
figure for the population from Mexico (15 percent)" (U.S.
Department of Commerce 1997, 20, emphasis mine).
Does dual citizenship inhibit
naturalization in the United States? Hispanic advocacy research groups
argue it does not. De la Garza and his associates (1996) compared a
group of Central and Latin American countries which do and do not grant
dual citizenship and ask whether dual citizenship affects naturalization
rates. They conclude it does not. However, they erroneously include six
countries that do grant dual citizenship (Bolivia, Chile, Guatemala,
Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Brazil) in their list of 10 who do not.31
Moreover, they are only able to conclude there is no difference
by excluding the single largest immigrant-sending country with (at the
time) no dual citizenship provisions Mexico from their analysis.
A more careful analysis of the
impact of dual citizenship on naturalization rates was undertaken by
Philip Q. Yang (1994) as part of a large empirical analysis of
naturalization using national census data. He notes:
In spite of the [statistical]
significance of its coefficient, the negative effect of dual
citizenship also contradicts the dual citizenship hypothesis that
dual citizenship encourages naturalization. The odds of
naturalization for immigrants from countries which recognize dual
citizenship are about 20 percent (-.201=.799-1) smaller than the
odds for those from countries which do not. Perhaps, immigrants
may...have confusion about and difficulty in maintaining dual
allegiances to both the country of origin and the host country.
Thus, immigrants may be reluctant to identify themselves with
Americans and are therefore much less likely to naturalize (1994,
473-74).
The ambivalence that immigrants
feel because of the pull of dual loyalties can be resolved in several
different ways. The pull of the old country can recede, and the
attachment to the newer one can grow. The pull of the old country can
retain its original strength and even grow given modern technology
and/or efforts by the "old country" to stimulate it. Or, the
immigrants can continue to have strongly mixed feelings essentially
making them feel never truly at home.
Yet rates of naturalization by
themselves, like rates of political participation by themselves, without
other information do not tell us very much. The latest figures on
Mexican naturalization (U.S. Department of Justice 2000, 170) show that
while it is still comparatively low, it is "inching up." For
example, "Mexico was the leading country of birth of persons
naturalizing in 1998 with 112,442 or 24.3 percent of the total."
Perhaps not coincidently that is the first year after Mexico's new dual
citizenship law went into effect allowing their nationals to retain
their Mexican citizenship while at the same time becoming U.S. citizens.
One can look on increasing
naturalization rates among immigrants as a positive development.
However, one can also wonder if groups that are more likely to become
U.S. citizens only when they are able to retain citizenship in their
"home" countries are the kinds of committed citizens that our
democracy envisions. Conflicted, and to that extent shallow, citizenship
seems as problematic for a country, as affairs are for a marriage.
Multiple
Loyalties: Then and Now
We are now in a better position to answer a question that arises in
connection with the spread of dual citizenship. Plainly stated the
question is this: Other immigrants have come here, established
themselves, and yet still retained an active interest and involvement in
the affairs of their home countries, even after several generations.
Irish and Jewish Americans come easily to mind here.
It's a fair question. Certainly
many Irish Americans were concerned with "the troubles" in
Northern Ireland and some provided financial support for the positions
they favored. In the annals of lobbying, the efficacy of those lobbying
for the state of Israel is legendary and a model for those who wish to
use their dual citizenship to emulate it. So why isn't what's
"good" for Irish and Jewish Americans equally good for Mexican
or Nigerian dual nationals?
While no one answer is likely to be
definitive, it seems that there are at least five differences between
then and now:
(1) America: Accepted vs.
Contested Culture: Yes,
culture is always in transition. However, when transition arises from a
questioning of the basic legitimacy and fairness of core social and
political institutions it is quite a different set of circumstances.
Ongoing and expected cultural evolution and development which
builds on and refines basic cultural and political institutions is one
matter. Building on the ruins of what was previously accepted is
another.
So, when Irish and Jewish Americans
expressed and even acted on their continuing interests in their
"home" countries,32 they did so
in a context in which one set of basic elements of an American identity,
a commitment to its core institutions and cultural arrangements, was not
in doubt.
(2) American National
Psychology: Self-Confident Individualism Fading?
The term "American national psychology" does not mean
there is one American psychology or an indelibly etched American
"national character." It does reflect the fact that the blend
of opportunity and freedom, framed by a constitutional republic which
reflected and encouraged both, created a group of citizens who were
determined to realize their ambitions and make use of their
opportunities, were independent and fair minded, and optimistic and
secure enough to take risks, but temperate enough to allow pragmatism to
temper them.
Obviously, not every American
displayed these characteristics in whole or in part. However, America
would not have been built without these characteristics being
substantially distributed in its population. Echoes of those earlier
characteristics survive and have been adapted to our new millennial
circumstances, but the number of Americans who combine them appears to
be shrinking. Other-directedness saps independence, and "thou shall
not judge" provides a cover from doing so.
So, in the past whatever interests
Irish and Jewish American had in their respective "home
countries," it was filtered through the lens of a more widely
shared national psychology which didn't shy away from independent-minded
judgments. What kinds of judgments might these be in these circumstances
of multiple attachments? One such set of judgments would surely involve
setting boundaries and priorities regarding one's attachments.
(3) Multiple Loyalties Then and
Now: The Psychology of Primacy: Consider the hyphenated Irish or
Jewish American identity. Does that mean such a person is an Irish-American,
a Irish-American, an Irish-American, or an American
of Irish decent? Each of these possible permutations reflects a
psychological identification with, and arrangement of, some of the basic
building blocks which form our identity.
It seems very unlikely that for
most Irish and Jewish Americans their "home country"
identifications were either equal to, or more important than, their
American identity. Moreover, had any of their fellow countrymen
suggested that they should be, it seems fair to say that most would
respond clearly, straightforwardly, and without much self-doubt: No.
They might be interested in some aspects of their "home
countries," but most, if not all, would say they were American
first and primarily.
Consider further the hypothetical
case in which the Irish and Jewish American equivalents of
"black," or Chicano (Hispanic) were available. Let's call them
"white" and "European." In fact, those terms, while
available, have never been embraced by Irish and Jewish Americans. Such
an embrace would effectively decouple one's identity from any
specifically stated identification with America.
Can anyone seriously argue that
such an identity would be chosen as Rumbaut (1994, 764 ,Table 2)
found was the case in second-generation immigrants from Mexico?
He found that almost half of his respondents selected a
racial/pan-ethnic identity, or that another 8 percent of these
adolescents would select an identity exclusively allied with national
origin. Would a random sample of Irish or Jewish American
second-generation children find over 50 percent whose selected
self-identification did not include an American element? I think not.
(4) Ninety-Three and Rising
Fast: The Problems of Scale: The
number of dual-citizenship- encouraging countries is rapidly rising.
More countries will be added to that list. Yet, there is an asymmetry in
the movement of immigrant populations. The flow is from economically
struggling, often less republican political countries to the more
economically secure liberal democracies. The weight of cultural economic
and political adjustment falls on the latter, not the former.
Few Americans not of Mexican origin
seek to become naturalized there. And if they did, they would learn that
Mexico, unlike the United States, requires those who would do so to
renounce their former citizenship, and is serious about that
requirement. If the foreigner makes such an affirmation, but does so in
a "fraudulent manner or without true intent to be definitely and
permanently obligated by them," the result can be a stiff fine
(Vargas, 1996, 32-33, emphasis mine). Who decides when and whether the
taking of an oath is done in this matter? The issue is "exclusively
dependent on the absolute discretionary powers of the Mexican
authorities." Moreover, the Mexican government does not even issue
birth certificates for the children of non-Mexicans born in Mexico
(Vargas, 1994, 35).
Even if Mexico were to liberalize
their naturalization laws for people other than their nationals living
abroad, it would have little discernable impact on the nature of their
political, cultural, and social institutions because the numbers are so
small. The same cannot be said of the circumstances of the United
States.
The United States takes in more
immigrants, from more countries, than any other country in the world. It
is also the destination of substantial numbers of illegal immigrants,
now estimated to total between 8.5 and nine million people, much higher
than earlier estimates.
These three facts, coupled with the
reality of 92 immigrant-sending countries which encourage dual
citizenship for their nationals (but not necessarily for immigrants
arriving in their countries), leads to an inescapable conclusion. No
other country in the world takes in so many immigrants, from so many
dual-citizenship-allowing countries, and as a result has such a vast and
swelling population of its citizens with dual citizenships and multiple
loyalties.
So, in the past, Irish and Jewish
Americans, to the extent they had interests and some level of attachment
to their "home countries," were the numerical exception, not
the rule. Today, with 85 percent of the large number of immigrants we
have accepted in the last four decades from dual-citizenship-encouraging
countries, the situation is fast being reversed. Dual citizens are
increasingly becoming the rule, not the exception, in certain
geographical areas in the United States.
(5) Compatibility of Interests,
Then and Now: Some Distinctions:
Immigrant involvement in "homeland issues," as Mona
Harrington (1980, 680-686; see also Tony Smith, 2001) terms them, is not
new. The Irish in the United States made U.S. relationships with
Ireland's archenemy, England, a campaign issue as far back as the 1840s.
(Harrington, 1980, 682). Ancestral
quarrels like those between Greece and Turkey have periodically spilled
over into American legislative politics. Yet, is it accurate to say as
Spiro does (1997, 1477) that a "dual Mexican American who advocates
policies that benefit Mexico is little different from a Catholic who
advocates policies endorsed by the church or by a member of Amnesty
International who writes his congressman at the organization's
behest"?
The first question that needs to be
asked is the relationship of the policy advocacy to the person's (or
group's) self-identity. Any American citizen who espouses a policy
position is likely to be in accord with one advocacy group or another.
Does the citizen who agrees with the Amnesty International position
define himself as a "world citizen" and not a U.S. one? Or, is
he basically an American citizen who supports the position of an
international organization? Is every American citizen who supports the
work of the United Nations an example of dual loyalties, about which we
should worry? Obviously not. Neither Amnesty International nor the
United Nations is a "home country" with all the emotional
attachments that follow from that experience.
A second question that needs to be
asked concerns numbers. Assuming those who wrote in favor of Amnesty
International positions were self-identified as "world
citizens." How many such "world citizens" are there who
do not primarily identify as Americans? Are they the same numbers of
possible dual citizens as Mexico possesses, over seven million? Further,
are they concentrated in a few states and metropolitan areas where their
combined weight might tip the scales of deliberative policy, as is the
case, for example, with Mexican Americans (U.S. Department of Commerce,
1997, 14-17).
What of Catholics voting in
accordance with the Vatican position on an issue? This starts to get
closer to the issues raised by dual loyalties to another country, but
falls far short as a accurate model. Few, if any, Americans were born,
raised, and emigrated from the Vatican. As a result, whatever doctrinal
beliefs they learned in church were also learned in an American
community, embedded in American cultural and social institutions and
surrounded by others with the same core American experiences. Moreover,
policy positions of whatever sort are primarily cognitive, attachments
to one's country more fully affective. Policy preferences are not often
deeply held, and even when they are, rarely organize the person's sense
of core identity.
Moreover to my knowledge, the
Vatican has never sought to substitute its positions on say, birth
control, for the more general, fundamental, and important set of beliefs
that constitute the "American Creed." One can easily be an
American Catholic who supports the Vatican's position on this issue or
an American Catholic who does not, but one will remain above all, an
American.
Do not Irish and Jewish Americans
lobby on behalf of what is, in fact, a foreign government or group? Yes,
but again it pays to make distinctions. The Irish have certainly
successfully labored to involve the American government in the solution
to the "troubles." And Jewish Americans have lobbied the
American government to support the establishment of,
and, more successfully, the continued existence of Israel. These
do not, however, constitute lobbying for policies that are against the
interests and long-term policies of the United States. Resolving
tensions between the Irish and our historic allies, the British, is not
against American interests. And supporting the right of existence of a
democratic state of Israel isn't either. Can the same be said of
organized efforts for repeated major amnesty programs which subvert the
attempt to make immigration an orderly, fair, and supportable policy?
Can it be said of organized efforts in support of open borders with
countries that stand to reap many more advantages from that policy than
the United States? Can it be said of organized efforts to make the
United States a multilingual country where there is no longer a common
language and understanding? I think important differences are clear in
these cases.
There is, as well, the issue here
of the effects on American culture and politics of having such a large
group of those living here advocating positions which are consistent
with their country of origin or dual identifications, but not
necessarily with those of the United States. Return to the metaphor of
dual citizenship as analogous to a marriage. Advocates claim that
different views between marriage partners are normal and need not cause
undue concern. And what if such partners do disagree on matters of
principle? No harm done, they claim, the individuals just agree to
disagree.
However, what if the spouses'
parents or family intervened in the marriage on behalf of their
principles and their son/daughter took their side? What if this happened
on a number of issues? Would there still be a pleasant agreement to
disagree? I think not.
What are the effects of siding with
your family at the expense of your spouse on the relationship of the
husband and wife and on the spouse whose views were trumped by the
spouse's family? Translated into the concerns we are raising here, the
question is: What is the effect of having groups of dual citizens side
with, or give strong weight to, the official views of their country of
origin or dual identification on both them, the United States, and the
country which asked for and received their agreement?
Finally, we must ask: Does it
matter if the successful results of such policy interventions by foreign
countries and their multiple-citizen allies change the basic cultural,
psychological, social, institutional, and political organizations that
have been the foundations of this country's republican democracy for
over 200 years? Yes. Of course it matters.
Many
Cultures, One Nation
America reached its present state of political, economic, and social
development by providing enormous personal freedom and abundant economic
opportunity. In doing so, it leveraged personal ambitions as a tool to
transform individuals' social and economic circumstances. In the
process, it helped develop and reinforce psychological elements which
were consistent with personal success and civic prudence in American
democracy. An emphasis on consistency, hard work, delay of immediate
gratification, prudence, pragmatism, and optimism were among these
characteristics.
In return, it asked of immigrants
that they learn the country's language, culture, and political
practices. Thus oriented toward their new home, immigrants could become
part of the fabric of American cultural and political life. Leaving a
life behind, even one that immigrants wanted to leave, was of course
difficult. Yet generations of earlier immigrants thought the sacrifice
worthwhile.
Dual citizenship and its associated
bifurcation of attention and commitment changes that traditional and
successful recipe. Immigrants increasingly come from countries that
encourage dual citizenship. Their purposes in doing so are primarily
self-interested. It may be to ensure the continued flow of financially
critical remittances from those working in the United States. Or, it may
be to organize their nationals to further their home country's policy
preferences; amnesty for
their nationals who entered this country illegally, for example, or the
support of bi-lingual language policies which help to maintain and
facilitate ties to the "home" country. Whatever the specific
purposes, sending countries are increasingly mobilizing to retain
immigrants' emotional attachment and to further develop commitment to
the "home" country from which they emigrated.
These developments set the stage
for a direct conflict of interest among new immigrants and citizens,
many of whom retain deep attachments to their home country.
Given the geographical distribution of such immigrants, it is
possible that whole states and certainly some localities will have a
substantial portion of dual citizens with active and deep connections to
their "countries of origin" being asked to put aside these
experiences and connections in favor of America's national or community
interest. Whether that is possible as a matter of psychology or politics
remains to be seen. I mean no implication that such immigrants will be
"fifth column." However, it is prudent to consider that in
such circumstances they are likely to be conflicted.
This poses a dilemma for the United
States. It has traditionally taken in immigrants with the assumption
that they would eventually become anchored to an American identity and
nationality over time. In the past this was a reasonable assumption. It
no longer is.
Dual citizenship seems well suited
to an age in which advocates, theorists, and politicians tell us there
are no limits on what we should expect to have, without incurring any
costs. Do you want the benefits of freedom and opportunity buttressed by
a 21st century infrastructure and unlimited access to consumer goods,
but still want to maintain and further develop your emotional, economic,
social, and political ties to your "home" country? No less an
authority on self-interest without responsibility than former President
William J. Clinton (1999) found the idea of dual citizenship publicly
appealing.33 And why not? To the immigrant,
it dramatically lowers the costs of immigration while raising its
benefits.
Yet, to a democracy especially
one facing issues of cultural coherence and solidarity the costs of
admitting and allowing large numbers of dual citizens, with multiple
loyalties and an increasing capacity to maintain these ties, and
pressures on them from their home countries to do so, are not so
favorable. In a time characterized by enormous worry regarding the
decline of social capital and its implications for American civic life,
the split attachments of large numbers of dual citizens are another
source of deep concern.
Reforming dual citizenship in the
United States is certain to be controversial. It will definitely be
politically difficult. Yet, such measures will have the advantage of
calling all Americans home to their country. This country
provides so much of basic human value to those fortunate enough to call
it home. Asking its citizens to have a primary and relatively
unconflicted interest in its affairs and a concern for its welfare seems
a small and legitimate sacrifice to ask of those who ask to share its
treasures freedom and opportunity.
Efforts to make immigrants feel
welcomed are important to making them feel more at ease in their new
surroundings. Yet there remain valid questions as to the different forms
that welcoming can take, and whether some forms don't damage the very
outcomes of integration they seek to foster. Do we foster attachment to
American citizenship and its ideals by devaluing it? If we allow, or, as
some would have us do, encourage, immigrant loyalties to the "home
country," do we not put at risk the involvement and connection that
have traditionally been the hallmarks of other immigrant groups that
have become integrated into American society and culture?
Do we encourage a connection to
America and its government by averting our eyes as other counties send
us their immigrants, but do everything in their power to foster
connections with their old country instead of their chosen one? Should
we encourage our dual citizens to vote in their home country's
elections, and ours through the prism of their home country's self
interest? Should we encourage our dual citizens to run for, and hold
office, elsewhere?"
Earlier this year, Andres Bermundez
who came to this country 28 years ago hidden in a car trunk and has
since become legal and an economic success became one of three
Mexican Americans to campaign for office in Mexico (Mena 2001) and won (
James Smith, 2001). He and his supporters are quoted as hoping that he
will be the first of a wave of "bi-national politicians." Juan
Hernandez, President Fox's advisor on Mexicans abroad, sees many such
candidates in the future, "for Mexican state and federal
legislative posts (emphasis mine)." Does such encouragement really
help Mexican-American immigrants to become integrated in their new
country or their old? What does it do to American civic traditions and
the functioning of our political system when a large group of new
immigrants is asked to turn away from our political way of life, except
when it suits the purposes of the country that sent them?
No country, and certainly no
democracy, can afford to have large numbers of citizens with shallow
national and civic attachments. No country facing divisive domestic
issues arising out of its increasing diversity, as America does,
benefits from large-scale immigration of those with multiple loyalties
and attachments. And no country striving to reconnect its citizens to a
coherent civic identity and culture can afford to encourage its citizens
to look elsewhere for their most basic national attachments.
The question that America faces as
it heads into the 21st century is whether its cultural, psychological,
and political diversity lead to a fragmented, and thus dysfunctional,
national identity.
As he had when he ran for president
in 1992, Mr. Clinton showed an accurate understanding of this basic
public dilemma.34 In a talk with reporters
he said:
It is really potentially a
great thing for America that we are becoming so multi-ethnic...But
it's also potentially a powder keg of problems and heartbreak and
division and loss. And how we handle it will determine, really,
that single question may be the biggest determination of what we
look like 50 years from now...and what the children of that age will
have to look forward to. (1997a, 509)
Elsewhere he (1997b, 877) had
warned that the central problem facing this country was whether,
"we define what it means to be an American, not just in terms of
the hyphen showing our ethnic origins, but in terms of the our primary
allegiance to the values that America stands for and values we really
live by." As was often the case with this president, however, the
question was whether his actions would be consistent with his publicly
stated understandings and intentions (Renshon, 2001).
A key question is whether the
opposite of fragmentation is Anglo-western "domination"? Some
apparently think so. James Hunter in his book Cultural Wars argues
that (1997, 52, italics his), "cultural conflict is ultimately
about domination." Yet the word domination implies subjugation.
And those terms conjure up vast, powerful, and cold forces who suppress
brutally if, necessary what some would characterize as the
authentic striving of the noble but powerless.
This, of course, is a caricature.
Its primary logical problem is to explain how, if
"Anglo-conformity" dominates, it has been possible for the
level of pluralism that has always part of this country's heritage to
exist, much less to prosper (Abramson, 1980; see also Gleason, 1980).
The truth is that there have been pressures for immigrants to conform,
but they have been to national political values more often than strictly
cultural ones. Moreover, some
of the pressure to conform to "Anglo-values," as for example
in the case of learning English, have much more to do with wanting
newcomers to become integrated into the society in which they have
chosen to belong than they do with "subjugating" cultures of
origin. There are obviously strong arguments as well on the side of
those who said that uniting diverse peoples, an early understood task of
the new American republic, required some basic uniformities and language
was an obvious candidate.
Is it true that the goal of all
cultural conflict is domination? Not necessarily. I'm well aware that
the United States has a mixed, in some cases bad, historical record in
its treatment of American Indians, Americans of African decent,
Americans of Asian decent, women, and others. Yet, the strong and
ultimately more historically successful tradition in the United States
has been inclusionary pluralism, not domination and subjugation.
Those who believe otherwise have the difficult task of explaining how a
"hegemonic," "dominating" elite no longer dominates.
A
better and more useful question is not whether a society must have a
dominant culture, but whether in a democratically pluralist country like
the United States it is still important to have a primary one. Is
democratic inclusionary pluralism compatible with the cultural primacy
of certain core American traditions like individualism, opportunity,
merit, and responsibility? The wager that this country has made for
200-plus years is not only that it's important but necessary.
End Notes
26 The authors also argue that remittances
to "home countries" benefit the United States nationally.
Their argument is based on the fungibility of financial figures. Thus if
country x buys products from the United States and their immigrants
abroad send money home, this money can be viewed as helping to pay from
such imports. Examining in depth the few studies adduced (and their
data) to support this claim is beyond the purposes of this paper.
However,
the authors do acknowledge that the vast majority of remittances come
from five states where such immigrants are generally located
(California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New York) and they are
substantial. The authors estimate (p.8) that over $3.1 billion
in remittances were sent home by immigrants from these five
states. They note (de la Garza et al., 1997, p. 8) that these
remittances, "Clearly, constitute a major resource, which if
invested locally [in the United States] could significantly improve
state and local economies in general, and the personal conditions in
which these immigrants live in particular."
27
Jorge A. Vargas is of Mexican nationality and a former professor of law
in Mexico City, now visiting at the University of San Diego Law School.
28
These include aggressive government strategies to develop and maintain
contact with important groups of Mexicans abroad, the creation and
proliferation of sixteen Mexican Cultural Institutes and Centers, a
promotional campaign in the favor of NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement), a considerable increase in the number of Mexican consulates,
the development of special programs to provide legal and diplomatic
protection to both documented and undocumented migratory workers, and
the publication of a new bilingual newsletter, "La Paloma."
29
The quotation marks are mine and reflect the findings of biologists and
anthropologists which suggest that race is a socially constructed
political category. Rumbaut (1994, 763) says that the last two
categories (three and four) are exclusively identities "made in
America," and the last (four) represents "a denationalized
identification with racial ethnic minority groups in the country of
destination, and self-conscious differences in relation to the white
[sic] Anglo majority population." He then counts together those who
select a plain American identification (11 percent) and those who select
a pan-racial/ethnic identification (21 percent) and concludes they are
not connected to their origins but to their "American
present."
He
is certainly incorrect to state that the hyphenated identity is not also
a "made in America" one. Yet, a larger and more important
question arises from his characterizations of his identification data.
From the standpoint of national coherence and integration, the major
question of these data is how much identification with an American
identity each category represents. It is quite clear that the plain
American identifications (11 percent) are that. It is also likely that
the national-origin identifications (27 percent) are not. Moreover, it
is unclear how much identification with the United States is contained
in the largest category, the hyphenated American identity (40 percent).
And the same is also very true for those who eschew any category with
the name American in it (21 percent).
30
There are reliability and validity problems with such data as well. For
example, Rumbaut (1994, 760) reports correlations of the respondents'
self reports with performance with the objective Stanford reading
achievement test score. He reports there was a "strong
correlation" of 0.42 (p=0.0001).
What
these numbers don't reveal is that in a sample of over 5,000 respondents
it is fairly routine to get findings of such magnitude and to reach
"statistical significance." Moreover, a correlation of 0.42
sounds high, but it means that of all the variance in the relationship
between self-report and object test measures, only 16 percent is
actually explained. Or to put it another way, the objective test results
"explain" or account for only 16 percent of the level of
proficiency reflected in the self-report.
31
They base their list on a publication by Blaustein and Flanz entitled
Constitutions of the World, but
give no date for the publication.
32
Of course, the number of immigrants from Israel to the United States is
low, both in numbers and percentages, in comparison to, for example,
Mexico or the Philippines. The dual citizenship/loyalty issue arises
primarily because of the historical circumstances preceding the
establishment of the state of Israel and the fact that the law of
return' promises any Jew Israeli citizenship on immigration. So, for
most American Jews the question is not returning to a state from which
they once lived, but emigrated, but rather their attachment to the
existence of a Jewish homeland after a 2000 years' diaspora.
33
Jerry Rawlings, President of Ghana, mentioned in a news conference with
President Clinton that he was sponsoring a bill to allow to allow
present and former nationals of Ghana dual citizenship. Part of that
exchange follows:
Q:
Would it be dual loyalty?
President
Rawlings: Well, I guess that what we have a bit of we don't
have any problem with that...I have a problem with you because you're
demanding loyalty to the American Constitution and yet I cannot
command the same type of loyalty in my country.
8.0in"President
Clinton: ... Almost all countries allow some form of dual
citizenship...it certainly won't hurt to get more Americans interested
in Ghana and contribute to Ghana's future. I thought it [dual
citizenship] was quite a clever idea myself.
Elsewhere, I (Renshon, 1998, 3-33) have described the basic public
dilemma as a fundamental unresolved question concerning public
psychology and governance facing the president on taking office. It is
not a specific question about public policy, but rather the public's
psychological connections to its institutions, leaders, and political
process. This unresolved public concern underlies and frames more
specific policy debates.
FROM:
http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/paper20/renshonmexico.html
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