Does anyone recall the story “The Man Without a Country” by Edward Everett Hale? I don’t think I’ve ever read it – it was a Civil War-era tract written to boost support for the Union cause – but I do remember seeing a gripping film adaptation when I was in elementary school. The gist of the story is that the protagonist renounces his American citizenship and is forced to live the remainder of his life in nautical limbo, forever refused entry on land again. As contrived as that sounds, it really made an impression on me as a chilling prospect; I can still see the melancholy in the eyes of the stateless man. Maybe that’s why I leapt at the chance to gain a second citizenship when, much later in life, the opportunity presented itself.
I find that when the subject of dual citizenship comes up, some people adamantly argue (in ignorance) that this is not possible in the U.S. But it’s a fact that, while not encouraging it, the State Department turns a blind eye to dual and multiple citizens, and there is absolutely no requirement that one renounce allegiance to another nation in order to be an American citizen. Personally, I think we should actually encourage multiple citizenship. It might go a ways towards mitigating the rampant nationalism that always seems to get in the way of understanding between peoples.
Even before I obtained my second passport, I always considered myself half-British. My mother is English and she has always retained her U.K. passport, even after she was naturalized as a U.S. citizen when I was born. She once told me that she never felt the need beforehand, but having given birth to an American, she wanted to be able to vote and help determine my destiny. Growing up, my family spent a lot of time visiting England and, if truth be told, my father – a native Californian – is more of an Anglophile than any of us. Alas, even when we actually moved to England during my high school years and obtained legal residency, he has never been eligible for citizenship. Unbeknownst to me, I had the option of electing British citizenship at the age of eighteen, but it seemed a moot issue when we returned to the States and I entered UCLA and embarked on my adult life in the Colonies, as some Brits half-humorously still refer to us.
It was only much later, while working in San Francisco, that I fell hard for an English lass and briefly contemplated relocating to London. My British residency status from high school days was still valid but I felt somehow cheated when I learned that only children of male British subjects were granted full citizenship automatically.
Fast-forward to a few years ago when I was travelling with my wife and son to London and handed over a new American passport to immigration at Heathrow, along with my old passport stamped with my U.K. residency status. Behold the magic words, carefully nursed from passport to passport since the 70s: “Given leave to enter the United Kingdom for an indefinite period.” So British in its subtlety, but so powerful in its import. So I was more than a little perturbed when the officer instead stamped a generic tourist visa in my passport (limited to six months duration) and explained that I hadn’t visited the U.K. recently enough for my residency to remain in good standing. Maybe it might seem trivial – I had no real desire to live in England again – but I felt a part of me had been ripped out. Seeing my distress, the immigration officer kindly asked me how I had come by my now-former residency status in the first place. When I told her it was because of my mother, she suggested I check with the British embassy when I return to the States, since the naturalization laws had changed.
And indeed they had. Tony Blair has been called “Bush’s poodle” for allowing Britain to follow America into Iraq. Maybe so, but bless Blair’s heart — he finally rectified the gender-discrimination that long treated offspring of British women as second-class (non) citizens with a new Act of Parliament. All I had to do was produce my mother’s birth certificate along with my own and I would be in. Rule Britannia!
This was important to me on several levels. As I say, I have always felt half-British and it seemed like I was finally getting legal validation of that fact. But on a more practical level, having a British passport was actually to possess a European Union one, which confers the unfettered right to live and work (along with my family) in any country in the EU. Spain, for example, or even Greece (at least until the rest of Europe gets around to kicking the Greeks out for decimating the Euro). Actually, I’ve long harbored the dream of living in France. I don’t know whether this is an itch that I’ll ever want to scratch, but the fact that I could is somehow very comforting.
There is something else, though – and this is what I was alluding to at the outset. I have always considered myself an internationalist, putting my status as a member of the human race above that of U.S. citizen. Don’t get me wrong: I love my country of birth and in the right circumstance would have been willing to fight and die for it, I suppose. But I have also always mistrusted nationalism of the flag-waving type. Why is it that we have to play our national anthem at sports events, when other countries don’t do that? Why is it standard American political rhetoric that makes us the “greatest nation on Earth”? Did anyone consider Denmark – or Belize? And why must my son recite the Pledge of Allegiance in school every day, as I did? I mean, will this make him a more law-abiding citizen?
No, maybe what we need is to have more dual nationals in our midst, so we don’t miss the global forest for the domestic trees. With a foot in more than one country, we won’t be as tempted to trample the cause of some other nation.
In fact, two of my good friends have recently augmented their passport collections: one has added Italian citizenship thanks to a paternal grandfather born in the old country (the Italians, along with the Irish, are very generous when it comes to claiming their own), and the other boasts not one but two EU passports in addition to her American one (since her father was born in Austria and her mother was born in England).
Just think – if everyone started cross-naturalizing, we’d confuse the hell out of terrorists. How can they target Americans when each of us could whip out multiple credentials, from every continent on the globe?
Now of course I can already hear the voices of dissent. How will citizens really champion the needs of America with divided loyalties? Won’t dual citizens, at the first hint of trouble, pull up stakes and high-tail it to Country B? To which I respond: True-blue Americans are always extolling the virtues of freedom. So what better way to make sure people want a stake in this place than by giving them a choice? As long as we don’t behave like jingoistic cowboys, invading sovereign nations and otherwise demonstrating our unsuitability to be a member of the civilized world, I’m more than happy to salute Uncle Sam. Just don’t tell me I can’t bow to the Queen as well!
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