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"unitary citizenship"

During Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate primary, Mehmet Oz first insisted that he would remain a dual U.S.-Turkish citizen while serving in the Senate. To avoid any conflict of interest he said he would simply recuse himself from any foreign policy issues with any connection to Turkey. Then after intense criticism he agreed that should he be elected to the Senate he would finally renounce his Turkish citizenship.

That appeared to partly settle the issue. It actually got less attention that the fact that Oz isn’t even a resident of Pennsylvania. He lives across the state line in New Jersey. But through the campaign there has also been an oft-repeated suggestion that raising this issue — Oz’s dual citizenship — amounts to a form of prejudice or Islamophobia. In fact, an early May ABC News report claimed that “Oz is not the first high-profile candidate to face accusations of a so-called ‘dual loyalty,’ a claim reminiscent of attacks against Catholics, Jews and members of other religious and ethnic groups in previous generations.”

This is Roger Ver. Last year he renounced his citizenship to avoid paying US taxes. Now he’s upset that the “tyrants” in the US government won’t give him a visa to visit Miami this weekend to speak at a Bitcoin conference.

As many of you know, unitary, robust citizenship is an important value to me. Another big interest of mine is morons and arrogant douchebags, especially people who fall into both categories. Which brings us back to Roger Ver, variously known as a “Bitcoin entrepreneur” or the “Bitcoin Jesus.” Ver is now a citizen of Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis. He was so excited about avoiding taxes that as soon as he became a Nevisian he set up yet another start up that would allow you to use bitcoins to buy a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport so you too could avoid US taxes. Alas, it folded after a few months, apparently because the St Kitts government disavowed it.

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I got in a bit of an argument on Twitter earlier this week about my belief in the importance of unitary citizenship — or to put it another way, thinking dual citizenship is really not okay. Read More 

TPM Reader BW shares her own citizenship story …

After reading Josh’s post “Citizenship Matters” I wanted to share my perspective as a dual citizen of the United States and Switzerland, and on the question of citizenship generally, which in my family is rather complicated.

Both my parents, my two U.S.-born brothers, and I are all Swiss citizens, but I am the only one who was actually born on Swiss soil.

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I’m glad to see that my earlier post on dual citizenship has sparked a lot of responses on various sites and in a number of emails.

Let me elaborate on a few points.

There are a number of people who believe that dual-citizens are so many potential fifth columnists, or that the current existence of many dual-citizens presents some real and present danger to our national fabric. I don’t think either of these is true.

Another point. A number of people write in to say that this is largely an enforcement issue and that it’s unenforceable. The point being that the United States can’t dictate to France or Israel or Mexico or any other country who they do or do not consider to be their citizens.

This is true of course. But I think it’s beside the point, because we do have quite a bit of control over and say about American citizens who either claim a second citizenship or, more importantly, exercise citizenship rights in another country. (I seem to remember once being told that the old Soviet Union deemed its own citizenship to be un-alienable. Once a Soviet citizen, always a Soviet citizen. But again, who cares?) Other countries can say whatever they want. The issue is what American citizens do.

One reader from the British Isles writes in to say that my sense of citizenship as unitary is a uniquely — and perhaps revealingly — American understanding of what citizenship is. I think is true. And actually that’s part of the point.

More on this tomorrow.

I just noticed this article in National Review Online discussing the question of dual-citizenship, and particularly the unique issue of Mexican-American dual citizenship. This is a complex question, of course, touching on the unique relationship between the US and Mexico, assimilation, the trans-national Southwestern economy, and so forth.

The broader issue, however — the idea of dual-citizenship — is one about which I have quite strong views.

I don’t think the United States should allow dual-citizenship at all. Not ever. Not with Australia, not with Canada, not with Israel, not with Mexico. Not with anyone.

Children present a unique case, of course. They should be allowed to maintain a dual nationality until they reach adulthood so they can make a mature decision about which country to adhere to. But why should any adult be allowed to be a citizen of two countries at once. And under what theory of citizenship does such a practice make sense?

I’m very pro-globalization, very internationalist in foreign policy and outlook. But citizenship is inherently unitary. It implies not only membership but allegiance to a political community and a state. One can no sooner be a citizen of two countries than a husband to two wives or a wife to two husbands. The very idea is a solecism in civic thought.

To my mind, this isn’t a conservative view. It’s a liberal one. One of the things that makes us all equal as citizens is the fundamental reality that makes us citizens: membership and allegiance to this political community, this country. That’s what allows an immigrant citizen to be just as much an American as the guy whose ancestors came on the Mayflower.