Limited Citizenship: The Inequity of Naturalization

by

PATRICK SKENE CATLING

I VISITED the United States Embassy in London the other day and confirmed a melancholy presumption. Unless Washington reforms the Immigration and Nationality Act before November 29, 1961, on that date I shall cease to be a citizen of the United States.

This prospect, I realize, is unlikely to cause panic on Wall Street or despondency in the State Department, but it saddens my family and me; and the principles involved should concern everybody who cares about the meaning of American citizenship and the durability of its substance.

The simple fact of the matter is that there are two grades of American citizenship. There is citizenship de luxe, the kind enjoyed by my wife and our two daughters, which one assumes only at birth and surrenders only at death; and there is the other kind, which one acquires deliberately, painstakingly, after years of preparation, examination, and testimony, and which may prove to be impermanent. The second kind is what I have. Only four and a half years after I swore the solemn oath of allegiance, it is extremely unpleasant to have to acknowledge that I was evidently awarded inferior status.

I first learned about it by reading the fine print in the back of what had been my favorite book, my new passport. The front of the book should gratify any American, especially page two, which bears the Great Seal of the United States and the polite but firm request that all whom it might concern permit the bearer “safely and freely to pass.”There is nothing threatening about it, of course, but the bearer is encouraged by awareness of being backed by a vast diplomatic machine, with Strategic Air Command, U.S.A.F., standing by ready. At the back of the book, however, there are some rather more explicit warnings directed to the bearer himself.

They point out in blood-chilling legalistic phraseology that “American nationality may be lost through being naturalized in, taking an oath or making a declaration of allegiance to, serving in the military forces of, accepting employment under the government of, or by voting in the elections of a foreign state.”This list of possible causes of denationalization seems entirely reasonable; no nation could be expected to demand less of its people than that they should refrain from submitting voluntarily to foreign sovereignty. But reading further, one learns that “Naturalized nationals may be expatriated by residing for 3 years in the country of birth or former nationality, or by residing for 5 years in any other foreign state or states.” Indeed, a new citizen who returns to his native country within five years of having been naturalized may be charged with fraud, because in his oath of allegiance he promised that he intended to reside in America; however, this harsh provision of the law is rarely enforced.

Suppose a young alien decides that the United States is the greatest country in the world and becomes a citizen, forswearing all other national ties, and then decides that he wants to spend a few years seeing some of the rest of the world — prospecting for uranium in Australia, say, or teaching African Pygmies how to play billiards, or writing sonnets in Lapland, or just loafing on a perennial cruise between remote places.

Why must the State Department assume that his loyalty to his adopted country, his intention eventually to settle down there, cannot possibly survive if he is absent for longer than five years? Why, if he stays away more than five years, should the State Department render him stateless? Why isn’t it enough that a naturalized American should be prohibited from serving a foreign state? Why must his travel abroad be restricted while native Americans normally are allowed to leave their country and return to it whenever they please? A native American might choose to spend twentyfive years among the Eskimos of northern Greenland. He might be considered eccentric; he might even be considered brave; but surely he would not be considered automatically a bad American.

There are exceptions to the present law. A naturalized national may reside abroad with impunity for an indefinite period in the service of the U.S. government or to represent an approved American educational, scientific, philanthropic, commercial, financial, or business organization, or in certain other special circumstances.

But I am concerned with the unexceptional cases, such as my own. I am a writer, essentially a reporter. For eleven years I reported for the Baltimore Sun, in the United States and abroad. Late in 1958 I resigned to join the London staff of the Manchester Guardian, and last year I moved again, to become an assistant editor of Punch. All three publications are admirable, and each is quite different from the others. I learned quite a lot on the Sun; I learned something else on the Guardian; and now I am learning something altogether different on Punch. I feel that, if I return from England to the United States, I shall be a better qualified journalist for having had this varied experience.

But Punch, of course, is not an American organization, so the State Department must feel that the magazine is steadily corroding my Americanism, and my days on the magazine are numbered if I am to keep my green passport. In this absurd modern version of Cinderella, in which the State Department plays the part of the not very good fairy, if I do not get home by November 29, 1961, I shall suddenly turn into an alien again, and my Ivy League suit, I suppose, will turn into an Olde English yokel’s smock.

I asked an American consular official in London why such embarrassing strings were attached to acquired citizenship, and he said, “The law is designed to make the melting pot more efficient. The process of assimilation would be more difficult if naturalized citizens were allowed to live outside the country as long as they chose.

“Anyway,” he added in a voice that was probably meant to be reassuring, “don’t worry about it. If you stay away too long, you can always apply for an immigration visa, the way you did before, and your case will be considered without prejudice.”

Great! All I have to do is to learn the knack of regarding my nationality the way a chameleon regards the sensitively changeable color of its skin.

I felt that the consular official’s remarks betrayed a lamentable lack of faith both in the United States and in the constancy of immigrants’ devotion to their new country, its people, and its institutions.

Apart from idealistic considerations, the State Department’s naturalization policy is curious when judged practically. The department professes to care about what foreigners think of Americans abroad. For example, in Department of State Publication 6727, “Getting Along Abroad,” it is written that citizens who know something about the foreign countries they visit and “show abroad the same consideration for others that they do at home . . . are our most effective and welcome ambassadors of good will.” Why, then, does not the department help rather than handicap the best-informed informal ambassadors, the citizens who know most about the customs and psychological quirks of foreign countries, the citizens who were born in them?

No American is more acutely appreciative of American virtues than the individual who has weighed them against the political, economic, and social systems of his native land, and then has chosen to become an American. No American abroad can explain American advantages more lucidly, tactfully, and convincingly than a new American speaking candidly to the people of his native land.

Would not United States naturalization law be altogether more sensible, and conform more harmoniously than it does with the constitutional concepts of American justice, if every citizen’s loyalty, at home and abroad, were taken for granted until demonstrably nonexistent, just as every citizen is considered innocent of crime until proved guilty?

I wish some reformer would get busy. The prospect of going back to the beginning again is almost intolerable. The forms I would have to fill in!