Exerpts from Images & Voices of Lighthouse Country
A pict/oral history of Deep Bay, Bowser, Qualicum Bay, Horne Lake
by Rita Levitz and Leah Willott
© Rita Levitz and Leah Willot -- Used with permission

Hugging the eastern shoreline of mid-Vancouver Island, Lighthouse Country encompasses almost 300 square kilometres, including the settlements of Deep Bay, Bowser, Qualicum Bay, and Horne Lake. The coastal setting along the Strait of Georgia, the natural safe harbour at Deep Bay, and the timber and maritime resources attracted both aboriginal and European settlers

Human occupation of the east coast of Vancouver Island dates back thousands of years. Fish and game were plentiful. Evidence of shell middens, fishing weirs, and stone tools are powerful reminders of the First Nations people who have lived here for generation upon generation.

European settlers began arriving in the late 1800's. They were drawn here in their search for homesteads, or to work in the logging or fishing industries.

Nature formed the geographic outlines, but politics was nature's handmaiden in shaping settlement and land use patterns. Large tracts of land, usually 160 acres, were made available to settlers through the pre-emption process. To qualify, the settler had to live on the land and make improvements to it. Only a British subject who was the head of a family, a widow, or a single man could apply for the Crown Land. Other men could give up their original citizenship, swear their allegiance tot he British monarch and become eligible. However, Chinese, First Nations, and single women of any ethnicity were excluded.

In the late 1890's a road was completed to connect Lighthouse Country to the small villages to the south (Qualicum and Parksville) and to the north (Courtenay and Comox), thus making this area more accessible to new settlers.

Early subdivisions of the E&N land were designed to encourage further settlement. Between 1912 and 1914, the Vancouver Island Fruit Lands were created. These 96 lots west of Bowser were intended for agricultural settlement, but many of the large lots remained vacant, and some were subsequently returned to the Crown. Between 1913 and 1928, 91 rural and waterfront residential parcels were created in the Bowser area.

The land grants associated with the building of the railway gave the broad brushstrokes to the settlement, logging, and farming that was to come to Lighthouse Country. Roads, railways, and resources all played their part in the bringing together, or the separating, of people and places. Each of the settlement areas, Deep Bay, Bowser, Qualicum Bay, and Horne Lake developed their own unique personalities in the reciprocal moulding and shaping that occurs in the interaction between people and the environment.

Modern Lighthouse Country is a mixture of landmarks and businesses that have survived the decades, and new business that are trying to find their niche and unique ways of serving the community. It is made up of people, old-timers who remember how it used to be, and newer arrivals who may plan to stay a short time, but find their hearts taken by the beauty, friendliness, and relative safety of the area. It is a community of young families and retired homeowners. Loggers, fishers, trades, professional, and service workers have all made their homes here. This area is a vacation destination for tourists who are drawn here, as they have been for over three-quarters for a century, by the fishing, the climate, and the natural beauty of the ocean and the forests.

Lighthouse Country is also made up of the organizations that work tirelessly to make this community a place where people of all ages can find activities, recreation, common interests, and solace and support in time of need. All of this has made, and continues to make, Lighthouse Country a special place in which to live.

FROM: http://lighthousecountry.ca/visit/history.html

Citizenship USA

(Permanent Residence in the USA)

Naturalization with the USCIS: The process immigrants have to go through to become citizens of the United States. A person may become a U.S. citizen by birth or through naturalization. Usually if children are Permanent Residents, they can derive citizenship from their naturalized parents. This is true whether is a child by birth or adoption.

Citizenship: As an U.S. citizen you will be granted rights and accept responsibilities.

Some of the rights and benefits granted by the U.S. citizenship include:

• All the rights listed in the Constitution including the right to vote
• Right to have a U.S. passport
• Right to work in the U.S.

Some of the responsibilities implied by the U.S. citizenship are:

• Promises in the Oath of Allegiance including giving up prior allegiances to other countries
• Support and defend the laws of the U.S.
• Swear allegiance to the U.S.
• Serve the country when required

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

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

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

FROM: http://www.uscitizenship.info/citizenship-library-dual.htm

By Stanley A. Renshon

Dual Citizenship and Conflict: The War of 1812 Redux?
 

Advocates of dual citizenship look to the past, and reassure us that we are unlikely to go to war over dual citizenship, as we did with the British in 1812 (Spiro, 1997, 1422-1423; see also David Martin, 1999, 20) . That conflict arose when the British, then following the "perpetual allegiance" theory of citizenship, forcibly tried to repatriate American citizens at sea. Yes, it is true that we will not go to war with Britain over these kinds of matters (Russett, 1993). However, Spiro takes his argument further. He says we we should "embrace dual nationalism" because:

The prospective spectacle of millions of Mexican-American dual nationals lining up at their consulates to vote in Mexican elections, on the one hand, and the possibility of their voting in high concentration in some U.S. elections on the other, suffices to justify the enterprise [e.g., reappraising dual nationality]...however the oddity of these developments should not by itself provoke resistance. In fact, under the standard of earlier times, dual nationality now poses little threat to the polity.  (1997, 1460; see also 1468, fn 246)

What are these standards of earlier times to which Spiro refers? Is it the fact that "democracies rarely make war on each other?" Clearly so, because he argues that it was war "that ultimately made dual citizenship so problematic in hostile world. In a malign incarnation they could undermine from within by doing the command of their other allegiance, threatening the polity at a fundamental level." (1997, 1461)

Spiro is raising the spectre here that dual citizens might be treasonous because of their mixed loyalties in wartime, but asks us not to worry about this because democracies now rarely go to war. This is an extremely odd argument for an advocate of dual citizenship to make. If mixed loyalties are so dangerous to this Republic that treason is a major issue — and I am not arguing that it is — then the fact that we rarely go to war with other democracies is small comfort.

The fact of the matter is that many of the 92 immigrant-sending, dual-citizenship-encouraging countries are not democracies.  Of the top-20 immigrant-sending countries to the United States (see Renshon,  2000a, 6 — Table 2), which account for 84 percent of our total number of immigrants each year, only two — Canada and the United Kingdom — are relatively peaceful and mature democracies. Most are not democratic (Iran, Pakistan, Vietnam, etc.) and the rest are fledgling democracies often with large and deeply rooted authoritarian strains (Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Russia, Ukraine, etc.) or continued histories of religious and communal violence.

Moreover, democracies do still have armed conflicts with non-democracies. And, as David Martin (1999, 8, fn 23) points out, "If relaxed rules on dual nationality are adopted or expanded over the coming decades, persons with such a mix of citizenship (one democratic and one non-democratic) will doubtlessly make up a significant percentage." Martin adds the "especially worrisome cloud" of the rise of ethnic tensions and identity politics which increase the structural fault lines in a large number of what he terms "polyglot nations," of which the United States is surely now one.

He is not wrong to worry. In Santa Ana, Calif., former Vietnamese communists and their non-communist counterparts scuffled during a protest against an art show's positive depiction of the communist regime (The New York Times, 1999). In a similar incident, the decision of a Vietnamese immigrant to drape a communist flag across the front of his store sparked thousands to protest (Sanchez, 1999).

In Miami, in the Elian Gonzalez case, residents of South Miami, backed by their local government, said they would defy federal orders to hand the boy over to immigration authorities.  A New York Times reporter who covered the story wrote:

To many people here, some who cheered and some who shuddered, it was a declaration of independence for a part of the country that is, increasingly, a nation apart. People have even begun to greet each other with: 'Welcome to the Independent Republic of Miami.' Latin Americans make up the overwhelming majority, and English has faded from homes, offices, and stores. But it is the Cuban exiles who drive the county's economy, politics and culture, and it is Cuba's flag, not the United States', in the windows of shops, on car antennas and on the mural behind the Chevrolet dealership on Le Jeune Road (Bragg, 2000).

During the recent outbreak of violence in the Middle East, large groups of anti-Israeli/pro-Arab demonstrators held noisy protests here at which several were arrested. (Waldman, 2000; see also Barry and Christian, 2000). During this period several Jewish synagogues were vandalized (Chivers, 2000).

And, in the aftermath of the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks, Americans focused on those from Arab or Muslim countries living here. Allegations by Arab-American advocacy groups have fueled concerns of "intolerant behavior" (Edsall 2001). Leaders, in turn, have admonished against such behavior (Sachs 2001). Yet beneath the obvious tensions toward Arabs and Muslims caused by the religious identity of the terrorists and the obvious fact that almost all Arabs and Muslims living here are not terrorists, lie a more complicated set of issues.

In one of the few systematic in-depth studies of identifications of Muslim immigrants with their country of origin and the United States, GhaneaBassiri (1997), an Iranian doctoral student at Harvard, found that they are extremely ambivalent about this country. More specifically, GhaneaBassiri found "a significant number of Muslims, particularly immigrant Muslims, do not have close ties or loyalty to the United States." Indeed, his questionnaire showed that 80 percent of his sample of Muslims in Los Angeles and a third of those who had converted to the Muslim religion felt more allegiance to a foreign country than to the United States.

Given these facts, the optimistic belief of multiple-citizenship advocates that inter-nation conflict that has implications for dual citizens is an historical relic seems to be a case of wishful thinking. The evidence simply does not support such naive optimism. Yet, while international military conflicts that engage or test the loyalties of dual citizens in this country cannot be easily ruled out, the real problem is not war, but cohesion.

Do Multiple Loyalties Equal Conflicted Loyalties?

Loyalty is a complex concept and an even more complex emotion. Psychologically, it is basically an attachment to, a sense of identification with, and feelings "toward a person, place, or thing."²⁵  These can run from the shallow to the profound, from the episodic to the immutable, and from the singular to the diverse.

Primary nationality, the one that we are born into, begins to take root very early, indeed before the child is born. The history and practices that brought a particular couple together are themselves influenced by the cultural expectations and understandings that they acquired while growing up in their country and culture. How they prepare for their child and how they relate to her is also conditioned by the same factors. And of course, the parents speak to the child in their own language, soon to be his, and as he grows they are the guides and interpreters of the culture he must learn and transverse. The process of being embedded in, and attached to, one's country of origin begins early.

Children begin to incorporate the symbols of their nationality and country very early. E.L. Horowitz (1940) found that 25 percent of a sample of first-graders in Tennessee chose the American flag as best, and that by seventh grade the number doing so was 100 percent. E.D. Lawson (1963) later replicated that study in an urban-suburban New York sample and found that from kindergarten, children put the stars and stripes first.  Eugene A. Weinstein (1957) found that the first notions of another country, ours as "good" and other countries as "bad," began as early as five years old. The emotional attachments to country clearly begin much earlier than the cognitive development level necessary to sustain an intellectual understanding of the concepts (Jahoda, 1973). Indeed, that is precisely the fulcrum of their lifelong power.

Summing up a variety of such early studies, A.F. Davis concludes:

The main lesson...is how early [they develop] and how closely they conform to a relatively stable and complex order of preferences appropriate to their American nationality...it runs through all grades, it is common to boys and girls, impervious to the syllabus, and remarkably resistant to background factors like family social status or region. (1968, 114)

What is the point of these studies? Just this: Loyalty to a nation and feelings of attachment to it begin at a primal age and become increasing consolidated as the child develops. Which is why people are willing to die for their country, why great national accomplishments bring pride, and why the symbols of a country — the flag, a constitution — carry such great emotional weight and political power.

It is why a New York Times reporter, covering the attitudes of African immigrants to this country could write, "Many African immigrants say that whether they stay here for two or 20 years, Africa is, and always will be, home." (Waldman, 1999)  It is why the Funeraria Latina — owned by funeral industry giant Service Corporation International — transports 80 percent of its bodies out of the United States (Finley, 1998).  It is why Alejandro Ruiz, who left Mexico and began work on landscaping crews around Denver, became a U.S. citizen, raised 10 children, 40 grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren here, can still say he wants to be buried at "home," meaning Mexico. He says, "My heart is here, but it's also there...Even though here I made money, enough to feed my family — it was easier for me to make a living here — I will go back to Mexico. When I die, I must go back to Mexico." (quoted in Finley, 1998)

It is why Lan Samantha Chang (1999), a novelist writing in response to the Wen Ho Lee case, could say in a New York Times op-ed piece entitled "Debunking the Dual Loyalty Myth," "True, many immigrants have strong ties to their countries of birth...But cultural or familial loyalties are on a different level from political allegiances...I love China, but I am a citizen of the United States." Ms. Chang appears to want to distinguish a love for one's "home" country from being willing to commit treason against one's adopted one. This is obviously a fair, reasonable, and appropriate distinction.

Yet, in the process of making such a distinction, she acknowledges the duality of her feelings. The issue is not between love of one's country of origin and treason, but rather the multiple loyalties that appear to be part of many immigrants' psychology.

Consider the case of Aida Ridanovic, an immigrant from Bosnia. She says: "On one hand, I've become so American that, if I go back, there will be tons and tons of things I'll miss. On the other, I am so much a Sarajevan that every day I pray to God that somebody will offer me a job there. . . I live my life on two tracks, one here, one there. And I am assimilated. I have a quite ordinary American life. I have a job. My husband has a job. We have our kids in day care. We pay taxes. We have a new holiday, Thanksgiving, which I really do care about. And we celebrated the Fourth of July...[however] I want to die in Sarajevo." (quoted in Finley, 1998)

She adds, refugees forced to leave their homes "may not like America, but all of them agree on one fact: They have a better life in America."

Or, consider the reactions of some Mexican Americans interviewed about whether they would apply for U.S. citizenship in light of Proposition 187. Some of the answers were (1) "Never, I was born in Mexico, raised in Mexico, and I want to die in Mexico... (2) [G]iving up my Mexican citizenship is like giving up a child of mine... (3) It's as though I'm betraying my country, my people and my culture..." (Corchado and Anderson, 1994)

The point here is not that immigrants are disloyal. They are, however, conflicted. And increasingly, governments of dual-citizen-sending countries are taking steps to ensure that the loyalties and attachments that many immigrants feel for their country of origin are maintained and even stimulated. A good illustration of the issues involved in these developments can be found in examining the case of Mexico and its immigrants to the United States.  (SEE ABOVE- MEXICAN CITIZENSHIP)

FROM: http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/paper20/renshon1812.html

Dual Citizenship

Posted Apr 14, 2005, 11:31 AM ET 
by Adrienne Wilson

It is a known fact to many that I tend to worry myself sick by little silly things.  Things that really make no huge difference in my day-to-day life like uh… obtaining dual citizenship for example.  If I can have it, I want it.  For one I think there are several perks to having citizenship in two countries and just to have options.  Options I say!  So now that I’ve revealed a little piece of my bratty, silly, worrisome ways here’s an article I found in the CBC News out of Canada on dual citizenship.

It’s a little dated, but will be a good starting point for anyone whose ever been curious about obtaining dual citizenship. There’s a good chance you may already be eligible for it and not even know.  Do your research and do it well.  Find out which countries recognize dual citizenship - Denmark, Norway, Finland, Japan, and Thailand are just a few that don’t.  The U.S. will allow dual citizenship so long as the other country allows it as well.  Then again, after 9/11 re-entry into the states could just become one huge headache.  How life-changing dual citizenship is and whether it is worth all the trouble is up to you.  Just something to think about.

FROM: http://www.gadling.com/entry/1234000840039290/

• You were born on territory belonging to, or claimed by, that country.
• One or both of your parents were citizens of that country.
• You married a citizen of that country.
• You (or one or both of your parents) obtained that country's citizenship by going through a legal process of naturalization (i.e. living there for a period of time, passing a citizenship exam)
• You lived in that country for an extended period of time.