Donald Trump’s idea to sell US immigration visas for $5 million may be an off-the-cuff pronouncement. As it is, an EB-5 visa can get a green card for persons who commit to invest in US businesses. Either way, though, the question arises – should money be allowed to “buy” American citizenship? Is there any, or should there be, some moral idea of what it takes?
Of course no such questions arise for persons born in the U.S. Trump tried to change that, in his executive order calling for non-citizenship for children of persons illegally in the country. The order actually is an attempt to insert some sort of qualification into the idea of American-ness. And yet again, while the rules that govern citizenship raise emotions, there is – and had been – little discourse around what American nationality means. What if any moral sense should inform any such rules?
This is, historically, an unusual question. Most nations are identified by ethnicity, traditions, people’s history on the land, or other received markers. But the American nation was conceived in secession from ancestral roots, as a “People” identified only by our holding of certain “Truths.” In the logic of this identification, anyone who truly shares that holding could be an American. Further, anyone, naturally born in this territory or not, who rejects those Truths does not fit this definition of an American.
Determining whether someone holds or does not hold to the founding truths is a practical impossibility, so the question of citizenship will ultimately come down to rules and procedures. But again, what principle are any rules meant to carry, however imperfectly they may do so?
It is not satisfying to say, since determining whether someone carries our creed is impractical, that we should simply adopt any rules that seem to benefit us. The oft-mooted idea of giving preference to immigrants with certain skills, just like the idea of taking in investors in the nation, may serve us economically. But does that keep faith with our founding?
Conversely, persons who serve in the U.S. military, particularly if they suffer injury or serve in combat, might demonstrate a fundamental commitment to the nation, however they may define it. Perhaps such cases need not respond to any defined principle.
The Fourteenth Amendment corrected an exclusion from citizenship, in violation of the founding tenets. This fit the moral content of our founding, but only undid the fundamental breach of our creed, of slavery and post-slavery exclusions. It posited no other criteria for American-ness.
More recently, many immigration reform efforts have featured calls for a “path to citizenship” for undocumented migrants. The underlying contention was that millions of these persons have lived here for a long time, assimilated, worked and paid taxes, and been part of the community. All well and good. But is “time in country,” even “good conduct in place,” a fair qualification? It may well indicate that the person in question does what any free American would do, in the same way that we generally do, with the lack of formal designation as the only obstacle to their being fully American. Does this indicate a holding of our creed, and thereby a vindication of proper American nationality?
Native Americans, descended from denizens of this territory from before the nation’s existence, most likely should have a right to citizenship based on birth. But shouldn’t they have a right to opt out of any obligations of citizenship, given the legacy of territorial conquest over their ancestors?
All the questions are problematic, and putting any principle into practice may be impossible. But as we take up questions of citizenship, naturalization, and immigration, making rules without some principled basis to them will reduce citizenship to a matter of partisan politics and vested interests. To be sure, any number of voters in old urban machines were just such pawns. But in today’s world, where a preponderance of Americans can afford to live by principle and law, simply giving in to the politics of naked interest and partisan contest is not acceptable.
The first step, then, is for Americans at least to reflect on what our nationality constitutes. It starts with that founding self conception, in our holding of the Truth of unalienable personal rights and government that exists to secure them. From there, we can only trust that comity in that identity will allow good faith deliberation and due process to devise concrete ways and means.
Common Conviction 