angus
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Posts: 17,424
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« Reply #2 on: September 18, 2015, 02:26:36 PM » |
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« Edited: September 18, 2015, 08:21:53 PM by angus »
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My wife has mentioned a couple of times that she thinks about it. She has held a green card for over eleven years. It used to be advantageous for her to maintain a Chinese passport, but their legislature makes nearly as many stupid decisions as ours does, and lately it has made some policy changes that have just about annihilated those advantages. Still, I suppose that if I lived and worked legally in another country I'd be reluctant to expatriate myself from the USA, so I can understand if any foreigner decides not to. Especially since the only real advantage of getting a US citizenship is that they wouldn't be able to deport her, but the odds of her getting deported are pretty slim. In any case I avoid forming an opinion on whether another person should become a citizen. It should be left up to the resident.
Not sure why Obama is pushing this. Politically motivated, I suspect. After all, what advantage does it really gain the USA if they become citizens? The federal and state governments already collect income and sales taxes from them. (Well, maybe in a few cases such as post-docs and other visa holders they don't, but permanent residents who work already pay the government taxes.) Also, they can be tapped for military service. You don't have to be a US passport holder to join the military. Do they think that naturalized citizens are somehow more loyal? Certainly we're a paranoid society, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that some think that, but we have had plenty of home-grown dissenters and terrorists, so I don't think having a US passports makes you beyond reproach.
Really the only thing that affects the government is the fact that they'd be able to vote if they became citizens. Some would not bother to--my wife, for example, has little interest in politics and probably wouldn't bother with it--but I am interested enough in politics that I'd probably vote in my new country if I were to obtain a different citizenship. In fact, I expect that many newly-minted citizens would exercise that right. And when they do, they'll think of it in a way that credits Obama and his faction with having encouraged it, so they'll vote for whomever he suggests.
I'm not saying that folks should or shouldn't become citizens, and I think it's grand if 8 million foreigners want to become citizens. I've consistently been a supporter of porous borders and against fences. I've also been very open on this forum about being a supporter of the occasional broad amnesty for undocumented foreigners and have been roundly criticized for it (from the right and from the left.) I certainly support making citizenship feasible for residents who want it, but I do think that it should be up to them, and they really need to weigh the advantages and disadvantages, especially if they are from countries where dual citizenship is not recognized. Blanket encouragement of the sort Obama is proposing smells too strongly of politicking for me to get all warm and fuzzy about this campaign.
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