The end of American citizenship
I AM the daughter of legal immigrants from the Philippines who proudly
chose to become Americans. They stood in line, aced their citizenship tests,
filed tons of paperwork, and - speaking in English -- swore allegiance
to the United States. The 206-year-old oath my parents took declares, in
part:
"I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all
allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty
"I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United
States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic...I will bear
arms on behalf of the United
States"I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation
or purpose of evasion; so help me G-d."
For millions of naturalized Americans like my parents,
the oath of allegiance is sacred. It is a solemn public commitment to embrace
and defend American laws and institutions. The rights and responsibilities
that accompany this coveted status are earned privileges, not free entitlements.
That is why the widespread assault on American citizenship is a grave insult
not only to
native-born Americans, but also to families like mine who played by the
rules to get here - and to stay.
Everywhere you turn, American citizenship is being devalued:
On the ball field, relatives of America's now-scandal-ridden
Little League team from the Bronx waved Dominican Republic flags - not
our Stars and Stripes.
On the Internet, the new Bush White House website unveiled this week includes
two versions - one in English, one in Spanish.
The English-language requirement for naturalized Americans has been gutted,
and many ethnic groups are lobbying to drop the oath of allegiance that
new Americans have taken for more than two centuries.
In Amherst, Mass., left-wing locals are once again pushing voting rights
for non-U.S. citizens -a trend pioneered in my home county of Montgomery
County, Md., where noncitizens in five communities are allowed to vote
in local elections, and in Chicago and New York, where noncitizens can
vote for school board.
And on the international scene, Mexican president Vicente Fox challenged
President Bush this week to approve a "bilateral migration policy."
Translation: Allow illegal Mexican workers to jump ahead of the line while
law-abiding immigrants from all other countries patiently wait their turn.
Although Bush has backed away from using the term "amnesty,"
it is clear that he is toying with the same craven politics of pandering
to the illegal alien lobby that the Clinton-Gore administration embraced.
In an election-year
effort to manufacture new votes, Clinton-Gore launched a "Citizenship
USA" campaign in 1996 to expedite naturalization for more than a million
aliens. Nearly 200,000 never underwent required fingerprint checks. More
than 80,000 had disqualifying criminal records.
The message this sends to families like mine is that we are chumps. Why
should we bother to obey the law? Or learn English? Why study American
history in order to earn the right to vote if liberal enclaves across the
country are going to enfranchise noncitizens - who don't even have to be
able to read their ballots in English, let alone name the three branches
of government?
Both the movement to naturalize illegal aliens and the
drive to give voting rights to legal permanent aliens have a shared target
audience: Mexicans. Many have absolutely no intention of assimilating here,
but they will gladly take what kowtowing U.S. politicians give them. President
Bush, courting
Latino leaders, says he simply wants to find a way to "legalize the
hard
work" of Mexicans who crossed our borders illegally. But illegal aliens
from Mexico aren't the only immigrants who do hard work.
Exclusive amnesty for line-jumping Mexicans is a slap
in the face to all
other immigrants -- from the Korean grocer and Ethiopian restaurateur,
to the Indian cab driver, British schoolteacher, and Filipino nurse --
who came
through the front door, toil gladly, reject the free-ride mentality, and
follow the rule of law.
The founding fathers didn't envision the naturalization
process as a means to boost the labor supply or the voting rolls. The ultimate
end, the purpose, of granting American citizenship is to help create one
people, one nation who share a common allegiance. It is a tragedy that
we've now given the enemies of our constitutional republic the keys to
flood our gates and trash our
home.
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