Pledging Allegiance: The Debate about Dual Nationality in France

I think I mentioned in a previous post that Marine Le Pen of the Far Right French party, Le Front National, has expressed in the past in several interviews, her distaste for the idea of dual-nationality for French citizens.

Well recently she came out swinging by sending a letter to all 577 representatives in the National Assembly asking that they do the "republican" thing and require all French dual nationals to choose their allegiance to France or to the other country.  Her language is quite direct:

Dans l’intérêt de la France et des autres nations, dans l’intérêt en particulier de nos relations avec l’Algérie, premier pays concerné, il est ainsi nécessaire d’engager une démarche authentiquement républicaine en mettant fin  à la double nationalité, et de demander à chacun de nos compatriotes placés dans cette situation, de choisir son allégeance : la France, ou un autre pays. 

Translation - "In the interests of France and of other nations, in the interest in particular of our relationship to Algeria, the first country concerned, it is necessary to start an authentically republican move to end dual nationality and to ask all of our countrymen in this situation to choose one allegiance:  France or another country."  

In her letter (full text can be found here) Marine Le Pen pulls out many of the traditional arguments against plural nationality: divided loyalties, destruction of national solidarity, a detriment to assimilation, participation in elections in two different countries and so on.  She singles out Algerians which, to me, guarantees that she is up to no good.  I also found it odd because I saw a study that said Algerians were one of the immigrant groups in France the least likely to become French citizens.  Americans were another, by the way....

One of the first and best replies to this was written by Hughes Serraf.  His post,  "La 5e colonne, elle ne passera pas par moi!" is a very funny and pertinent poke at Le Pen.  He proposes that the reason she chose Algeria as an example in her letter was because of its relative neutrality. It's the English she's really after, he says,  with tongue firmly in cheek.  His wife, you see, is British and their children are dual citizens). So as a good Frenchman fulfilling his duty to the nation:

Je vais les réunir dans le salon sous un prétexte quelconque et je vais leur expliquer, gentiment mais fermement, que « la multiplicité des appartenances à d'autres nations contribue aujourd'hui, et d'une manière de plus en plus préoccupante, à affaiblir chez nos compatriotes l'acceptation d'une communauté de destin ».  Là, je leur fais confiance, elles vont me filer leurs passeports british, je vais les foutre à la poubelle et on n’en parlera plus. 

Translation - "I will find some pretext to take my family into the living room and I will explain to them, gently but firmly, that 'the multiplication of affiliations to other nations contributes today, in a more and more disturbing fashion, to the weakening of our fellow citizens acceptance of our community of destiny.'  Now I am sure that they will trust me and hand over their British passports which I will then throw into the wastebasket and we will speak no more of it."  

Read the entire piece - it is hysterically funny (Serraf is a gifted satirist) and it illustrates beautifully how absurd and cruel the result of such legislation would be if it were played out in the households of hundreds of thousands of French families.

An equally good,  albeit more serious, response came from the master himself, Patrick Weil.  In this article published in Marianne, Weil counters all of Le Pen's arguments brilliantly.  He argues that dual nationality is a factor toward greater integration (not less) and a plus for the influence of France in the world.  He reminds everyone that past laws against dual nationality have been highly discriminatory toward women with Frenchwomen losing their nationality if they married foreign men and not having the right to pass their citizenship to their children (this was true until the middle of the 20th century.)   In his view Le Pen shows a shocking lack of confidence in France itself and her capacity to unite people around her powerful and universal values:  equality, the French language, the Revolution and the separation of church and state (secularism).  He ends with this call for the French to return to those values:

Autour de ses valeurs la France garde un énorme potentiel d’intégration et de rayonnement dans monde, et pour cela les binationaux sont un atout: il nous faut donc sortir d’un débat régressif et malsain qui nous rabougrit, sortir de ces divisions artificielles et se tourner vers un avenir à construire ensemble."  

Translation - "With these values France keeps her enormous potential for integration and for influencing  the world and for these things her bi-nationals are a strength.

What I admire most about Patrick Weil's piece is how he counters a negative initiative with an uplifting positive vision of all that France is and could be.   That, my friends, is exactly the right way to inspire people to love a country and create loyal citizens out of residents.

Playing for Change - Gimme Shelter

Playing for Change has just released a new album:  PFC 2: Songs Around the World.   For the kickoff they have released this video of musicians all around the world playing the Rolling Stones classic, "Gimme Shelter."  Magnificent....

Pledging Allegiance: The Path to Citizenship Part III

I found this on the official government website for Australia (very eloquent in my opinion)

Australian citizenship is a privilege that offers enormous rewards. By becoming an Australian citizen, you are joining a unique national community. Our country has been built on the combined contributions of our Indigenous people and those who came later from all over the world. We celebrate this diversity and at the same time, strive for a unified and harmonious nation.

How compelling are these arguments? The answer is "it depends." From the individual's perspective there are other considerations. Please note that the following represent what I was able to come up with as an American migrant in France. You may have others or you may disagree with my list. Also, these are reasons to become a citizen and not reasons to relocate and become a legal resident. A migrant moving to a country for personal or economic reasons or one who is escaping persecution or discrimination in his home country can live in the host nation's territory, have access to the job market and participate in most (if not all) social programs quite nicely as a "legal resident alien."

Emotional Attachment:  Genuine sense of admiration and commitment to a country through marriage, through long-term residency, though family ties, through love and appreciation of the language and history.  You like the founding principles of the nation and you want to be a part of it.

Integration:  I call this "feeling at home."  You speak the language, work, have friends and family who you love and you're happy to be living here, in this place, with these people.

Gratitude/Shame: the feeling that you have been granted opportunities to build a life in that country and having enjoyed most of the benefits of residency for so long, you now feel that it is important to make a commitment to that country. When asked why he became an American citizen, Christopher Hitchens said, "I realized that I've been living here a long time and that this country, this society, had been pretty welcoming to me. I was just cruising along with a green card and felt like I was cheating on my dues."

Permanent right to reside: under international law, your country of citizenship must allow you to leave and to return. Legal residents have no such rights (or these rights are limited) and can be deported.

Political equality: a desire to participate in the political process, to vote or run for office. As a citizen you are no longer "taxed without representation."

The Right to Live and Work in Multiple Countries/Territories: UK citizenship gives you the right to live and work in France and all the other countries of the EU. U.S. citizenship gives you the right to live and work in 50 states. Canadians, Mexicans and Americans may have an easier time getting the right to work or reside in other each others countries because of NAFTA.

Career opportunities: you want to be able to work in certain fields or industries that are closed to non-citizens: civil service, defense industry, and state-owned companies.

Family:  as a citizen you can pass your citizenship to your children.  You can also bring other members of your extended family to live with you.

Discrimination:  you do not like the way some citizens teat you as an immigrant.  You think you will be treated better (or at least have more protection) if you become a citizen.

The Quality of the Welcome:  you feel that your destination country and its citizens are happy to have you here.  You are actively encouraged to become a citizen because the people around you feel that you would be a great addition to the nation.

Citizenship is Something Special:  the people around you are proud to be citizens of that country.  They feel it is an honor and a privilege to have been born a citizen of (or naturalized in) country X.


Some reasons not to become a citizen:

The Rights of a Citizen in that country do not interest you:  you are not interested in voting or running for office, you do not intend to reside permanently in that country, you are not planning to bring over your family, you have no desire to work in the defense industry or to become a "fonctionnaire."

The Duties of a Citizen are Unacceptable to you:  military service in that country, for example, or taxation.  The U.S. taxes ALL its citizens whether or not they are living in the U.S.

Loss of Other Citizenship:  you will lose or put at risk the citizenship of your country of origin and you will deprive your children of the right to be born citizens of the country of their grand-parents.

Loss of Protection:  Citizens have the right to ask for the aid and protection of their states of citizenship.  In the case of dual nationals the principle of "dominant nationality" may be applied and you may not longer be able to ask for help of the country of which which you are a citizen but not a resident.

Political Ambitions:  you would like, one day, to run for office in your home country or serve in a high position in the government.  Even where it is allowed by law, you fear that you won't be selected or elected by your home country constituents if you have dual nationality.

Loss of property and inheritance rights:  Apparently this used to be true of certain countries.  It is still, theoretically, possible.  Imagine you have an inheritance or property dispute in the home country.  The sheer effort that will be required to defend your rights (not to mention the look on the judge's face when he/she find out that you live in and are now a citizen of another country) will be substantial which gives a distinct "home court advantage" to your adversaries.

Family Responsibilities:  Some of my friends have aging or ill parents in the home country. If taking on another citizenship means that you cannot easily go home to care for them, that's a problem for you, for them and for the country they live in.

Social Pressure:  The people of your home country may be genuinely offended that you are considering becoming the citizen of another country and they let you know it.  Even where the law permits dual nationality, public feeling is against it.

Integration Seems impossible:  You do not have the sense that the people around you like immigrants (resident or citizen) and they are either ambivalent or actively hostile to your presence.  The political climate makes you uneasy.  You feel that, no matter what you do, you will never be accepted by, and will always face discrimination from, the citizens of the host country.

Complicated Process:  the process is long, bureaucratic and costly.

Citizenship is Nothing Special:  the citizens of the receiving country do not seem proud of their country or of their citizenship.  They don't see it as having value.  When asked, they are unsure as to why you would bother.

In most debates about immigration, citizens tend to tout all the advantages of citizenship and ignore all the negative consequences.  These people impute purely economic motivations to every immigrant or resident who is suspected of trying to take advantage of the host country in some way.

This is beyond ignorant.   Just as no state can make citizenship laws in a vacuum, no individual makes a decision to ask for citizenship without doing some very deep thinking within his own particular context.   Even where both countries accept dual nationality, the choice to ask for citizenship is a complicated moral, emotional, financial calculation where the individual must weigh all the factors for and against before making a decision.

Pledging Allegiance: The Path to Citizenship Part II

The voluntary path to citizenship is naturalization.  This is a formal process where a resident explicitly asks to become a citizen.  The state in question then examines the grounds for granting it depending on the laws prevailing in that country.  Again, there are more grounds for being naturalized than you might think.

Legal Residency:  This pretty basic.  Almost all countries have residency requirements for potential citizens.  The length depends on the country and can range from 1 to 10 or more years.

Amnesty:  Illegal residents can sometimes move toward citizenship under Amnesty programs.  This was done in the U.S. in 1986.  Britain is considering a similar program.  This method is highly controversial.

Marriage:  Most countries have moved away from granting automatic citizenship to a foreign spouse but most countries facilitate naturalization in some way in these cases.  For example, in France a foreign spouse can apply for citizenship after 4 years of marriage.

The State of Origin has ties with the Destination Country:  It appears that in Brazil you can apply for citizenship after one year of residency if you come from a country where Portuguese is the primary language.  Spain seems to have similar requirements for immigrants from "Ibero-American" countries.

Loss of Nationality:   The UN Declaration on Human Rights declares that everyone has the right to a nationality.  If someone is stateless, some country is supposed to grant him citizenship.  The theory is great, the actual practice is another story.  How do people become stateless?  Incompatible citizenship laws, political change, discrimination and so on. If you are a stateless person and you find yourself in Belgium, for example, there is a government office called the Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons.  Most other countries have similar organizations. It is estimated that there are 679,000 stateless Europeans.  A convention up for signature at the EU level called the "2006 Convention on the Avoidance of Statelessness in Relation to State Succession." but it has not been ratified by the member states.

Military service:  Foreign nationals who serve in the  U.S. military can apply for citizenship after 1 year.  A special executive (Presidential) order signed in 2002 allows all foreign nationals serving in the U.S. armed forced on or after September 11, 2001 to immediately file for citizenship. Service in the French Foreign Legion will allow you to apply for French citizenship after 3 years honorable service.

Adoption by Foreign Nationals/Parental Choice of Nationality:  It appears that, if you were adopted by a foreign national, or your parents left the country and became citizens somewhere else, you can, in some cases, go back to the country of your birth or your parent's birth and ask for your citizenship to be restored.  The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia allows for this if the person makes a request through the Naturalization Department.

Cash:   The Carribean islands of Dominica, Grenada and Saint Kitts-Nevis will make you a citizen for a fee ranging from 50,000 to 250,000 USD.  The Commonwealth of Dominica calls this "Economic Citizenship."  Details are here.

With all those options, you might think that all qualifying persons would be running in huge numbers toward citizenship.  Not necessarily.  There is enormous variation in naturalization rates across countries.  From the data I was able to glean from the Web and other sources, Canada seems to have the highest rate with the U.S, Australia and New Zealand close behind.  Germany, Italy, and Switzerland have very low rates.  I saw one figure that claimed a naturalization rate of only 5% for Germany.  France and the UK appear to be somewhere in the middle.  I saw a figure for France of about 17% which I found shockingly low given the rather generous process.

In the next post, let's talk about some of the reasons legal residents do or do not ask for citizenship in their country of residence even when they meet all the requirements.

Pledging Allegiance: The Path to Citizenship

There are many paths to becoming a citizen - many more ways than most people think and not all of them are up to the individual.  Let's divide them into two categories:  voluntary and involuntary.   Voluntary means that an individual must ask to become the citizen of a state through a formal process.  Involuntary means that an individual simply is a citizen by virtue of some quality that he has little or no control over.  Let's start with Involuntary Citizenship because it has some very interesting twists and turns.

Involuntary Path to Citizenship

jus sanguinis:  citizenship is granted automatically at birth to a child born of at least one citizen parent - an individual can't choose his parents or grand-parents.


jus soli:  citizenship is granted automatically because the child was born in a particular country or territory - an individual can't choose the time or place of his birth.


Acquisition of territory/Political Change:  some or all of the residents are automatically made citizens of the country that now controls the territory. Native Americans were granted U.S. citizenship in 1924.  Hawaiians became U.S. citizens when Hawaii was annexed.  Algerian Jews were granted French citizenship in 1870.  Estonians were incorporated into the USSR between 1940 and 1991 and then most (not all) became citizens of the Republic of Estonia in 1992.

Territories change hands, borders shift, empires ebb and flow and people are tossed around through no fault of their own.

Whim: a state can simply decide to grant citizenship to someone they admire for service to humanity or the nation.  The American, Jonathon Littel, was given French citizenship after his book, Les Bienvaillantes, won the Prix Goncourt in France. The Irish Republic Citizenship Act of 1986 allows the Irish President to "grant Irish citizenship as a token of honour to a person or to the child or grandchild of a person who, in the opinion of the Government, has done signal honour or rendered distinguished service to the nation."

There are a couple of interesting outcomes to automatic or involuntary acquisition of citizenship.

The first is that it can create some fairly tragic/comic situations.  An individual can actually be bi- or pluri-national without even knowing it.  For example, say you are an Canadian citizen traveling to an ancestral homeland.  You have never claimed citizenship in that country because you had no idea that you could.  Upon arrival you announce to all and sundry that your father was born here.  You are then informed that you are a citizen of the country (not a tourist) and 1. you are (if male) required to fulfill your military service and/or 2. you need a passport from that country to leave.

I once met a Frenchman at the U.S. Embassy in Paris who was, to put it mildly, furious.  He had been born some 40 years ago in the U.S. to French parents. The family left the U.S. shortly after his birth (his father was an expatriated businessman).   Now this particular Frenchman needed to travel to the U.S. on business and when he applied for a visa he said that he was informed that he could only enter the U.S. if he had an American passport.   What started out as a simple business trip turned into a bureaucratic nightmare. "I am not an American," he said over and over and over to no avail.

 The Dual Citizenship FAQ strongly recommends that,  "Accordingly, anyone who is planning to travel to an ancestral homeland -- even for a brief vacation trip -- would be strongly advised to check that country's citizenship laws carefully beforehand."

The second is having granted citizenship to individuals involuntarily, most modern states ask very little of individuals in order to keep it.  Paying taxes, obeying the local laws and breathing country X's air don't count - even non-citizen residents are required to do these things.  Some states require military service (mostly for men, but sometimes for women too - Israel, for example) but many don't.  Military service is is no longer required in the U.S., and France, for example.  Even voting is optional in many places. U.S. citizens can be called for jury duty but of the millions of Americans called up, only about half (figures vary) actually serve.

In the next post we'll look at the other category:  Voluntary Paths to Citizenship.

Pledging Allegiance: Plural Nationality Part III

T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer, in their essay "Plural Nationality: Facing the Future in a Migratory World," divide states into three categories on the plural nationality question:

Open regimes:  Canada, France, Russia and the UK.  All allow multiple citizenship however that citizenship was acquired.  None require renunciation of citizenship once dual nationals reach the age of majority or of their citizens who become naturalized citizens of another country.

Tolerant regimes:  Australia, Germany, Israel, Mexico, South Africa and the United States.  These countries allow dual citizenship at birth but some require the renunciation of one citizenship at the age of majority.  The U.S. tolerates dual citizenship for its citizens who naturalize in other countries but does not, in principle, permit dual citizenship for naturalized citizens.  Australia and South Africa do just the opposite.

Restrictive regimes:  Austria and Japan.  Both follow strict jus sanguinis.  Dual citizenship is generally not allowed (there are exceptions).

In my previous post I asked why states are not more aggressive about applying strict and limited citizenship rules and why they don't make agreements with other states to enforce them in a consistent way order to avoid the "evils of plural nationality".

Here are what I think are three plausible answers:


Costly and Nearly Impossible to Enforce:  Interestingly enough the U.S. did enter into a set of agreements with other states to manage such issues as military service and naturalization.  These were called Bancroft treaties signed between 1868 and 1937.  In that time the U.S. signed a whopping 25 treaties with 34 countries.  They were allowed to lapse because many of the provisions did not stand up to Supreme Court scrutiny and because they were nearly impossible to enforce.

Today the U.S. can hardly keep track of how many citizens it has abroad much less proceed to a case-by-case discovery of how long they have lived outside the U.S. and whether or not they have acquired other citizenship (states do not necessarily share that information with other states).  So between the arduous task of negotiating citizenship treaties with every other nation-state on the planet that past muster with the U.S. Supreme Court, and the near impossibility of enforcing those treaties beyond U.S. borders, it is simply not practical to make such agreements.  Europe seems to have come to the same conclusion.

"Harnessing the Diaspora":  Let's say that a quarter of the French citizens living abroad (about 250,000 people) decide to become naturalized in their countries of residence.  And what if those citizens represent some of the best and brightest and most productive members of the French nation who were raised and educated in France?  The receiving nation is happy to have them because their skills are a net benefit to the destination nation at nearly no cost (it is estimated that there are nearly 500 companies in Silicon Valley, USA started by French entrepreneurs).

Now, what is the likelihood that they will ever come back to France if they become American citizens and lose their French citizenship because France decides to abolish dual citizenship?  Nearly zero, I would imagine.  Moreover, by refusing to allow dual citizenship for its nationals, the French would not only lose the naturalizing citizens to another state but their descendants as well.  By this reasoning the French state has every interest in allowing her citizens to hold plural nationality.  She retain her citizens and their children, and French emigrants are turned into assets to their home country by fostering economic and social ties between all their countries of citizenship and by, perhaps one day, returning to France with their skills, their knowledge and any assets that they acquire abroad.

Impediment to Attracting New Citizens: All states have an interest in having some residents become citizens particularly if they are stable, productive, highly-skilled, long-term residents.  Resident foreign nationals are people who do not participate in the political life of their country of residence and have no allegiance or duties and responsibilities toward that state other than paying taxes and obeying the laws.

In most modern states they also enjoy almost all the benefits the country has to offer (public education, social security, access to the job market...) without becoming full citizens.   Another source of concern is their state of citizenship which has a legitimate interest in their well-being and some limited right to intervene on their behalf.   So from the receiving state's perspective it is better to bring these people into the community of citizens.  However, where renunciation of prior nationality is a requirement for naturalization, even long-term residents think twice and may decline to become citizens of their state of residence.

So the bottom line is that for any agreement to work states would have to set up costly enforcement mechanisms (share citizen databases, for example?), they would have to agree to permanently lose citizens to other states and they would have to accept the likelihood of larger numbers of foreign nationals on their soil who enjoy all the benefits of residency but refuse to become citizens.

What I see when I look at this murky, overlapping, intersecting, inconsistent set of citizenship rules is states jockeying for position and competing with other countries for potential citizens (or just trying to hold on to their own) within the community of nation states.  Everyone is trying to create rules that maximize their interests based on their relative position:  country of emigration versus country of immigration, number of resident foreign nationals, number of nationals living abroad, desire to attract high-skilled labor or labor desperately needed by certain industries, relationships with former colonies or other areas of interest, a need for foreign capital (remittances, for example, or direct investment), demographics, and so on.  States have every reason to compete and very few reasons to cooperate.

The result seems to be a trend toward tolerance of plural nationality.

That's the perspective of the states.  What about individuals?  Do individuals also weigh the costs and benefits and try to maximize their interests?  Of course.

In the next post let's talk about the path to citizenship and the individual.  

Pledging Allegiance: Plural Nationality Part II

There are four reasons why plural nationality is more and more common:

Migration:  This is the first and the most obvious reason.  There are 5 million American citizens living abroad according to the AARO. Oddly enough, when people move around they still tend to do very human things like marry, have children, build careers, serve a nation, and make lives for themselves in their country of residence.  All those things lead to situations where plural nationality is possible.

Technology:  It is easier today for people to keep a genuine attachment to multiple countries thanks to cheap, fast transportation and personal communication devices.  I can be in the city of my birth, Seattle, in mere hours.  Advances in computer-mediated communication and the growing availability of Internet access make it easy to stay in touch.  Telephone service and radio were a big step up from snail mail but today we have Facebook, email, chat which are all ways we keep in constant contact with loved ones and how we stay aware of and can continue to participate in, the debate on currents events in our home countries.  When you can have that level of contact with another country your attachment to it does not weaken just because you live somewhere else.

State Sovereignty:  Every nation state has the right to decide its own rules for acquiring and losing citizenship and it is considered to be a purely internal matter.  This means there is very little cooperation between states on this issue.  France does not check with all the other countries on the planet before deciding to limit jus soli for the children of immigrants.  Today, people in the U.S. do not verify the coherence or impact of repealing the 14th amendment with the laws of other nation-states.  For that matter,  when the amendment was first implemented did the United States ask other nation-states whether or not they were OK with the fact that one of their citizens by blood could automatically be granted U.S. citizenship just because he or she was born on U.S. soil?

Limited International Law:  There does exist on an international level a minimum ruleset for all states concerning citizenship which seems to consist of saying that everyone has the right to a citizenship somewhere and that all citizens have a right to leave their country of citizenship or return to it.    There is also the 1957 Convention on the Nationality of Married Women and other conventions that cover otherwise stateless persons and racial or sex discrimination by a nation-state in the acquisition of nationality.  Aside from that everyone is pretty much free to make up his own rules and those rules intersect in interesting and often odd ways.

I had a colleague many years ago who was an American citizen by birth, a French citizen by naturalization and was married to a UK citizen.  Her child could have had three passports, all legitimately acquired through a combination of U.S., U.K. and French law.  This fact might infuriate the citizens of the states in question but, to my knowledge, there was nothing illegal about it.

The reality for all states is they cannot make citizenship laws in a vacuum - other states will make their own laws and if they overlap or conflict with yours, well, there is not much you can do.

If states really wanted to stop plural nationality they would 1.  apply a very strict jus sanguinis or jus soli laws internally and force children of mixed marriages or naturalized citizens to choose one citizenship and  2. enter into agreements with other states that would enforce those laws.  

Oddly enough, for all the talk about the evils of dual citizenship, I don't see any modern nation-state doing all of these things.  

In my next post I'll talk about why I think that is.