In all the news media ballyhoo about tomorrow's Iowa caucuses a disturbing proposal by Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee seems to have slipped out unnoticed.
The former Arkansas governor wants to impose a federal law that would deny American citizens the right to hold dual citizenship -- a right that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in several cases decades ago. Huckabee would make it a crime for an potential estimate of 40 million Americans who now have a right to dual citizenship to even use a foreign passport for travel or business purposes.
Huckabee's jingoistic proposal came as part of his "get tough on illegal immigrants" campaign aimed at getting votes among conservatives in Iowa and elsewhere who are rightfully concerned about illegal immigration and the failure of the Bush administration to protect U.S. borders. Indeed, Huckabee would also make it a crime for U.S. citizens to vote in foreign elections or perform official or military service in other countries. (In recent years, Americans with dual nationality have served as officials in the governments of Yugoslavia, Armenia, and Estonia. A retired U.S. Government employee, Valdas Adanikus, was elected president of his native Lithuania, while a former New York City attorney, Lionel Fernandez, is in his second, non-consecutive term as president of the Dominican Republic).
Huckabee's main target seems to be the millions of legal U.S. citizens of Mexican descent who, under Mexico's laws and constitution, have a right to vote in Mexican elections, as well as in the United States. Many other nations also allow voting by dual nationals.
A Constitutional Right
In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of U.S. citizens to hold a second, foreign passport in the case of Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967).
Prior to this ruling the official stance was that a person acquiring second nationality automatically lost U.S. citizenship. Since 1967, the government must presume a U.S. citizen does not wish to surrender citizenship. The burden of proof is on the government to show intentional abandonment of U.S. citizenship. This presumption is also set forth in a U.S. Department of State publication, Advice About Possible Loss of U.S. Citizenship and Dual Nationality, (1990). As a matter of policy, the U.S. Government recognizes dual nationality but does not encourage it because of what it views as problems and conflicts that may result.
Against Global Trends
In an ever more global world, dual citizenship has become commonplace. In 1996, for example, seven of 17 Latin American countries allowed some form of it; by 2003, fifteen countries did. In 2006 India changed its policy to allow dual citizenship. That means every major country whose nationals migrate to the U.S. in large numbers now allows dual citizenship, except for China, South Korea and Cuba.
Dual nationality simply means that a person legally is a citizen of two countries at the same time, qualified as such under each nation’s law. This status may result automatically, as when a child born in a foreign country to a U.S. citizen becomes both a U.S. citizen and a citizen of the country where he or she is born. Or it may result from operation of law, as when a U.S. citizen acquires foreign citizenship by marriage to a spouse from another nation, or a foreign person naturalized as a U.S. citizen retains the citizenship of their country of birth.
Under U.S. law, a second passport does not jeopardize American citizenship. However, U.S. citizens, including dual nationals, must by law use their U.S. passport to enter and leave the United States. Dual nationals may also be required by the foreign country to use their passport to enter and leave. But the point is that acquiring and using a foreign passport does not endanger U.S. citizenship.
Dual Citizenship Protects Freedom
There is another disturbing trend that makes a second passport of great value. In various ways, governments increasingly use issuance of a passport to their own citizens as a means of coercion. In the United States a citizen can be denied a passport simply for being in debt to the Internal Revenue Service, because of other problems with federal government agencies or because they are behind in excess of $2,500 in back payments for court ordered child support.
Depending on your nation’s policies, your government may use your passport to restrict your basic human right to travel, rather than to guarantee it. Use of your passport can be made contingent on payment of your taxes, however unreasonable, and on reporting of worldwide income and assets. Issuance of your passport allows your government to control, restrict, monitor, and record your travels.
Now you can begin to see, even if Mike Huckabee cannot, why a second passport may be highly useful.
Your qualification for a second nation’s passport, one that comes with no restrictive strings attached, can serve as your passport to freedom. It can be your key to a whole new world of free movement, expanded international investment, greater flexibility, and adventure. In addition, it can mean safe passage as compared to delay or even worse.
It is this important freedom that politicians such as Huckabee would so easily repeal in a demagogic search for votes.
* If you want to know more about dual citizenship and second passports, you can read all about them and scores of countries in The Passport Book which I have authored, now in its sixth edition. Click here http://web-purchases.com/190SGOPS/W190H721/
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