Thread: Citizenship means a pledge of allegiance

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Citizenship means a pledge of allegiance

By George Sjostrom
May 13, 2006

pictureLet's assume for a moment that the guys who wrote the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America said what they meant, and meant what they said:

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen, that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same."

There's more, but that's enough to get us started.

The critically important part of the oath, that any citizenship applicant must agree to, is that he or she renounces allegiance and fidelity to any sovereignty of which they have been a subject or citizen. If interpreters water down this language by mixing sociology or politics or special interests with it, we should demand that the Supreme Court declare those interferences to be unconstitutional.

People seeking protection under our Constitution must first have agreed to be bound by it, and then agree to abide by it. If our politicians and judiciary would strictly enforce the requirements of the oath, there would only be three classes of people within our borders: citizens, visitors or invaders.

And it might be a good idea to apply the conditions of the oath to natural-born citizens who, so far, haven't promised anything. Then the problem of what we should do about people who wave foreign flags or advocate the overthrow of our system of law would become more understandable.

Citizens, natural-born or naturalized and visitors, who are here under specific permission, would have a clear run of our country. Anyone else would be a lawbreaker.

In this country of law and of opportunity, civil disobedience is not a valid way to get something wanted but not earned. Strikes and their generic equivalent, boycotts, are always unnecessary exercises in arrogance. The real solution is that if the protestors don't like the job they have, find another. If they don't like our systems and procedures, move on.

France provides us with a graphic example of what happens when government surrenders its responsibility to marching students, unions and radical sects. Instead of progress, they have delivered to France economic stagnation and governmental paralysis.

President Jacques Chirac, who for a time supported a February law that tried to limit lifetime job guarantees in trade for hiring rights that gave employers the right to choose good workers from sloths, lost his political integrity and withdrew the new law.

Now French employers rarely hire new employees whom they can never again fire. The employers can't control the size of their own work force and, therefore, can't control the cost or the price of their products. Because of that, France's unemployment rate is surging, and its economy has stopped competing with the rest of the world.

On the subject of our guest-worker program, there is absolutely no excuse for Congress to continue the impasse between the House's already-passed immigration bill and the draft legislation in the Senate.

It takes political courage, not mathematical skill, for our legislators to figure out how many guest workers we need to pick our strawberries and clean our hotel rooms.

Until now, Congress has never been reluctant to take the responsibility for immigration: The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited citizenship to whites; the Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited citizenship to Chinese immigrants; the Immigration Act of 1917 excluded Asian-Indians; the Immigration Act of 1924 excluded Japanese; the Tydings-McDuffie Act excluded Filipinos; the Magnuson Act of 1943 lifted barriers for most Asians; the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act established quotas and set up the basic laws of citizenship; the Immigration Act of 1965 abolished national origin quotas, and gave preference to special skills; and on and on.

Social apologists continue to argue that our immigration policy should be more concerned with Mexico's political and social stability than it is with the American economy. They argue that an interference with Mexico's escape rate would aggravate Mexico's already soaring unemployment and sinking finances.

Professor Stephen Haber, of Stanford University, says, "There is no scenario in which a politically and socially unstable Mexico is in the interest of the U.S."

If you buy that, we might as well let Mexico vote in our upcoming elections.

— George Sjostrom is a Simi Valley freelance writer. His column appears biweekly in The Star. His e-mail address is sjoworld@aol.com.

had_enuf,

Well said!

Unfortunately, right now our gov't IS having Mexico vote. It's outrageous and treasonous, as far as I'm concerned. They (gov't) have a sworn duty to protect us from invasion. They are actively conspiring with the enemy.

We need to vote them out of office!