adult citizenship

If I could, I would abolish citizenship as a birthright. Make all who aspire to be citizens take the test immigrants take.

I don’t want to diminish citizenship, but to enhance it. I believe people take it for granted and should be reminded how valuable it is, how lucky they are, and how hard they should work to preserve and defend what they have.

One thing I hope to get rid of by this proposal is hyphenated citizenship, where people divide their loyalties between the country in which they live and some other country or region, often one they have never known. I’m all for acknowledging one’s family tree, but when origin or ethnicity is used as an argument against working for the common good, it’s wrong.

I’d also like to see a return to the idea of the commons, those things we all share but that can be ruined by the arrogance or ignorance of a few. From the air we breathe and water we drink to the roads we drive and the lands we all share, it would behoove us to stop thinking of it all as ours, singular, instead thinking of it as ours, plural.

The newspapers and magazines continually bemoan the lack of civic involvement, to say nothing of ignorance (quick: name your senators and house representative. Bonus points if you know when your senators are up for re-election).

But the only way to solve that is to make people earn the title of citizen. The founders of the republic risked the gallows for the ideas and principles we all claim to hold dear. In these self-interested times, people don’t even want to vote or serve on a jury, seeing these obligations as burdens rather than rights. Two hundred years ago, the notion of pure citizen democracy, where no one was born into privilege and everyone (according to the ideas of that time) was equal, was truly revolutionary, and millions flocked to this place where they could make a life for themselves. It seems quaint to think of these ideas now, but there are people willing to risk their lives, by crossing deserts or stowing away in freight containers, for the opportunities enshrined in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. In short, they’re willing to earn it or die in the attempt.

Say what you like about their actions, they’re willing to risk all for a chance. How many of us are?