Duelling Opinions Over Dual Citizenship

Though the governor general position is "above politics," it is indirectly involved in them, he says. So, for Jean's allegiance to be in no doubt, she should renounce the French citizenship she took up upon her marriage in 1990. Freedman is surprised there hasn't been as much comment on Jean's dual status as on her alleged-and-denied Quebec separatist sympathies. It's only because the second country is France, he speculates. "But what if a future governor-general is a dual citizen with North Korea or Zimbabwe or the U.S.? Imagine the outcry." It's got Freedman thinking about the meaning of citizenship. About whether it has "moral and ethical aspects," or whether it has become merely a tool of economics and convenience, the- second-passport-as-travel-facilitator. He learned just this week via the department of citizenship and immigration's website that the Citizenship Act allows Canadians "to have two or more citizenships and allegiances at the same time." The word "allegiances" stunned him, he says. "Surely, the essence of citizenship is loyalty to one's country." It is. But that no longer precludes allegiance to another country. Not in Canada, which was among the first, back in 1977, to allow dual and multiple citizenships. Nor in any of the 95 or so other nations that have since adopted the policy in one form or other, most in the past five or six years, including a long-reluctant United States. Some states, such as India, promote dual citizenship — at least with those who've immigrated to wealthy countries, such as Canada — as a means of attracting expatriate investment. Other regions are developing "cluster" citizenships. Being a citizen of a European Union member country now means you're a citizen of the EU. Several Latin American countries now have dual-citizen arrangements with Spain. Analysts say countries are adopting the practice to acknowledge the new realities of economic globalization, of increased mobility, of the move toward a "post-national" or "supra-national" world. "Is it reasonable or realistic any longer to ask people to give up their old identity, all their old residual loyalties, for a new one?" says Jeffrey Kopstein, director of the Institute of European Studies at the University of Toronto. Some would say an emphatic Yes. Pledging sole allegiance to a new country doesn't entail extinguishing emotional or family ties to the old, but it does formalize the commitment, and commitment is not an unreasonable request, they argue. There are some 40 countries internationally that agree — among them Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Japan and China — and bar second citizenships. Their number, however, drops with every passing year. Critics such as Stanley Renshon, a political scientist at the City University of New York, are concerned about future political fallout if the trend continues. "No country, and especially no democracy, can afford to have large numbers of citizens with a shallow national attachment," he told a recent dual citizenship forum at the Center for Immigrant Studies in Washington. "No country striving to connect its citizens to a coherent civic identity can afford to encourage its citizens to look elsewhere for their most basic national attachments." The trend, Renshon believes, "sets the stage for direct conflicts of interest" between new immigrants and long-term, integrated citizens. The tension between the two competing views was made clear at an international conference on the issue at U of T this spring hosted by Kopstein, himself a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. "One discourse sees it as a realistic, human rights issue," he says. "The other thinks you have to worry about dual loyalties and state security in the post 9/11 world. Question is, how do you square all that?" Particularly in highly diverse, countries such as Canada: "A lot of people are looking at this. With multiculturalism, the devil is in the details." But most governments, he says, now accept that "the old solution of a mono-identity, where the new citizenship was supposed to be like a religious conversion, doesn't work. If you don't allow dual (citizens), you will lose a lot of good people. Most people don't want to go back to that." Even countries that don't officially permit double citizenships, "allow it through the back door," Kopstein adds, citing Germany, which now permits certain exceptions. There may be many more dual or multiple citizens than the 691,000 who listed themselves as such in Canada's 2001 census. A person born here with parents born in two other countries could be a triple citizen without knowing it. Moreover, many people don't realize they are still regarded as a citizen by their country of origin unless they have formally renounced that citizenship. That means informing the previous government or its representative in Canada, the British High Commission, for example, for British-born Canadians. (But, to complicate matters, some states, such as Syria, don't allow renunciation.) Though Canada does nothing to discourage dual citizenship, the citizenship and immigration department does emphasize the attendant risks in many cases, explaining on its website that: In some countries, travelling with two passports can result in the confiscation of one of them. (Conversely, however, India now requires both passports to be shown.) Dual citizens may be subject to exit restrictions, to military service (as has occurred with at least one Italian-Canadian) and to special taxes or financial compensation for services rendered in the past. Canada may be limited in what help it can provide if a person gets into trouble in another country where he or she is also still a citizen. Opposition to dual citizenship because of security and terrorism fears is a red herring, some analysts counter. It's more likely a backlash to multiculturalism, says U of T law professor Audrey Macklin, a specialist in immigration and citizenship law. Some people argue that multiculturalism leads to a dilution of loyalty or to divided loyalties. She's not one of them, she says. "Even with multiple identities and the emotional link people have to where they were born — and you can't erase that — their primary affiliation is to where they live." There are those, however, who see restriction to a single citizenship as a symbolic gesture of commitment to Canada. But Macklin thinks that enforcing it would have negative repercussions. Some newcomers might resist taking out Canadian citizenship if they can't retain a formal link to the old country. As for Michaëlle Jean, she may take heart in the fact that the Queen, whose representative in Canada she is about to become, appears to have multiple citizenships, 17 at last count. Among them: Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Not, however, France. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1124489413858&call_pageid=968332188492

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