Time For New Rules In Washington Dealing With Dual Citizenship

The matter of citizenship is increasingly important in American politics. A recent article indicated that naturalized citizens who will vote in the upcoming November election could have a significant impact in Pennsylvania, one of the key battleground states. What is more, a recent report published by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and Boundless Immigration suggested that as many as 300,000 citizens were denied the ability to vote in the presidential election because the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services were prevented from doing their job properly. These sources pinpointed the importance of citizenship to the political landscape of America. But there is another aspect of citizenship that has not been given enough attention. That is the impact of politicians who have dual citizenship and their role in formulating American policy related to their countries of foreign allegiance.

More than mere love of ancestral homeland

Let’s get things straight right from the start. Just as I can love my father and my mother at the same time, I can love America and Canada at the same time, for example. There’s nothing wrong with that. An American who is raised to love America and his or her ancestral home has nothing to be ashamed of, whether that home is Canada, Italy or Mexico. Such a person can hold any office in the land, even be the president, without any problems. Think of Kennedy or Reagan and their love affairs with Ireland, for example. That’s not what we are talking about here.

What we are talking about here is the troubling notion of national political leaders holding dual citizenship in today’s world. In the past, there were American presidents that had dual citizenship and that was acceptable. For example, President James Buchanan, although his father was naturalized as a U.S. citizen, was still a British subject by virtue of his birth to an Irish father. President Chester A. Arthur’s father was born in Ireland and a British subject at the time the president was born in the United States and thus passed down his citizenship to Arthur. It was President Teddy Roosevelt, however, who first raised questions about dual citizenship in regard to politics, calling it a self-evident absurdity. Most recently, the issue was raised in regard to the foreign citizenship of Ted Cruz when he ran against Donald Trump in 2016.

So what’s the real problem?

If you have ever personally been in a conflict of interest, particularly when the stakes were high or large sums of money were involved, you will know that your ethical lines suddenly get very blurry and rubbery. It’s remarkable how easily you can bend those lines in your favor when your interests, or the well being of your family, are at stake. Your judgment is clouded by your self interest. That is why it is essential to set limits in advance before you enter such conflicts and to stick to preset boundaries.

A touchy subject

Prominent politicians holding dual citizenship is not only an American affliction. For example, former Canadian Prime Minister John Turner was a citizen of the U.K. when he held office. More recently, Andrew Sheer when he was leader of the Conservative Party of Canada was attacked for being an American citizen as he ran against Justin Trudeau not long ago. In the U.K., Boris Johnson was an American citizen until he renounced is U.S. citizenship, albeit before he became Prime Minister.  Australia went through a political crisis over the issue. Its constitution provided that dual citizens cannot sit in Parliament and several prominent leaders had to resign when it was disclosed they held dual citizenships.

Andrew Coyne, a journalist for Canada’s National Post, argues that Canadian national leaders should renounce dual citizenship. “In any political community, especially in a crisis, a leader must be able to rally the people to his side, to inspire them to make difficult choices, take necessary risks, sometimes to make painful sacrifices … They are unlikely to be willing to make the sacrifices he demands of them if he cannot himself make so elemental a sacrifice as to cast his lot with them — if not irrevocably, then at least exclusively … The parties know this: you cannot be a member of one political party if you are a member of another. Why do they treat Canadian citizenship less seriously? Why do we?”

Should political leaders be required to abandon dual citizenship?

Given the complexity of today’s world, why should political leaders at the national level be allowed to hold dual citizenship? At the very least, should holders of the highest office in the land be required to abandon their dual citizenship? What should be the rules? Here are the rules I would propose:

1. At the very least, any politician at the federal level, let’s say in Congress in the United States or in Parliament in the U.K. or Canada for example, as a matter of ethics, should be required to disclose any entitlement to foreign citizenship on being elected.
2. In addition, national politicians should recuse themselves from making any decisions relating to the foreign country of their citizenship and should be subjected to stiff penalties for failing to disclose such allegiances.
3. Still more, any political leader seeking to be a head of state, or a member of cabinet, at the federal level should, as a matter of ethics, be required to renounce their foreign allegiance.

In short, it is time for an ethical initiative to block dual citizenship in elected office when it comes to national leadership and to put everyone on notice that if they hold dual citizenship, they need to stand on guard against weighing in on decisions in which they have an obvious conflict of interests. This should be just as true for Washington as it should be in Ottawa, London, Canberra or elsewhere.