Dual Allegiance: a Challenge to Immigration Reform and Patriotic
Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder November 2005 Dual Allegiance A Challenge to Immigration Reform and Patriotic Assimilation By John Fonte, Ph.D. Foreword by Newt Gingrich Introduction by Thomas L. Bock, National Commander of the American Legion, and Dr. Herbert I. London, President of the Hudson Institute Executive Summary • When immigrants become American citizens they take a solemn oath to “absolutely and entirely renounce” all previous political allegiances. They transfer their loyalty from the “old country” to the United States. Dual allegiance violates this oath. • Dual allegiance is incompatible with the moral basis of American constitutional democracy because 1) Dual allegiance challenges our core foundation as a civic nation (built on political loyalty) by promoting an eth- nic and racial basis for allegiance and, thus, subverts our “nation of (assimilated) immigrants” ethic; and 2) Dual allegiance violates the core American principle of equality of citizenship. • The Founders, along with Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Louis Brandeis, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Felix Frankfurter, and Newt Gingrich, among others, have all affirmed that undivided political loyalty to the United States should be an absolute condition for citizenship. • Mexican government policies today directly challenge the patriotic assimilation of immigrants, just as Italian government policies did in the past. What is different is that, in the past, the American government and elites opposed dual allegiance and insisted upon patriotic assimilation. Today, they are mute. • In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court in Afroyim v. Rusk, by a vote of 5-4, overturned 200 years of traditional American practice toward dual allegiance. Nevertheless, there is plenty of effective action that Congress could take within current Supreme Court interpretations.
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