Giving Thanks for Dual Citizenship

By Roger G. Waite

I am no fan of judicial activism, but I more than willing to admit when it has done me a good turn. No, I’m not talking about affirmative action. Instead, I refer to an earlier act of raw assertion by the High Court, Afroyim v. Rusk, handed down by the Warren Court in 1967. The justices ruled that the Congress had no power to deprive anyone of his citizenship without his consent, as had happened to Beys Afroyim whose U.S. citizenship was revoked according the Nationality Act of 1940 for voting in a foreign election. 

I cannot say what road this has taken the Fourteenth’s Amendment’s emanations and penumbras down, but I am certain of what it means for me: The Feds can’t do anything about my allegiance to a foreign monarch. It’s not that I have only sporadic pride in the United States, the land of my birth, as one prominent figure confessed not long ago, but that I live in a mobile and modern world, where it always helps to have a few extra options. After all, a few decades back my second homeland had a charismatic, young prime minister who kept on talking about spreading the wealth around and the “politics of change,” and a few years on most people who could were happy to hop on the first plane to the United States. As much as I trust in the good sense of my countrymen, I cannot shake the fear that policies with a similar ring might lead to parallel results in these parts. 

Things aren’t exactly great in my ancestral homeland. Its proud agrarian roots have been marred by urban poverty, narco-trafficking to the United States, and one of the world’s highest murder rates. An acquaintance of mine recently received an email from a friend there reading, “Prices are up. Crime is skyrocketing. So, when are you going to come back?” Not too enticing, but the recent electoral victory of the more moderate party there, as well as the election over here have given me—how shall I say?—hope about its comparative benefits. 

Seeing liberal Harvard students proudly singing the national anthem, I can’t restrain my own upsurge of patriotism. God save Her Majesty, Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, Queen of Jamaica—and of Her other Realms and Territories.