Should citizenship be earned?

Great Debates
1

Sometimes I think a lot of us here in the U.S.A. take the rights we have from being lucky enough to be born here for granted. We want all the rights while wanting to dodge all the responsibilities, and a depressingly high number of people don’t know much about either rights or responsibilities, or anything about how our system supposedly works.

Maybe if they had to earn it, they would value it more. Would it be so terrible to have to be able to pass a civics course, and maybe give the country a year of some kind of public service before you can have full citizenship rights? I’m not saying I would take away rights pertaining to a fair trial, or protection from discrimination. I would leave all the protections in place for everyone. But the right to vote in elections and the right to run for office, couldn’t we make people earn those, at least? Is this a crazy idea?

2

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed literacy tests. Wouldn’t being required to pass a civics course kind of be like a literacy test?

3

[QUOTE=XaMcQ]
Would it be so terrible to have to be able to pass a civics course, and maybe give the country a year of some kind of public service before you can have full citizenship rights?
[/QUOTE]

Who decides the requirements? What do you mean by ‘public service’? Who watches the watchers?

4

[QUOTE=monica]
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed literacy tests. Wouldn’t being required to pass a civics course kind of be like a literacy test?
[/QUOTE]

Yes, it would be. Of course the test could be given orally, it could be given in other languages, for all I care, but probably any kind of test would violate the spirit of that act. I don’t know. The literacy tests were meant to keep blacks from voting, not illiterates. I am not especially looking to cut down the number of people who vote, though that would probably, sadly, be a result of such any such requirements. I just think people would cherish their citizenship more if they earned it, and if they had more knowledge about their government.

5

[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
Who decides the requirements? What do you mean by ‘public service’? Who watches the watchers?
[/QUOTE]

I assume that Congress would pass laws about the requirements, since it would have to be a legal framework. By public service I mean everything from military service to hospital orderly or national park service. Some job that lets you serve the public in some way. As for who watches the watchers, well, who is watching them now? Are you implying that if there was a test and a year of service to your country required(with exceptions for medical conditions, etc.) that there would soon by only a small, elite group of citizen voters controling the govt? Most people don’t vote now. If they couldn’t, maybe they would care more about the right to do so.

6

[QUOTE=XaMcQ]
I assume that Congress would pass laws about the requirements, since it would have to be a legal framework. By public service I mean everything from military service to hospital orderly or national park service. Some job that lets you serve the public in some way.
[/QUOTE]

That requirement, right off the top, is senseless. A private job serves the public just as much as a government job - in fact, I’d argue that on average, it serves the public MORE than the average government job. Providing the public with food is very important, isn’t it? But virtually all jobs related to the production, delivery, preparation and serving of food are private. Why is providing the public with food less deserving of credit than providing the public with a national park?

All private jobs are socially valuable. If they weren’t valuable, they would not exist. They exist because society places some sort of value on the goods or services that the job helps to provide. There’s nothing about “public” service that is any better for the public than a private sector job.

What if I’m an entrepreneur who starts a business than employs 50 people? That’s a REMARKABLY socially beneficial job, far more so than almost any soldier. Should the entrepeneur not get some credit for that?

Right away we’re seeing the problem with the idea of “earning citizenship” - the requirements are always going to be subjective and will invariably be (a) heavily politically biased, (b) arbitrary and silly, or (c) both.

7

Have you read Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers? Those who only saw the movie might be surprised at how much of the book was actually about politics. Heinlien posited a political system based on (I believe) a unique franchise. Only people who had completed a period of public service (with no choice of what service they performed) were full citizens and eligible to vote. The flip side was that nobody could be compelled to participate in public service (including military service) and nobody could denied the opportunity to volunteer if they wished to do so.

8

A quick response.

I have thought about this, and while I agree with the premise I’ve never been able to see a way to make it workable in practice.

The biggest problem I see is that such a system will inevitably further marginalise groups that are already marginalised: the poor, minorities, the unducated. It doesn’t matter what your intentions are the fact is that any sort of test will immediatley discriminate against those groups, and those are the very groups that can least afford to lose that little power that citizenship can grant.

Can you honestly say that Black kid from juvenile hall will be just as likely to sit a citizenship exam as White kid fom a prep school? Based on what we know about different groups’ voting enrolment and voting turnout I’m guessing that the odds are they won’t be any more inclined to take up citizenship.

The idea of a year of “public service” will effectively make it impossible for poor people to ever become citizens. It’s easy for a rich boy to take a year off between college and high school or after graduating college. But how would a poor single mother manage to do this? Do you intend to pay people a full-time wage and provide free child care for a year while they complete their service? If so how do you propose to fund this significant expense?

Even if you are proposing to pay people a full-time wage and provide free child care how do you intend to guarantee candidates are able to re-enter the workforce after 12 months absence? I know none of my bosses would have re-hired me if I had vanished for 12 months for somehting as ‘frivolous’ as a citizenship tour. But maybe you intend to make it illegal for people not to re-hire citizenship candidates after their tour. In that case you place a huge and unnecessary burden on employers who will be effectively forced to grant the equivalent of maternity leave to every employee. The immediate outcome will be that nobody will want to hire young people who haven’t become citizens because of that risk. Unless you want to introduce anti-dicrimination lwas covering that as well. This is rapidly becoming an administrative and legislative nightmare.

And what if people fail? Is citizenship something I only get one shot at? If I apply at 18 and can’t hack it after 6 months working in the Sonora national park or the Alaska wilderness is that it? Am I ruled out for life? And if I’m not out for life what is to stop me from becoming professional citizenship bum (assuming you are paying candidates wages)? Why can’t I apply now, do 11 months on full-time wages and then drop out and force you to re-employ me next year? I could guarantee myself a public service job for life doing this couldn’t I? How do you intend to stop such abuse?

The next problem is how you intend to apportion citizenship responsibilities under your scheme. Consider the draft as just one example. Would people be able to dodge the draft just by not becoming a citizen? Or do you just intend to force people to die to defend a society that doesn’t consider them worthy of being full members? The former option seems unworkable. The latter is abhorrent and unethical.

And these are just the more obvious problmes I have seen. Like I said, I agree with your sentiment and I suport the idea in principle, but I can see no way to make it work in pratice.

9

Yes, and I think the process should be televised. Here’s how it would work:

Potential citizens will be given 20-some briefcases to choose from containing different timeframes in which they will be allowed to establish their citizenship, ranging from “Never” to “Immediately”. Then they will begin asking super-hot models to open the remaining cases, knocking amounts like “7 years” or “6 months” off the board.

Each round, the Immigrations Officer will call in with an offer of establishing the contestant’s citizenship within X years. They can either accept his offer, or continue opening cases until they are left with the case they picked out originally. Everyone claps, and the host goes off to sleep with the super-hot models.

Isn’t it brilliant?

10

In ‘On the Beach’ by Nevil Shute he described a society in which people had multiple votes.

It strikes me as a pretty sensible idea, I actually find it offensive that my vote is worth exactly the same as that of a clinical moron.

However, we do covertly run a similar system.

Medical care, education and immunity from over zealous law enforcement officers are determined by the ‘stripes’ we wear - we live in a cash society.

11

I think it should be earned through hard work and slavery.

just kidding.
Yeah, it should be earned after paying taxes for years, working a steady job for a minimum of 5 years and paying for your own children before any government can step in and help them out.

12

[QUOTE=XaMcQ]
Sometimes I think a lot of us here in the U.S.A. take the rights we have from being lucky enough to be born here for granted. We want all the rights while wanting to dodge all the responsibilities, and a depressingly high number of people don’t know much about either rights or responsibilities, or anything about how our system supposedly works.

[/QUOTE]

What are my duties as a citizen?

To pay taxes. I do that.

To serve in a jury. On the one occassion that I received a summons, I tried to.

To educate oneself. I did that.

Not break laws? OK, I’m law abiding.

Vote? I don’t vote in the primary elections, but I do vote in the general ones.

??

What else is there for me to do? I was born in this country. I didn’t ask for that “priviledge”. You know how I earn my citizenship? I pay taxes. I pay a whole lotta gotdamn taxes. I do so gladly, because I like smooth roads, crime-free streets, and clean water. If writing a big ole check every year isn’t earning something, then I’m at a freakin’ lost for what “citizen” means.

Oh yeah…

I don’t know where you went to school, but in Georgia it was required that all high school students take a semester of civics. I think political science was also mandatory in university, but I went to a public school.

High school students were (and I’m assuming still are) also required to accumulate 75 hours of community service. I know lots of school districts have this as a requirement for graduation. I don’t see it so much as a citizenship thing as much as an opportunity to get real world experience, perhaps develop some marketable skills in the process. I’d much rather a fellow citizen be self-supportive and a solid tax payer than a do-gooder who can’t rub two nickles together.

13

I couldn’t possibly back such a plan. I’m a political animal (as some of you may have gathered, God knows) and I see the immediate flaw in the plan as being that it would, within ten years, become a means of restricting the franchise, and therefore political power, to the ‘right’ people. Even the instinct for such a plan is alarming. Disenfranchisement, a permanent underclass, and greater societal differentiation would be almost inevitable.

Given a chance to discriminate humans opt to do so a remarkable amount of the time. It’s sort of a downstream result of tribalism. The people you know are smart. Everyone else doesn’t count.

You see this in Congressional opinion research literally all the time. When surveyed people have extremely negative outlook on Congress. They think that Congressmen are a bunch of corrupt weasels out for their own power instead of the greater good. Until they’re asked about their own representative. He’s a good guy who’s trying to make things better against the other idiots.

Remember, that guy down the street that you think is too stupid to be allowed to vote likely thinks exactly the same thing about you. To assume you’re right and he’s wrong is to give in the sort of elitism that damages the body politic.

Are there people out there exercising the franchise unwisely? Undoubtedly. But I’d rather have that than the consequences of bringing back literacy tests and voter requirements.

14

I don’t think it’s a crazy idea at all. I haven’t given it much thought but I like it when people throw out original ideas, and this is an original idea.

How about this variation? Let’s auction off slots for becoming a citizen. If we’re going to have 1,000,000 immigrants next year, let’s have continuous auctions for those openings. If you win at the auction you have to pass some agreed on qualification, e.g. minimal or no criminal record, willingness to denounce Al Qaeda on videotape, etc. If you change your mind or don’t meet the qualifications, you can sell your opening, maybe at a profit.

I haven’t thought this through, but who are the winners and losers? Winners: US Treasury, rich people who really want to come here fast, US workers as we get the benefit of having all that capital brought here and the effect of added entrepreneurs on the economy. Losers: Immigration lawyers? Poor people who want to come here and have the patience of Job?

15

[QUOTE=FRDE]
In ‘On the Beach’ by Nevil Shute he described a society in which people had multiple votes.

It strikes me as a pretty sensible idea, I actually find it offensive that my vote is worth exactly the same as that of a clinical moron.

[/QUOTE]

Why do you find this offensive? How many clinical morons are even voting?

Are you equally offended that the dollar bill in your pocket spends the same as the clinical moron’s down the street? Do you think your superior intelligence should grant you more rights? Are you willing to concede more rights to those who are smarter than you?

Or were you just being facetitious?

16

[QUOTE=monstro]
How many clinical morons are even voting?
[/QUOTE]

Just over half of the population.

(And yes, I’m being facetious. :stuck_out_tongue: )

17

[QUOTE=Blake]
A quick response.

I have thought about this, and while I agree with the premise I’ve never been able to see a way to make it workable in practice.

The biggest problem I see is that such a system will inevitably further marginalise groups that are already marginalised: the poor, minorities, the unducated. It doesn’t matter what your intentions are the fact is that any sort of test will immediatley discriminate against those groups, and those are the very groups that can least afford to lose that little power that citizenship can grant.

Can you honestly say that Black kid from juvenile hall will be just as likely to sit a citizenship exam as White kid fom a prep school? Based on what we know about different groups’ voting enrolment and voting turnout I’m guessing that the odds are they won’t be any more inclined to take up citizenship.

The idea of a year of “public service” will effectively make it impossible for poor people to ever become citizens. It’s easy for a rich boy to take a year off between college and high school or after graduating college. But how would a poor single mother manage to do this? Do you intend to pay people a full-time wage and provide free child care for a year while they complete their service? If so how do you propose to fund this significant expense?

Even if you are proposing to pay people a full-time wage and provide free child care how do you intend to guarantee candidates are able to re-enter the workforce after 12 months absence? I know none of my bosses would have re-hired me if I had vanished for 12 months for somehting as ‘frivolous’ as a citizenship tour. But maybe you intend to make it illegal for people not to re-hire citizenship candidates after their tour. In that case you place a huge and unnecessary burden on employers who will be effectively forced to grant the equivalent of maternity leave to every employee. The immediate outcome will be that nobody will want to hire young people who haven’t become citizens because of that risk. Unless you want to introduce anti-dicrimination lwas covering that as well. This is rapidly becoming an administrative and legislative nightmare.

And what if people fail? Is citizenship something I only get one shot at? If I apply at 18 and can’t hack it after 6 months working in the Sonora national park or the Alaska wilderness is that it? Am I ruled out for life? And if I’m not out for life what is to stop me from becoming professional citizenship bum (assuming you are paying candidates wages)? Why can’t I apply now, do 11 months on full-time wages and then drop out and force you to re-employ me next year? I could guarantee myself a public service job for life doing this couldn’t I? How do you intend to stop such abuse?

The next problem is how you intend to apportion citizenship responsibilities under your scheme. Consider the draft as just one example. Would people be able to dodge the draft just by not becoming a citizen? Or do you just intend to force people to die to defend a society that doesn’t consider them worthy of being full members? The former option seems unworkable. The latter is abhorrent and unethical.

And these are just the more obvious problmes I have seen. Like I said, I agree with your sentiment and I suport the idea in principle, but I can see no way to make it work in pratice.
[/QUOTE]
Many countries have had a period of conscription in the armed forces in the past with the conscripts returning to work quite easily.In the U.S. and Europe primary education is free so while it is harder for the poor to study after school it is very attainable .As to people leaving school and immediately becoming unemployed single parent families! even the bushmen in the middle of the Namibian desert know where babies come from and they dont have schools.Much if not most of the poverty in the West is as a result of people having children they cant afford to keep at all let alone in numbers ,and they cant wait !its got to be now.Are you suggesting that someone who doesnt even make a realistic effort to take responsiblty for their own lives has the "nous"to vote for policies that will determine the future of the whole nation ? And then we come to the poor who arent going to pass a citizenship test ,those who are determined WILL pass.Are you suggesting we give the others a "tick"pass?After all thats what we do for Drs,nuclear technicians and the like dont we ? This candidate hasn`t got any idea about medecine(or nuclear physics or economics etc.etc.)but hey ! he comes from a deprived background so lets let him loose on sick people ,reactors etc. I mean everyone has a right to be a doctor so it would unethical to deprive him of the opportunity based on mere ignorance and lack of any ability to do the job!Of course we could always ask a patients family plus hospital cleaners ,porters etc. what surgical procedure to adopt before an operation ,with of course the majority vote being the one used and to heck with the lone vote cast by the surgeon!

18

[QUOTE=Lust4Life]
Many countries have had a period of conscription in the armed forces in the past with the conscripts returning to work quite easily.In the U.S. and Europe primary education is free so while it is harder for the poor to study after school it is very attainable .As to people leaving school and immediately becoming unemployed single parent families! even the bushmen in the middle of the Namibian desert know where babies come from and they dont have schools.Much if not most of the poverty in the West is as a result of people having children they cant afford to keep at all let alone in numbers ,and they cant wait !its got to be now.Are you suggesting that someone who doesnt even make a realistic effort to take responsiblty for their own lives has the "nous"to vote for policies that will determine the future of the whole nation ? And then we come to the poor who arent going to pass a citizenship test ,those who are determined WILL pass.Are you suggesting we give the others a "tick"pass?After all thats what we do for Drs,nuclear technicians and the like dont we ? This candidate hasn`t got any idea about medecine(or nuclear physics or economics etc.etc.)but hey ! he comes from a deprived background so lets let him loose on sick people ,reactors etc. I mean everyone has a right to be a doctor so it would unethical to deprive him of the opportunity based on mere ignorance and lack of any ability to do the job!Of course we could always ask a patients family plus hospital cleaners ,porters etc. what surgical procedure to adopt before an operation ,with of course the majority vote being the one used and to heck with the lone vote cast by the surgeon!
[/QUOTE]

Your entire post is the textbook definition for “strawman”.

19

We always get the old chestnut ,who will watch the watchers ,who will mark the tests !Well who counts the votes in an election ?Who arrests policemen if they commit a crime ? Mark the citizenship test the same way you mark university degrees, or have the question paper identified only by a code to be matched upwith a name elsewhere no ethnic or political information and also have the geographical location at yet another site,still technically possible to eventually track down the the testee,just as its theoretically possible to trace your secret ballot but have ALL marking totally open to public scrutiny and an easy and overt appeal process ,with a large or unlimited number of appeals allowed ,this will result in some frivolous or even insane appeals but its the lesser of two evils. The western democracies all debar sections of the population from voting ,children ,the insane and in the U.K. convicts so the franchise has NEVER been universal.Every right has a corresponding duty and in voting its to have some sort of clue as to the subject you`re voting on.

20

[QUOTE=Lust4Life]
Every right has a corresponding duty and in voting its to have some sort of clue as to the subject you`re voting on.
[/QUOTE]
Is that in the constitution, or did you just make it up?

You have a very strange definition of democracy if you believe only some of the people should participate. The power of government is derived from the consent of the governed, not the other way around. If you disenfranchise a portion of the governed, even for what you consider justifiable reasons, you have instituted tyranny over that class who will resort to violence against it, because you have left them no other choice.