French Citizenship: Learn French, Learn French History, Adopt French Values, or Don't Bother.

It may be too late.



30/12/2011

 

France makes it harder to become French

By FRANCE 24  

Foreigners seeking French nationality face tougher requirements as of January 1, when new rules drawn up by Interior Minister Claude Guéant come into force.

Candidates will be tested on French culture and history, and will have to prove their French language skills are equivalent to those of a 15-year-old mother tongue speaker. They will also be required to sign a new charter establishing their rights and responsibilities.

“Becoming French is not a mere administrative step. It is a decision that requires a lot of thought”, reads the charter, drafted by France’s High Council for Integration (HCI).

In a more obscure passage, the charter suggests that by taking on French citizenship, “applicants will no longer be able to claim allegiance to another country while on French soil”, although dual nationality will still be allowed.

Guéant, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party, described the process as “a solemn occasion between the host nation and the applicant”, adding that migrants should be integrated through language and “an adherence to the principals, values and symbols of our democracy”. He stressed the importance of the secular state and equality between women and men: rhetoric perceived largely as a snipe at Muslim applicants, who make up the majority of the 100,000 new French citizens admitted each year.

France’s interior minister has made it clear that immigrants who refuse to “assimilate” into French society should be denied French citizenship.

Earlier this year, Guéant intervened personally to ensure an Algerian-born man living in France was denied French nationality because of his “degrading attitude” to his French wife.

That followed an earlier push by France’s former Immigration Minister Eric Besson to revise existing laws in order to strip polygamists of their acquired citizenship.

Pandering to the far right?

Guéant has come under criticism numerous times over the past year for allegedly pandering to the whims of far-right voters in his efforts to secure a second term for Sarkozy in 2012. The UMP has edged progressively further right over the course of Sarkozy’s term, even as the far-right National Front party continued to bite into its pool of voters.

Marine Le Pen, the popular leader of the anti-immigration National Front, has been campaigning in favour of a ban on dual citizenship in France, which she blames for encouraging immigration and weakening French values. While several UMP members have endorsed her stance, Guéant has stopped short of calling for a ban on dual nationality, largely because of the legal difficulties such a move would entail.

But the interior minister has taken a hard line on immigration, announcing plans to reduce the number of legal immigrants coming to France annually from 200,000 to 180,000 and calling for those convicted of felony to be expelled from the country.

François Hollande, the Socialist Party’s candidate in forthcoming presidential elections, described Guéant’s stance as “the election strategy of a right wing ready to do anything in order to hold on to power”, adding that his own party would tackle all criminals “irrespective of their nationality”.

Under further proposals put forward by the ruling UMP party, non-French children who would normally be naturalised at the age of 18 (those who are born in the country and have spent most of their childhood there) would instead have to formally apply to the state.

Should Sarkozy and his party secure a second term in 2012, analysts predict a return to an immigration stance that hasn’t been seen in France for almost two decades. They point to a case of déjà vu: in 1993 Charles Pasqua, then France’s interior minister, coined the slogan “zero immigration” and introduced a bill that made it virtually impossible for children born in France to non-French parents to be naturalised.









france

This little Indian ...

Who decides who is an Indian or not?



Cherokee Indians: We are free to oust blacks


US government wants second-largest Indian tribe to recognize as citizens 2,800 descendants of slaves that were held by Cherokees


Reuters / MSNBC
updated 9/14/2011 9:00:20 AM ET

OKLAHOMA CITY — The nation's second-largest Indian tribe said on Tuesday that it would not be dictated to by the U.S. government over its move to banish 2,800 African Americans from its citizenship rolls.

"The Cherokee Nation will not be governed by the BIA," Joe Crittenden, the tribe's acting principal chief, said in a statement responding to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Crittenden, who leads the tribe until a new principal chief is elected, went on to complain about unnamed congressmen meddling in the tribe's self-governance.

The reaction follows a letter the tribe received on Monday from BIA Assistant Secretary Larry Echo Hawk, who warned that the results of the September 24 Cherokee election for principal chief will not be recognized by the U.S. government if the ousted members, known to some as "Cherokee Freedmen," are not allowed to vote.

The dispute stems from the fact that some wealthy Cherokee owned black slaves who worked on their plantations in the South. By the 1830s, most of the tribe was forced to relocate to present-day Oklahoma, and many took their slaves with them. The so-called Freedmen are descendants of those slaves.

After the Civil War, in which the Cherokee fought for the South, a treaty was signed in 1866 guaranteeing tribal citizenship for the freed slaves.

The U.S. government said that the 1866 treaty between the Cherokee tribe and the U.S. government guaranteed that the slaves were tribal citizens, whether or not they had a Cherokee blood relation.

The African Americans lost their citizenship last month when the Cherokee Supreme Court voted to support the right of tribal members to change the tribe's constitution on citizenship matters.

The change meant that Cherokee Freedmen who could not prove they have a Cherokee blood relation were no longer citizens, making them ineligible to vote in tribal elections or receive benefits.

Besides pressure from the BIA to accept the 1866 Treaty as the law of the land, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is withholding a $33 million disbursement to the tribe over the Freedmen controversy.

Attorneys in a federal lawsuit in Washington are asking a judge to restore voting rights for the ousted Cherokee Freedmen in time for the September 24 tribal election for Principal Chief.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
indians

Citizenship

America and Europe close the door on immigrants



22:55 10/08/2010
RIA Novosti
Andrei Fedyashin, RIA Novosti political commentator


Anyone aspiring to U.S. citizenship had better act now before it's too late. Soon merely being born in that country may not be enough to qualify for citizenship. Immigrants and foreigners are always subject to much greater scrutiny during hard times. They are sized up by the local population to determine whether they are an asset or a liability to the country, or even a threat.

This is what is happening in the United States right now. Republicans are determined to amend the U.S. Constitution, which provides for jus soli ("right of soil") citizenship. This means that any child born in the country, regardless of the parents' citizenship, automatically has the right to apply for a U.S. passport once of age. But for how much longer?

Senior Republicans in both houses of the Congress have backed their party's push to revise the 14th Amendment, which legalized birthright citizenship back in 1868. The first hearings on the issue are scheduled for September or October, when Congress reconvenes after the summer recess.

Senate Republicans believe that the amendment is allowing for an "invasion by birth canal." Children "arriving" in America via this "canal" are referred to as "anchor babies," who make it easier for their non-citizen parents to obtain legal residency and eventually citizenship.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has calculated that over 450,000 children of illegal immigrants "steal" U.S. citizenship every year, adding to the burden on U.S. taxpayers.

"People come here to have babies," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said. "They come here to drop a child. It's called 'drop and leave.' That shouldn't be the case. That attracts people here for all the wrong reasons."

But amending the U.S. Constitution is no simple matter. America's founding fathers were wise and had no illusions about the unruly masses. They protected their laws by double and triple lock to prevent voters from making impulsive and ill-advised decisions about the country's fundamental laws under the influence of heated rhetoric, leaving future generations to regret it.

Adding, revising or repealing an amendment requires two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the states to approve. The U.S. Constitution will turn 223 this September, and around 10,000 amendments have been proposed over that time; yet, only 27 eventually passed, while six more still have not been ratified by the states. Most of the amendments concern people's rights and liberties, or the election and terms of the president and members of Congress.

The United States started "closing the door" for the first time in 1882, when it restricted Chinese immigration. Since 1917, immigrants have been required to know rudimentary English; in 1920, immigration quotas were introduced; in 1924, all immigrants were required to have visas issued by a U.S. consulate.

The last time U.S. lawmakers dealt with immigration was in 1965, when they passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, which set quotas for the eastern and western hemispheres rather than for specific countries.

Whether the Republican-backed amendment will pass is unclear. It has as many opponents as supporters. Yet, the numbers of supporters have been growing lately due to the prolonged recession. America's attitude toward immigrants is changing. This nation of immigrants is beginning to show signs of moving toward the internal passport system we have in Russia. In Arizona and Virginia, police officers now can check the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally, even if they have not committed a crime -- something that was unheard-of until now. Admittedly, in Arizona this law is pending a court decision on its constitutionality.

All Americans used to see the logic behind the practice that most U.S. states still abide by. Why check people's papers if they have not committed a crime? Indeed, what right do law enforcement officers have to do so, if the country is not in a state of emergency or at war?

But the gloomy public sentiment is playing into the Republicans' hands. Congress is preparing for a big election in November, when all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 37 of the 100 seats in the Senate will be contested. Many Americans now consider President Barack Obama a liar who has failed to keep his campaign promises, while others view the Republicans as their saviors from the Democrats' rule.

Cracking down on illegal immigration is a safe political move, so long as only illegal immigrants are targeted. The children of people with temporary residence or work visas will still enjoy birthright citizenship, or at least this is what the backers of the initiative claim.

Immigrants are no more welcome across the Atlantic. France, the Netherlands and Denmark are also planning to tighten immigration laws and step up deportations of illegal immigrants. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered authorities to deport illegal Roma immigrants to Romania and dismantle their camps. Moreover, immigrants who have obtained French citizenship can now be stripped of their citizenship for breaking the law. France's Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said that this punishment will apply to all felonies.

France immediately came under fire from human rights groups around the world, as if it was the first country in Europe to restrict the freedom of the Roma people. Italy did essentially the same thing two years ago.

Germany also plans to deport 12,000 Roma people to Kosovo over the next one or two years. They came in 1999 after fleeing the bombing in Yugoslavia and the Kosovo war. Their children, who have grown up since then, do not even speak Serbian or Albanian, only German.

The municipal government in Copenhagen is also determined to expel hundreds of Roma from Eastern Europe. Belgium is also planning a "Gypsy purge". So France is not the first or only European country to crack down on the local gitanes.

In fact, few are aware that France is the only European country where jus soli in its pure form is still the law of the land. Ireland abolished it in 2005. To be eligible for birthright citizenship in an EU country now, one needs to have at least one parent who is a citizen, or to have lived in the country for at least eight years (Germany). Other countries require that a person has relatives who are citizens. All European nations have made the requirements for citizenship stricter.








 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
citizenship

Citizenship: A Bill in Congress Redefines

A Birthright? Maybe Not.


George Will
Sunday, March 28, 2010



WASHINGTON -- A simple reform would drain some scalding steam from immigration arguments that may soon again be at a roiling boil. It would bring the interpretation of the 14th Amendment into conformity with what the authors of its text intended, and with common sense, thereby removing an incentive for illegal immigration.

To end the practice of "birthright citizenship," all that is required is to correct the misinterpretation of that amendment's first sentence: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." From these words has flowed the practice of conferring citizenship on children born here to illegal immigrants.

A parent from a poor country, writes professor Lino Graglia of the University of Texas law school, "can hardly do more for a child than make him or her an American citizen, entitled to all the advantages of the American welfare state." Therefore, "It is difficult to imagine a more irrational and self-defeating legal system than one which makes unauthorized entry into this country a criminal offense and simultaneously provides perhaps the greatest possible inducement to illegal entry."

Writing in the Texas Review of Law and Politics, Graglia says this irrationality is rooted in a misunderstanding of the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." What was this intended or understood to mean by those who wrote it in 1866 and ratified it in 1868? The authors and ratifiers could not have intended birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants because in 1868 there were and never had been any illegal immigrants because no law ever had restricted immigration.

If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration -- and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration -- is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 begins with language from which the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause is derived: "All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States." (Emphasis added.) The explicit exclusion of Indians from birthright citizenship was not repeated in the 14th Amendment because it was considered unnecessary. Although Indians were at least partially subject to U.S. jurisdiction, they owed allegiance to their tribes, not the United States. This reasoning -- divided allegiance -- applies equally to exclude the children of resident aliens, legal as well as illegal, from birthright citizenship. Indeed, today's regulations issued by the departments of Homeland Security and Justice stipulate:

"A person born in the United States to a foreign diplomatic officer accredited to the United States, as a matter of international law, is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. That person is not a United States citizen under the 14th Amendment."

Sen. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois was, Graglia writes, one of two "principal authors of the citizenship clauses in 1866 act and the 14th Amendment." He said that "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States" meant subject to its "complete" jurisdiction, meaning "not owing allegiance to anybody else." Hence children whose Indian parents had tribal allegiances were excluded from birthright citizenship.

Appropriately, in 1884 the Supreme Court held that children born to Indian parents were not born "subject to" U.S. jurisdiction because, among other reasons, the person so born could not change his status by his "own will without the action or assent of the United States." And "no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent." Graglia says this decision "seemed to establish" that U.S. citizenship is "a consensual relation, requiring the consent of the United States." So: "This would clearly settle the question of birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens. There cannot be a more total or forceful denial of consent to a person's citizenship than to make the source of that person's presence in the nation illegal."

Congress has heard testimony estimating that more than two-thirds of all births in Los Angeles public hospitals, and more than half of all births in that city, and nearly 10 percent of all births in the nation in recent years, have been to illegal immigrant mothers. Graglia seems to establish that there is no constitutional impediment to Congress ending the granting of birthright citizenship to persons whose presence here is "not only without the government's consent but in violation of its law."









 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
citizenship