Citizenship or legal residence?
John Derbyshire explains the likely decision-making calculus of the average currently-illegal immigrant.
The way the immigration rules are (and, on the Senate plan, will continue to be) structured, citizenship isn’t actually worth a damn unless you just have some irrational, sentimental desire to be an American. It is, in fact, a bit of a nuisance in one respect. Citizens have to do jury duty, but green-card holders don’t. The positive things that citizenship gets you are the right to vote, and the right to hold certain government jobs needing security clearance. Otherwise there isn’t a whole lot of difference between citizenship and green-card status. Both are liable for the same taxes; both have to register for the draft. Since only around half of U.S. citizens bother to vote in national elections, the other half would, for all practical purposes, be better off as green-card holders, in that they’d be excused jury duty. And in fact there is a campaign for giving voting rights to aliens—New York City Council has debated a bill on the subject—so even in the matter of voting, citizenship may not be a benefit for much longer.
Plus, one may wonder just how thoroughly the voter registration bureaucracy would distinguish between citizens and non-citizens in an increasingly immigrant-filled future.
“Otherwise there isn’t a whole lot of difference between citizenship and green-card status.”
I went from green card to citizenship. Big difference. I can leave and enter the country on my own terms — I can stay out longer than a year if I want to. And they can’t deport me either.
Shortz, the question at hand, really, is whether there is a big difference between green card and illegal status. And there is one, a massive one, one much larger than whether a person can stay out of the country for 12 rather than 13 months. All of the practical, day-to-day benefits of citizenship are there, and at bottom what we’re talking about is a legalization of status. It think that by setting upon that one (possibly exaggerated) remark you’re avoiding the central point altogether. Oh, and believe me–if you’re so unwilling to deport someone that you’re willing to simply hand them a green card, what makes you think they’re suddenly going to be in any real danger of being deported later? Get real.
“Shortz, the question at hand, really, is whether there is a big difference between green card and illegal status.”
No doubt that is a big difference. Neither side of this debate thinks otherwise.
“Oh, and believe me–if you’re so unwilling to deport someone that you’re willing to simply hand them a green card, what makes you think they’re suddenly going to be in any real danger of being deported later? Get real.”
Sure. They may do things that make them ineligible for citizenship. And you never know what reactionary laws will get passed, urging deportaion for people for certain violations.
The point is, as a citizen, I have some mastery over the government. As a green card, I’m subject to more of its tyranny.