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One of the most effective ways of
determining these matters is to note carefully who goes into
which queue/line when Caribbean-originated airline flights
arrive at Miami International, New York’s John F. Kennedy
and Boston’s Logan airports.
In recent years there have been murmurings in a number of
Caribbean jurisdictions, but somehow there appears always to
have been some accommodation and the initial complaints
would simmer and then disappear from public print, because
so often even the complainant has his ‘cloven hoof’.
The resumed debate in Basseterre, highlighted today
(Thursday) in a BBC-Caribbean report, is said to have begun
with a query of how a Kittitian-born senior opposition
member of parliament came to hold US citizenship, but the
report noted that the debate “has escalated to include MPs
from both the ruling St. Kitts Nevis Labour Party and
opposition People’s Action Movement.”
It went on to quote the country’s
former Attorney General and United Nations Ambassador Delano
Bart as having explained that the constitution was very
clear about the criteria of citizenship, which MPs must
fulfill before they could be elected.
“If you are a citizen of another country but are also a
citizen of St. Kitts, one looks to see how you became a
citizen of that country, for instance if your parents were
born there, then that’s a matter of the operation of the
law. What the law prohibits would be citizenship which was
acquired as a consequence of your own acts, this is
interpreted to mean that you swore allegiance to a foreign
power, government and state.”
It is unknown what more Mr. Bart might have told the BBC,
but, clearly, the point of view attributed to him addresses
just a part of the citizenship difficulties confronting
high-placed officials who have independently assumed
citizenship of another country, most times the USA. the
United Kingdom and Canada.
It has been my privilege on a few occasions to sit in
among guests at swearing-in ceremonies of immigrants from
the Caribbean and all across the world being accorded their
precious American citizenship. Without fail, every time,
with hands over hearts, they all pledge the following:
“I hereby declare, on oath, that I
absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance
and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or
sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a
subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the
Constitution and laws of the United States of America
against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear
true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms
on behalf of the United States when required by law; that I
will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the
United States when required by the law; that I will perform
work of national importance under civilian direction when
required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely
without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so
help me God. In acknowledgment whereof I have hereunto
affixed my signature.”
Latterly, there has been some adjustment which relaxes
the rigidity of the section about “bearing arms on behalf of
the United States”, a ridiculous requirement for, say, my
mother (nearing 98) who took the oath and became a citizen
when in her 80s.
In light of the Oath, which is very clear and specific,
and mandatory for all new naturalized Americans, the major
difficulty which dual-citizen Kittitians (and others highly
placed in Caribbean officialdom) would seem to be facing is
not so much that “they swore allegiance to a foreign power,
government or state”, but that they at the same time
consciously, deliberately and explicitly renounced their
former citizenship.
Now, if those members of parliament and/or of government
in St. Kitts and Nevis who are ‘dual’ were to allow
themselves to be prodded by the current controversy into
renouncing American, or whatever other citizenship they
hold, could it be assumed that they would automatically
revert to the original citizenship which they had previously
renounced, or would they be required to file an application
formally requesting that the status be restored?
The framers of national constitutions in the
English-speaking Caribbean (and these instruments, coming
out of London as they did, are very similar, not identical)
had contemplated the possibility of some members of their
populations wanting at some point in time to denounce their
citizenship in preference to status elsewhere. So they
pronounce on who is a citizen, who can become a citizen; and
how citizenship could be renounced, or nullified or
withdrawn.
The constitutions of Barbados and Guyana (perhaps the
others as well) reserve to parliament the prerogative of
making provision for citizenship deprivation but only among
those granted status within a special category.
On the matter of renunciation, Barbados says clearly:
“Any citizen of Barbados who has attained the age of 18
years and who also is a citizen of any other country, or
intends to become a citizen or national of any other
country, shall be entitled to renounce his citizenship of
Barbados by a declaration made and registered in such manner
as may be prescribed.” This suggests a voluntary action,
with no official compulsion.
Guyana does not pronounce on
individual renunciation, and, following the establishment of
the republic, the power of deprivation of citizenship
resides with the president, but is discretionary.
The relevant section of the constitution states: “If the
president is satisfied that any citizen of Guyana has at any
time after 25th May, 1966, acquired by registration,
naturalization or other voluntary and formal act (other than
marriage) the citizenship of any country other than Guyana,
the President may by order deprive that person of his
citizenship”
However, both constitutions are emphatic on the
exclusionary effect of foreign citizenship on a Barbadian or
Guyanese eligibility for membership of the House of Assembly
and Senate, in the case of Barbados and the National
Assembly, in the case of Guyana.
There is no difference in the manner of expression in the
two documents:
Barbados – “No person shall be qualified to be elected as
a member of the House of Assembly who is, by virtue of his
own act, under any acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience
or adherence to a foreign Power or State“; and
“No person shall be qualified to be
appointed as a Senator who is, by virtue of his own act,
under any acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or
adherence to a foreign Power or State”; and
Guyana – “No person shall be qualified for election as a
member of the National Assembly who is, by virtue of his own
act, under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience or
adherence to a foreign power or state.”
What
has now bubbled up in St. Kitts and Nevis will put some
glare on practices in both the Region and the USA where
thousands of dual-citizen travelers have valid (and
periodically renewed or re-issued) passports from both
jurisdictions.
The Caribbean governments do not appear to have a
difficulty with that: Their people are their people are
their people. Full stop. And with regard to the USA, the
authorities are well aware of the situation but have decided
against punitive measures, except when individuals become
too flagrant in their duality.
Some travelers at time tell of brief periods of
discomfort on re-entering the USA when the immigration
officers, after asking their departure dates, search the
passports and could find no entry stamp for Barbados,
Jamaica or wherever… but then smile knowingly, apply the
re-entry stamp and let them through.
And maybe that is the course which St. Kitts and Nevis
will likely adopt…. the path of least difficulty; which is
to say that the dual citizen never lost his or her original
citizenship despite what might have been sworn in a solemn
US initiation oath; and therefore, once those officials now
being tagged as suspect citizens renounce their foreign
citizenship, their restoration to being fully Kittitian is
simultaneous.
The fact is that except where the issue has been or is
being politicised, none of the Caribbean territories can
afford to penalise their nationals who have assumed
citizenship in the developed western democracies. It is not
in their interest to do so, for such a policy would surely
ostracise an influential diaspora whose annual remittances
are assessed to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars
and who are developing into an increasingly significant
lobby in the local political jurisdictions of their adopted
countries.
In the USA today, changes in the law have rendered
citizenship a sacred right which cannot be taken away, but
the law recognizes the prerogative of deliberate
renunciation, and in such circumstances, it countenances no
reinstatement of citizenship, and that represents a major
legal turnabout by Washington from conditions a half century
ago when rabid anti-communists led by Senator Joseph
McCarthy witch-hunted innocents and were quick to suspect
that un-American activities were occurring behind every
closed door.
American citizenship, up to the late 1970s, was also
taken away for voting in another country’s political
elections, and I think that was the reason for its
withdrawal from Chicago-born Mrs. Janet Jagan, who was later
to become Prime Minister and President of Guyana.
Citizenship was automatically restored to her in 1967, as
was that of many other people who had had theirs withdrawn,
when the Supreme Court with a 5-4 majority, in the case of
Israeli jew Beys Afroyim, determined that an American could
not have citizenship taken away involuntarily for any
reason. Citizenship could only be explicitly renounced,
which was what Mrs. Jagan subsequently did. |
