Citizenship: The Precious Legacy

Thomas Lifson has a written a very good article, "Citizenship: The Precious Legacy."

Increasingly and dismayingly, citizenship has seemed to become merely an irrevocable green card, a permission to live here with no obligation to learn the common language, serve the commonweal, or behave in a distinctively American mode of civic conduct.

It is time for us to think long and hard once again about what American citizenship really means.

I want America’s door to remain open to immigration. We benefit from it too much to close it in a fit of pique and foreclose the possibility of another Albert Einstein, An Wang, or Carlos Santana coming our way.

But we have to insist that citizenship mean something more than a ticket on the gravy train of welfare benefits and enhanced power for ethnic block politics. Citizenship is precious. It is a gift from our Founding Fathers, who recognized the Divine origins of our rights and staked all on the quest to establish them for posterity. Citizenship is a gift from the warriors who fought to defend us. It is far too precious to offer, willy-nilly, to people who have flouted our laws. More....