Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals: What Does Citizenship Mean In a Globalized World?
Dear Community,
My dad’s family left France, Norway and Iceland to immigrate to Canada. They opted to move deeper into the territory that one day became North Dakota. They were Canadian, but when the 49th parallel was drawn, they found themselves on the wrong side of the line. They now lived in America and all their descendants were American citizens. Yet, this happened by chance. This is similar to what happened to Mexican families after the Mexican-American War. It is harsh to judge Mexicans as not citizens or bad people, since a majority of the western side of the country was part of Mexico or New Spain at one point. Families ended up on opposite sides of the line. Citizenship can happen by chance. Why do we not talk about the Canadians like we do the Mexicans?
How we define citizenship changes drastically over time. Citizenship is a funny thing because the concept has had different meanings over time from the Greco-Roman cosmopolitan nature, as in citizens of the cosmos (world), to the more modern idea of citizens of a political entity (Abrahamian 2015). During the Revolutionary era, citizenship rights were linked to property and local communities. Citizen rights, such as voting, were given to men of property due to their connection and investment in the local economy through their property. We have come to change this, making people of all races and genders citizens. Corporations were given Fourteenth Amendment citizenship rights through the court case, Pembina Consolidated Mining co. V. Pennsylvania. If corporations can be citizens why can’t other groups of people who want to be citizens be included in discussion of citizenship? After the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), corporations could hold property and exist from Mexico to Canada (Smith 2012). The problem with NAFTA is that it let businesses cross borders, but the laborers could not cross the borders where their jobs were moving to. Why can corporations cross borders and not laboring people? In a globalized world we need to be aware of the changes free trade agreements have brought to our country. We have Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigrants who are in jeopardy, since the repeal of the executive order. We need to voice our concerns for the “Dreamers,” who are as American as you and me, since they came to America by chance or parental action.
We were given rights by the Founding fathers to stand up for what we believe in. The great Declaration of Independence states the Lockean concept that “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The government protects our natural rights thought the consent of its citizens. We should use those citizen rights to discuss how citizenship is functioning and obtained in our country, remembering we are all humans and citizens of the world first, then defined as citizens of where we live or identify. Citizenship can be arbitrary, so we need to discuss it fairly and openly, without condescending groups of people, who are like us, related to us, or similar to our ancestors. Citizens and wannabe-citizens are people in the end. So please talk to your communities, neighbors, senators and congressmen about how you feel about the “illegal immigrant” children, who are in jeopardy because of DACA’s retraction. Only the legislative branch of the federal government can help the “Dreamers” now, so please talk to your elected officials who represent you.
Here are the emails to the U.S. Senators from New York:
Also, you can petition the government through your First Amendment rights. Here is a link to a current petition grant temporary citizenship to Venezuelan refugees. None exists on the We the People petition site for “Dreamers,” so consider making one to open the discussion on this issue.
Works Cited
Abrahamian, A. (2015). “The Cosmopolites.” Columbia Magazine.
A.K. “TEMPORARY PROTECTED STATUS (TPS) FOR VENEZUELA.” (July 2017). petitions.whitehouse.gov. Retrieved from https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/temporary-protected-status-tps-venezuela-0.
Jefferson, T. (1776). “Declaration of Independence.”
“Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania, 125 U.S. 181 (1888).” (2017). Supreme.justia.com. Retrieved from https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/125/181/case.html.
Smith, P. H. (2012). Talons of the Eagle: Latin America, the United States, and the World. Oxford University Press.