I began thinking about citizenship a few weeks ago during one of my regular bouts with sleeplessness. What had been and still is bugging me is that it will take me years to earn citizenship in this country. I tried to dream up a way of simplifying the process while also making sure that only people who really wanted to be a citizen could. Here are the results:
- Get rid of the notion that citizenship should be handed out with birth certificates.
- Require thorough education in national, state, and local history as well as explanations on how different the government works at all levels of education.
- Require "national service", to be completed any time after high school. This could be: time in the military or Peace Corps; volunteer work; time as a police officer or firefighter; work in a government job; time in a non-governmental agency, et cetera. The idea behind this being that people would be applying what they learned about the values and social structures of this country in order to prove that this is something they want.
- Building off of #2, have a national test for all those interested in applying for citizenship, available after high school. This works in tandem with national service, this test proves what they learned about the history of the country and their comittment to adding new chapters and passages to that history. (WPI students will be familiar with these two concepts as lehr und kunst, "theory and practice").
- Upon completion of the term of national service and test, the person would be given citizenship and all the rights and privileges thereof.
- People born to citizens could be given the equivilent of green cards to allow them to live, work, and pay taxes here.
- History courses could be taken outside of the regular education system for immigrants who arrive here after they've completed high school in their home country, or for people who decide to get citizenship later in life.
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