Is citizenship an act of inclusion or exclusion? According to The Belonging Barometer study, differentiating between “us” and “them” can create a stronger sense of belonging for those within the “us.” But moving closer to one group can create more distance from another, even if it’s not designated as “them.” This tells us, the study says, that “belonging is not just dynamic (always changing) but sometimes also compensatory (e.g., in a life of limited time and energy, an increased investment and experience of belonging in one life setting may mean a decreased sense of belonging in another).“7
Noncitizens don’t just apply for status once and kick up their feet. It takes time and energy. They have to renew green cards and visas, stay on top of work permits, and resubmit biometrics for fingerprints (in case they change?) Art had maintained his green card for something like 45 years. He’d filed the right paperwork, sent in hundreds of dollars every ten years, and dutifully kept the card in his wallet. He paid taxes. Registered for the draft. Avoided moral turpitude. But he never applied for citizenship. When our daughter was born, we started the paperwork to secure dual citizenship for her, but that process halted when COVID started and the Polish consulate shut its doors.
Do I have to explain why a person might want to remain a citizen of his own country even if he’s grown up in another? Art’s mother brought him to Connecticut when he was four years old, after President Carter expanded the Family Reunification Program. They had waited years to be allowed to join Art’s father, who was already working in a tool and die shop in Hartford. Art did not choose to be born in Communist Poland to Polish parents, who would speak their language to him, nor did he choose to switch to American kindergarten, where his teachers and peers taught him a new language. One is his history and culture; the other is his home. Why would a person want to choose? What actually changes with the ritual of citizenship? For Art, the biggest change would be the right to vote, but there was another, more amorphous shift that he hadn’t been willing to make until now.
The Belonging Barometer might be a beautiful metric, but I’m not sure it can explain the reasons that people feel patriotic or not, the reasons that people do or don’t want an official paper to define them, the reasons some wave a new flag with joy and some are content to remain strangers in a strange land.
7 The Belonging Barometer https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/the-belonging-barometer/ p 4
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