Becoming an American

I never brought my green card around with me except when traveling for departure and reentry – too worried that I’d lose it (I used to lose wallets with dismaying regularity for a bit there). Congratulations. It sounds as though it was a perfectly lovely experience. The one bit that I found unfortunate was the Q&A on US history and politics that you had to learn, where “states’ rights” is an acceptable answer to the question of what caused the civil war.

It might be different for green card holders; I have only ever entered the US as a visitor. But I frequently pass through immigration in the UK and the US, and there is no doubt that the UK is much worse.

Don’t darken our door again!

As a Madison native who now is a British subject living near Macclesfield, congratulations! The US –> UK version is much less traumatic though still annoying at times. The ceremony was odd. Swearing an oath of allegiance to Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was odd. And her representative was the Lord Lieutenant of Cheshire, a very tall polished man. He admonished us to be British and (I’m not kidding) to not steal things. OTOH, many local public service providers used it as an opportunity to meet and greet and sign people up for voting, smoke detectors, etc. Having two passports is delightful though! Short line both ways across the Atlantic . . .

Well, congrats. Truthfully, there are a lot of other countries I would rather be a citizen of (one of which is the UK — and by extension the EU — and so I am), but I happened to be born there, and that blue passport is pretty handy at US airports. And, as it turns out, I’ll be heading back, to Vermont, for a long stay in the company of a very nice woman, so it’ll be handy for work purposes. Otherwise, meh. God save the Queen!

Still, welcome to the club.

(And Jonathan Cook@7, my oath was taken at Oxford, and it was exactly like that — including a nice portrait of HM overseeing the ceremony. There were exactly two Americans in a multicoloured sea of 100 or more people from over a dozen different countries. And we had tea and cakes. I’d memorised the first verse of ‘God Save the Queen’, and sang it reasonably well, I think. And, yes, one winds up knowing — at least for awhile, until memory fails — far more about the country than 99.9% of the natives — but, of course, immigrants are the cause of all our problems, as any Daily Mail reader knows.)

My mother was Irish and became an American citizen only with reluctance.

One of my student’s became a citizen last week. Our class clapped when he returned.

Madison is awesome. Do you ever go to Chicago? When I lived in IL, I enjoyed my trips over the border in the land of cheeseheads and Packer fans. We loved camping on Rock Island up past Door County.

Congratulations!

My wife almost never carries her greencard. This makes me nervous, as officially it’s supposed to be carried at all times, and I have fears of immigration holds if anything unusual were to happen, though I suspect that with a valid US driver’s license and a middle-class European appearance she’ll mostly be okay.

Neil at 3- that’s interesting. I’ve been to the UK only twice, but both times were fast, easy, and friendly at passport control- generally more friendly than returning to the US as a citizen.

Niall at 8- that’s interesting, too, as becoming a high official for a different country is one of the few grounds for removing U.S. citizenship from a naturalized citizen. (This was an issue w/ Valdas Adamkus, former president of Lithuania, who was a naturalized US citizen. He renounced his US citizenship before running [that’s also actually pretty hard to do], but likely would have been stripped of it upon election, anyway.)

And congratulations, Harry. Keep the certificate of naturalization in a safe place, and apply for a US passport ASAP (but keep the British one up to date, too.)

Congratulations. I am sorry about our immigration system (mine and yours both, now).

Ah, now, Harry, what’s 800 years of oppression between friends?

Welcome! It’s nice that you had a courthouse ceremony; in my experience those often end up being the most meaningful, in part because it’s generally perceived as a happy change of routine for the justices.

Here in the big city they usually only assign you to a courthouse ceremony if you are changing your name; I assume you were not doing that, but Milwaukee is of course much smaller.

It sounds like you missed out the video with Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” as a soundtrack — be grateful for that, although tbh some of the American-landscape-and-people images are gorgeous and stirring, it’s the song that grates.

I moved to the US from the UK as a student and ended up staying for many years during which I became a US citizen. Now that I have returned to the UK, I find that my US citizenship is a huge liability. The US and Eritrea are the only two countries in the world practicing citizenship taxation. I usually don’t pay any actual tax to the US but I do have to file a huge stack of US tax forms which even with my math PhD are hard to understand. Others have to pay specialists thousands to complete these useless forms. Now thanks FATCA, banks are closing US person accounts so soon I’ll need to go off to the US embassy to rid myself of this burden just to survive. US citizenship is great if you live in the US but the worst citizenship to have if you don’t. Look before you leap.

I find the concept of someone left-leaning identifying as English and not British weird – but that doubtless reflects my Anglo-Welsh-Jewish heritage (with “English” consisting of bigots and “British” consisting of the people whose culture I share), and is an argument I’ve had many times and will again…

TheSophist: you don’t actually need to give up your UK passport to accept US citizenship these days (it may have done in the past, if so I’m not sure when it ended).

Maaaaannnn there’s a joke about terrible food in there somewhere.

Except for cheese!

I suspect my experiences reflects the general crackdown on academic visitors to the UK. If I simply lied aand said I was a tourist, my Australian passport would have me waved through. As it, I am grilled every time and have been taken for further questioning twice. Perhaps they suspect me of looting the store of British knowledge.

I find the concept of someone left-leaning identifying as English and not British weird

I liked Billy Bragg’s effort to make it non-weird.

This is semi-statutory, in that membership in these groups can be grounds for being inadmissable

I vaguely figured it was something like this — it was just extremely strange to see membership in a CP effectively equated with being a Nazi or a fascist party member. The former seemed just too… normal.

This fits with my experience insofar as it seemed to me the people got nicer as you moved through the process. In the early application stages, it was like dealing with morose alien robots who’d just as soon lock you up as say hello. By the end, it was the nicest people in the world. And Faneuil Hall was a pretty great location for the ceremony.

haven’t made it to naturalization, but going through the greencard process, this was 100% my experience, too. Interesting.
I’ve also found, though, that the folks at the border have been getting nicer since about 2007/2008. Before that it felt like being frisked by prison guards, now I have pleasant chats (frequently about how horrible Obama is, but hey, progress…)

Judas!

Congratulations.

As a resident alien with a UK passport living in the Great South West (Tucson AZ), I never leave home without my green card. Checkpoints everywhere, staffed by bored but heavily armed Border Patrol. Do not piss these guys off.

For other ex-pats/emigrants who don’t want to naturalize, don’t exceed the speed limit by more than 20mph. Don’t get caught with a blunt, don’t get charged with any one of thousands of petty offenses that are nevertheless counted as felonies. You see, a felony can be grounds for deportation. At a minimum, you’ll be paying a lawyer for some fancy footwork.

I’m on my third green card, but it’s my last. I’m finally going for citizenship.

Fwiw, my relevant experience is as an American who lived in Canada (on student visas) for several years in the 80s and 90s. I found that Canadian Customs almost always lived up to the cliche of the polite Canadian. (There was a very noticeable contrast with American Customs.) Canadian immigration, by contrast, ranged from supercilious to outright shitheads. My hypothesis about this is that Customs agents are looking for contraband in your stuff; but Immigration officials are required to treat you as potential contraband. Immigration control is just inherently dehumanizing. As you approach citizenship, you approach human status.

Aside from that, congratulations I guess?

Cranky Observer@20: “= = = I’ll never feel American, I am pretty sure of that. But I don’t feel British either; I identify as English, and Wisconsinite. = = =

Sounds as if you been thoroughly US-ized then ;-)”
+
Doug K@22: “I am grateful to America for taking us in, but these Americans are crazy..”

= got it right.

Welcome — now you, too, (legally) have “a song, to, sing, all over this land.” A lot of work ahead, but it will be fun, too. There is a lot of good cheese everywhere, and beer, beautiful skies and rivers, industrial sublime galore, and so many different kinds of people, all a little crazy, perhaps definitely.

Matt@22 – “This is an under-appreciated reason to naturalize. No one expects to be convicted of a crime that could make them removeable”

Prior to the citizenship interview I obsessed over whether the interviewer might see my drunken and disorderly/public intoxication convictions (2) as fulfilling the “moral turpitude” clause for removal. He didn’t make anything of it – possibly because of my post-rehab existence as an excessively bland silicon valley burgher (i was told that DUI or possession might have been terminal). The naturalization ceremony itself was welcoming and very efficient in all ways. USA USA USA !

Congratulations to Professor Harry, btw.

>Matt @30:

Q. Is it your intention to subvert the Government of the United States by force?

A. Sole purpose of visit.

(Broadcaster Gilbert Harding on Visa application at some point in the 1950s)

Keith writes: All these details will be forgotten when there is a world Government.

I don’t think so: Dublin and Cork have been part of the same country, or at least crushed under the boot of the same colonial oppressor (Hi Harry!), for hundreds of years, but there is no sign that the cultural differences and rivalry between the two. are going away.

Congrats, Harry!

Wow. I guess congratulations are in order, although I have to confess to feeling surprisingly discombobulated to find that the only cousin with whom I feel significant affinity has become an American citizen.
I suppose my discomfiture is mainly to do with how someone whom I’d assumed to be at heart a liberal socialist could willingly sign up to the flagship nation of free market capitalism. I agree things are no better here, but we didn’t have to sign up to being English (and I agree, I feel English rather than British).
But equally important to me is being European, with all the history and culture implied by that. I feel the influence of our grandmother in feeling a weight of history, and the significance that a sense of heritage brings.
Anyway, good luck, and don’t lose touch completely. If you send your current email I will update you on family goings on!

I don’t carry my green card most of the time because, as the person who conducted my interview noted in an unofficial capacity, if you lose your wallet it’s a right royal pain to replace it. I’m also not likely to be travelling to papers-please states any time soon.

From what I can tell, the bureaucracy definitely becomes less hostile and Kafkaesque the closer one gets to naturalization, perhaps because that’s the side that’s more exposed to born-in-the-USA Americans and elected politicians, who are otherwise pretty ignorant of that chunk of government. It’s an industrial process to produce Americans, a bit like the meat industry: the public gets to see the prime cuts, not the slaughterhouses.

I’m nearing the point where my GC is up for renewal, and the cost is designed to nudge people towards citizenship; I’m not ready to make that leap yet, in spite of the pragmatic advantages, in part because of the whole “becoming a [nationality]” thing. Unlike Harry, I feel more British than English, but I feel more northern than both, which is more about allegiance to a sensibility than a state: part of the great continuity that extends to Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor.

My impression of US entry is that the default setting is hostile, but that every now and then there is a big stuffup (like this one, some heads roll, and instructions are sent out to be nice, at least to the kind of people who can make a fuss that will be heard.

Qualified congratulations (take that as you will). Don’t forget to vote.

D^2: Didn’t this used to be a British blog? Chris is now the only regular poster who is English.

The entropy of an isolated system never decreases, but always moves toward dissipation of energy and dispersion of matter. Of course, this results in a lot of new Americans.

Matt writes: Swearing to give up allegiance to a foreign prince or sovereign doesn’t mean you have to give up other citizenship, or do anything in practice.

Eliding the princes and sovereigns, it begins:
“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign state of which I have heretofore been a citizen”

That’s a pretty strong “form of words”, even if it does not formally require me to give up my Irish citizenship.

That’s a pretty strong “form of words”, even if it does not formally require me to give up my Irish citizenship.

Oh, I suppose (though not more than in many other countries), but I’ll admit that it does seem to me that the only real question is “what is the practical effect of saying this?”, and the answer is “you can have US citizenship”, and nothing else. No one will make you do anything else, or feel anything else. Your immortal soul will be fine, and you won’t loose a single right or power if, both in your heart and in your speech, you don’t, in fact, abjure your allegiance to Ireland. In fact, your right to do so would be _better_ protected as a citizen of the US living in the US than they would be as permanent resident. I mean, growing up I used to pledge allegiance to the US flag all the time, but even at the time, I knew that didn’t really mean anything, because it had no legal force. That’s essentially the same here.

Isn’t forcing someone to publicly commit to something in itself an attempt to make them feel something?

Well, I’m not sure I see the “forcing” here. These things are obviously aspirational, as are wedding vows, but if you fail to live up to them, there’s no consequence, and it’s known that there is no consequence, so it can’t plausibly be thought to have anything more than aspirational impact.

I’m pretty sure that even people who think oaths have power over one’s soul think you have to actually mean it when you say it for it to do so- they are not magic words that have power just by being said, as otherwise you could trick people into saying them and then bind them.

As for wedding vows, people who write them themselves of course find them meaningful, but that’s because they wrote them themselves, to express their own views. That’s obviously different from this oath, and this difference is blindingly obvious, so it’s not clear to me how anyone who thinks about it could be confused.

I should add that I’d change the oath if it were up to me. I don’t think that the aspirational content is things we should really aspire to. (And, if I were to become a citizen of a commenwealth country and have to swear allegiance to the Queen, or whatever one says, I’d feel a bit gross about saying such a thing, but not think had any impact.) But it would seem simply silly, a mistake, to let this stop anyone who saw real benefit in becoming a citizen of any particular country.

Thanks, Matt. I agree that it wouldn’t be a good reason to pass up citizenship but I was just surprised to hear that declaring on oath something one doesn’t truly hold doesn’t carry ethical implications. I know wedding vows _may_ be individually drafted but I think the cases are still comparable. One is making a solemn public declaration of one’s attitude to something ([other] partners, states) and while this doesn’t carry legal consequences I think it is possible to do it in good or bad faith, and reasonable to have moral qualms about the latter.