Introduction
Canada amended its Citizenship Act in 1976 to allow Canadian citizens to retain Their citizenship of any other country in case they had one or take the citizenship of any other country while remaining Canadian citizens. Thus Canadian citizens could have not just dual but multiple citizenships. This was in keeping with the growing acceptance of multiple or dual citizenship throughout the world keeping in mind the increased mobility of the people because of which every country had become a plural society.
This vast movement of people has been accelerated by the dismantling of Soviet Union and ethnic strife in different parts of the world. Then, economic opportunities have increased manifold as globalization has led to the world becoming a huge market place. Big trade alliances such as NAFTA and the European Union have made this more a reality than a vision. It is also easier to maintain ties with more than one country thanks to the availability of cheap and rapid transportation and communication. Today, one out of every hundred persons lives in a country other than his own.
1 This has created multiple allegiances and the need to feel a part of every nation that one feels close to.
One of the earliest countries to recognize this plurality was Britain when it changed its policy of requiring people to renounce their British citizenship if they became naturalized citizens in another country as far back as 1948. It enacted the British Nationality Act under which a British citizen could only lose his citizenship in Britain by an express “declaration of renunciation” because it felt that “many persons of unimpeachable British association because nationalized in a foreign country for purely business reason, and it was not felt justifiable to cause them to lose nationality automatically in such circumstances.”2 The French amended their Civil Code to the same effect in 1973. A Swiss citizen does not lose his citizenship by voluntarily acquiring a second nationality. The new German Constitution grants citizenship by birth to children of parents of other nationality who have been legally resident in Germany for at least eight years. However, they have to make a choice between the two citizenship when they attain the age of twenty-three.3
In 1967, the US Supreme Court recognized that an individual had a constitutional right to retain his American citizenship even when he voted in the election of a foreign country. Today, even accepting a seat in the Parliament of a foreign country does not deprive an individual of his American citizenship. In 1990, the US State Department made a policy statement that a person who naturalized himself in another country must be presumed to have the intention of also retaining his American citizenship unless he made an express declaration to the contrary. In 1995 it was once again circulated to all diplomatic posts that it was “no longer possible to terminate an American’s citizenship without the citizen’s co-operation.”5
Even when a foreign state requires a person to renounce any other citizenship that an individual may possess, the U.S. treats an oath taken to this effect as routine unless an individual expressly declares his intention to renounce his American citizenship. Conversely, although the US oath of allegiance requires renunciation of all other allegiances, US officials routinely advise that this will not result in the loss of earlier allegiances. Mexico has allowed dual citizenship in 1998 and so has Australia in a limited sense.6
The total change of attitude towards dual citizenship has probably taken place because laws have to conform to the “needs of the individuals in an increasingly interconnected world” as was stated in the 1994 Report of the Australian Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee.7 The Preamble of the European Convention of Nationality, 1997 notes “the varied approach of States to the question of multiple nationality” and recognizes that each is free to decide whether or not to allow dual nationality.8 This is to come a long way since 1954 when the International Law Commission recommended to the UN General Assembly that individuals must be required to choose one nationality based on the principle that ‘all persons are entitled to possess one nationality, but one nationality only”9
CITIZENSHIP: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
The question arises what is citizenship and why do people feel such a need to become citizens of various states. Before this question can be answered, it is necessary to trace the political, cultural and emotional history of the concept of citizenship since many of our notions and expectations derive from it. Robert Bothwell and William Kaplan have given us a brief overview of it in “Something of Value? Subjects and Citizens in Canadian History” and “Who Belongs? Changing Concepts of Citizenship and Nationality” respectively.10 It stretches back to the history of ancient Athens and then Rome. Demosthenes in the fourth century B.C. reminded Athenians that their citizenship was considered “so worthy and august” that it had been bestowed restrictively. It existed in a defined territory, was by inheritance or birth, and very occasionally was conferred on worthy aliens. It conferred both privileges and obligations. Citizen were those “who shared in the benefits flowing” from the exercise of power. They were political actors and decision makers and were obliged to contribute to the political community.11
In Rome, citizenship was allied to the idea of service to the state. Even when actual political participation declined, citizenship was such a prized possession that it was restrictively conferred right up to 3rd century AD. It also had a very practical aspect of placing the individual above the “potentially arbitrary local jurisdiction”.12 As the Roman Empire expanded, citizenship was conferred on people outside the walls of Rome to make “new Romans” and get their allegiance. Yet some contemporaries like Tacitus saw this extension of citizenship as a destabilizing factor. However, Rome was keen to extend its boundaries and the late republic and the early empire saw the emergence of two general classes of inhabitants – non-citizens with limited rights and citizens. The break up of the Roman Empire was followed by several centuries of wars, invasions and movements of whole groups of people who subsequently settled in relatively stable territories that emerged as ‘nations’ and the Roman concept of ‘citizen’ disappeared.13
The idea was revived in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to indicate membership in a free town or city. Only citizens could participate fully in all aspects of community life. These free towns and cities developed into nation states and empires of Europe between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and this idea of citizenship went into abeyance to re-emerge at the time of the French and American revolutions. The term citizen came into widespread use during the French Revolution because “Feeling a kinship with, and assuming a succession to the republican tradition of the Greek and Roman city-states, the leaders and supporters of the Revolutionary forces felt that this term, and its connotation in the sense of free and a equal participation in government, seemed best suited to describe how the people felt about their new situation.” 14 The term was adopted in the American constitution for similar reasons.
Kaplan goes on to distinguish between “nationality” that means membership in a nation and “citizenship”, a status that can be legally conferred.15 The word `nation’ not only has political connotations but also ethnological and sociological ones. Before the French and American revolutions, the relationship between the individual and the state was that of a subject owing allegiance to the sovereign. These two revolutions created republics with the underlying Lockean idea of a contractual and consensual relationship between the government and the people. They also introduced the idea that a nation consisted of people bound by a common language and culture – and that such an entity was entitled to be independent and self governing. Hence the terms nation and state became interchangeable and the idea of a ‘national’ and an ‘alien’ developed: “Thus with the rise of the nation state and the emergence of the idea that those who lived within its boundaries were members of an ‘imagined community’ with collective interests grounded in ‘a common heritage, the possession’ of common characteristics and the universalization of political rights, there developed a dichotomy between ‘national’ and alien’ (or ‘foreigner’) The former as citizens, were considered to have the right of residence and political participation within the nation state while the latter could enter only with the permissions of the states which assumed sovereignty over the nation.”16
Therefore, the idea of nationality with legal and political connotations is of modern origin as is the intermingling of terms ‘citizenship’ and ‘nationality’. However, the two terms can describe different statuses. Not all citizens may be nationals of a particular state and not all nationals may be citizens. In International Law, nationality connotes the quality of being permanently within the jurisdiction of a state whether living within or without its territory: “Thus the ‘nationals’ of a state are all those persons, natural or artificial, whom it has the right to protect abroad, with respect to whose conduct abroad it has a right to legislate, and whom it is under a duty to receive back into its territory if a foreign state desires to deport them. Thus more than one state may claim a single individual as a national and a state may well draw distinctions between different categories of its nationals.”17
Citizenship derives from the domestic laws of a state, which can determine who is a citizen and what rights and duties flow from that status Domestic law also determines the rights and obligations of aliens within a state. According to Act 1 of the Hague convention of 1930, “It is for each state to determine under its own laws who are its nationals.”18 It is accepted as an inherent right of sovereignty that a state has the power to confer citizenship and to admit and exclude aliens: “Since the ideal of nationhood first fired the human imagination, a country’s power to decide unilaterally who may enter its domain, under what conditions, and with what legal consequences has been regarded as an essential precondition to its independence and sovereignty.”19 Act. 1 of the Hague convention further provides that “nationality law is recognized by other states in so far as it is consistent with international conventions, international custom and the principles of law generally recognized with regard to nationality.” 20Therefore, the most fundamental underlying legal requirement for an individual to acquire the citizenship of state is the existence of a connection between the individual and the state.
Connection between an Individual and a State
The connection between an individual and a state is established by any one or combination of the following: a) jus soli (b) jus sanguinis (c) marriage (d) incorporation of territory (e) option in special circumstances (f) adoption, legitimation or recognition of paternity (g) naturalization. Of these jus soli, jus sanguinis and naturalization are the most common methods of acquiring citizenship.21
Jus soli is the rule by which citizenship is given on the basis of birth in a particular state, irrespective of the nationality of the parents that may or may not be relevant, depending on the country. The rule does not apply to the children of the diplomatic staff and other like officials.22 Under the rule of jus sanguinis, nationality is acquired by descent wherever the child may be born.23 Naturalization is the process by which a person who was formerly an alien becomes a subject or citizen of the state enjoying all rights, powers privileges and obligations to which national born citizens of that state are entitled: “Naturalization, in its more technical and restricted meaning, as a specific title to nationality, is the admission of an alien to the nationality of a state as a result of a voluntary application or a formal act on his part equivalent to such application and normally at the complete discretion of the state. The connections invariably selected as a basis for individual naturalization are a substantial period of residence, service under the government of the naturalizing state or exceptional public services to the state.”24 Therefore as Kaplan points out, citizenship and nationality are not matters merely of legal definition but also of participation in the community, democracy, access to certain types of employment, residence, landownership, who a people are and what they think their country in all about.25
Issues of Nationality and Citizenship in Canada
In Canada, the issues of nationality and citizenship are particularly vibrant because of several reasons. In a way Canada is going through a process that occurred in India a couple of thousand years ago – people of various races belonging to various regions of the world came to India as traders, conquerors, or for education and made it their home. Similarly people from all over the world go to Canada for work, business, as refugees, or as members of family of people already there and settle down in the country carrying with them diversity of race, religion, customs, language, culture and others. Further, Canada has been gradually moving away from the British connection culminating finally in the Constitution Act of 1982 and in the process have been forced to confront issues of sovereignty and identity that are linked to citizenship. Then, new identities are continuously formed due to globalization that has given each individual access to an unending stream of products, ideas and values breaking barriers of state and citizenship. Also, Canada has always had the concept of two founding races since its inception as a confederation and the Meech Lake Accord brought the simmering issue of the aboriginal peoples to the forefront by attempting to accord Quebec the status of a ‘distinct society’. The threatened break up of Canada has led to thought about what is a community, who owes allegiance to whom and what does the citizenship of Canada mean. It might be recalled that in the last referendum to the Quebec question, it was the 5% vote of the other ethnic communities that played a pivotal role in keeping Canada unified. This brought the naturalized Canadians in the limelight as and showed them to be a crucial instrument in bridging the gulf between the old and the new. For the first time the balance shifted from the trust in the primacy of the two founding elite races to the naturalized citizens who seemed more capable than them of holding Canada together,26
In this context, the official adoption of the policy of multiculturalism in 1971 and several sections in the Charter like. S.27 pertaining to the non-founding peoples, S.25 to aboriginals; and the categories made in the equality provision of S.15 have also heightened awareness among the hitherto less privileged groups and sections of their place and role in Canadian society. It has simultaneously brought to the fore different allegiances, self-interest as individuals and groups, and different concepts citizenship and nationality. All these pose new challenges to the Canadian society and open the field for discussion on what Canadian citizenship means, what distinct Canadian identity and what will be the future shape of the Canadian state.27
Usually citizenship is seen as a legally defined single uniform status that gives an individual official position in a political community. The expectation is that all citizens will be treated equally. The Constitution is supposed to guarantee equal rights to all the citizens but the Canadian constitution like all modern constitutions has as we have seen special categories to accommodate the diverse needs of society. In effect it can lead to the creation of several ‘nations’ within a nation. If distinction is made between citizenship that is a mere legal category and ‘nationhood’ that contains factors of community, allegiance and ethnicity, then Canada, like most other countries is a plural, multinational state. This creates multiple identities and allegiances within a community that can lead to fragmented or hyphenated identities.28
As Cairns points out, there are at least three nations within Canada today displacing the more conventional concept of the two founding races or of ten provinces and ideas of federal and provincial territories.29 These three nations are Quebec, the Aboriginal people and the Rest of Canada but their boundaries are unclear and their confusing allegiances and sense of belonging are directly related to what does Canadian citizenship mean. Quebec with its Francophone majority has long nourished a national identity. The expression of a national identity by the aboriginals is of more recent origin although their history is replete with the discourse of dispossession, subjugation and injustice. The ambitions of these two are either nation creating or nation preserving but for the Rest of Canada, maintaining status quo seems to be enough. Even in this vision, there are ambiguities and imperceptions. For example, if Quebec is equated with Francophone majority, it leaves out French speaking Canadians in the other provinces especially in Ontario and New Brunswick and reduces them to an irrelevant minority. If the Rest of Canada is identified with the English Canada, it leaves out Quebec Anglophones, non-Quebec Francophones and the distinctive society of New Brunswick’s French speaking community. Also, it suggests homogeneity in Anglophone Canada that does not exist now more than ever with source countries from which immigration into Canada takes place having changed.30 Earlier 80% of immigrants were of European heritage. Now over 75% are from Asia, Africa and the Carribbeans, almost half being from Asia. Visible minorities excluding the aboriginal people now form almost 10% of Canada. Most of the immigrants settle in the Metropolitan areas of Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal making them, to use David Cameron’s phrase, riotously multicultural.31 This ethnic transformation is bound to continue and has been remarkable enough to lead to new labels like the third force, visible minorities, allophones, multicultural people and others. The Aboriginal people do not also constitute a single nation. The Constitution Act of 1982 itself identifies three categories Indian, Inuit and Metis. Even the category ‘Indian’ is really only a legal fiction because within it are numerous distinct Aboriginal nations with their own histories and separate community identities. What all of them really is a common history of subordination but not a pan-aboriginal political community.32
Hence Canada presents a typical example of a modern state with ethnic plurality living within the boundaries of a nation state. 33 Each distinct group has not only its own ideas of citizenship and allegiance but also their own separate histories. This is evident from the presentations made before the Jt. Senate and House of Commons Committee in 1980-81. Each “began with a recitation of their members’ arrival in Canada, their contribution to the development of the nation, and the trials and tribulations they endured along the way…In every tale…there are epic heroes, early leaders of settle communities who saved their people from near catastrophe at the hands of ruthless villains – usually bigoted ‘WASPS’ who wanted to preserve the British character of Canada from the onslaught of foreign immigration”.34 Their history focuses past injustices and change of immigration laws. The internment and relocation of Japanese Canadians, the head tax on the Chinese, the interment of Canadians of Ukrainians and Italians origins during the First and Second World Wars, the Komagata Maru and the Sikhs are all remembered and used as tools of ethnic mobilization. Hence Canadian society consists of people who do not share a common historical past. Rather group memories help them to establish their distinct identities.35 As Matt James has pointed out, it has also led to the politics of redressal; the demand that the Canadian government accept its past mistakes and express regret for them. However, according to him, this is not necessarily bad or dangerous and should not be just dismissed as opportunism or rationalized through Trudeau’s words that “we can only be just in our own time”.36 To do so, he argues, is to believe that history has no moral bearing on our present. “The problem is that Canadians wishing to participate on the civic stage are to a significant extent faced with a preexisting allocation of roles according to which members of some groups enjoy a much greater capacity to command civic notice than do others. To the degree that it is through participation in democracy that we shape our futures, this question of civic honor carries an importance that goes far beyond psychological issues of self-esteem.” 37 Citizenship, according to him, provides the basic framework of equality and the democratic rights create a community by providing an instrument of participation in the querying, refining and shaping of rules and norms by which we collectively live. Yet individual citizens can feel intimidated by this civic arena unless they are sure that they command the respect of others and in this the public redressal of past wrongs is of great help.38
Iris Young has criticized the ideal of universal citizenship that gives equal rights and privileges to all because it is neither practically possible to implement nor does it create a just order where society consists of social groups with different life experiences who necessarily therefore, bring different needs and perceptions to the advocacy and analysis of public policy.39 That is what has enhanced the role of the Constitution in the recognition of diversity and inequality through it. The Constitution then becomes a vehicle by which one is accepted or not in society and by which the relative status of a group in relation to others is determined. Therefore the Constitution does not merely hand out abstract rights to the people of Canada but rather defines them according to gender, ethnicity, official-language status and the presence or absence of disabilities by making specific provision for them.40
This creates an awareness that has other consequences. Historic offices of high symbolic value like those of Governors or Lt.Governors are used to remind Canadians of their diversity and provide instruments of its public recognition: Also it then foregrounds the issue of representation of this diversity in different areas.41 As Cairns points out, the police force, for example, often finds its legitimacy challenged if it does not have adequate representation of the minorities. Similarly, the insensitivity of the legislature on certain issues is attributed to its lack of representative ness and leads to proposals like representation for aboriginals or for electoral systems that ensure almost equal representation for males and females. One advocate for special aboriginal electorates for example, described the Parliament as “the exclusive domain of the settlers, a reflection in doubt, of the fact that the electoral system was designed by settlers, for settlers and historically developed to exclude aboriginal people.”42 Similarly, courts are criticized for not having a proportional representation of minorities and so allegedly having a limited understanding of their concerns. Thus a politicized heterogeneity creates problems for a representative system of democratic government where the presumption is that one can speak for many in spite of their diversity.
CITIZENSHIP AND THE CANADIAN SUPREME COURT
Challenges posed by the plurality and diversity of Canadian society are further aggravated by certain decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada. Ordinarily citizenship assumes that people of a political community have shared values and fundamental rights and obligations that bind them together. Usually these fundamental rights and freedoms are accepted as those accorded by the Constitutions but as Robert J. Sharpe has pointed out, the way these have been stated in the Canadian Constitution and elaborated by the courts, it has become difficult to identity them with citizenship.43 In the first fifteen sections of the charter that elaborate the rights, only the democratic right to vote and be a member of the legislature and the mobility rights are given to citizen. The rest use the terms ‘everyone’, ‘every individual’ and ‘any person’ which makes them applicable to all irrespective of whether that person is a citizen or not. Therefore no attempt can be made to identify the status of citizenship with a constitutional core of fundamental rights and privileges or to limit the entitlement of these rights and privileges to citizens.44
For example, S 15 guarantees equality rights to “every individual” irrespective of whether he is a citizen or not. These have been enlarged by the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Andrews vs. Law Society of British Columbia45 thereby significantly constraining the government’s capacity to confer benefits or impose restrictions on the basis of citizenship. Not only had citizenship been eliminated as a prerequisite for asserting a claim to most Charter rights, citizenship itself has been rendered a highly suspect legislative classification.
The issue in the Andrews case was the constitutionality of the British Columbia Barrister and Solicitors Act that required citizenship for entry into the legal profession. The plaintiff satisfied all other requirements for entry into the profession except that he was not a Canadian citizen. He alleged that the citizenship requirement infringed his right to equality guaranteed by S.15 of the Charter. It was argued from the side of the government that the citizenship bar fulfilled three important purposes – ensured familiarity with Canadian institutions and customs, indicated a strong commitment to Canadian society, and was essential as lawyers played an important role in the administration of law and in the Canadian system of democratic government. The Supreme Court felt that while it might be desirable for lawyers to be citizens, the way citizenship was given was not designed to achieve that objective. Citizenship, the Supreme Court felt, provided no assurance of familiarity with Canadian institutions and customs and in any case the knowledge of these was better determined by a test than by mere fact of citizenship. As to commitment to Canada, it was said: “Only those citizens who are not natural born Canadians can be said to have made a conscious choice to establish themselves here permanently and to opt for full participation in the Canadian social process including the right to vote and run for public office. While no doubt most citizens, natural born or otherwise, are committed to Canadian society, citizenship does not ensure that is the case. Conversely, non-citizens may be deeply committee to our country”.46
In R.vs. Oakes, the Supreme Court of Canada set out the basic framework for analyzing whether there was any justification for placing limitations on rights. It said that the initial burden of proving violation of rights rested with the individual asserting a Charter claim.47 As soon as a prime facie violation was proved as happened in the Andrews case, the burden shifts to the party justifying the infringement. The courts, at the justification stage had to consider the collective interest in limiting a right or freedom and weigh that collective interest against the right of the individual. Reconciliation of the collective interest against individual rights was done through “proportionality” review. Was there an objective “of sufficient importance to warrant overriding a constitutionally protected right or freedom?”48 In Oakes, the Supreme Court said that the objective must “relate to concerns which are pressing and substantial in a free and democratic Society”. 49 Next, the court asked, whether there was a rational, non-arbitrary, non-capricious connection between the objective and the law that was challenged. Further was there any other way for the legislative to satisfy the objective so as not to impair the right or freedom at issue or that would have a less impact on the right or freedom than the law under review.50
The Andrews case indicates that respect for human dignity and respect will ordinarily preclude according privileges or imposing restrictions on the basis of the formal status of citizenship. In fact preferences or restrictions based on citizenship were regarded as forms of discrimination based on race, nationality and religion. Even where it was felt legitimate to establish preferences or restrictions on the basis of familiarity with Canadian customs and institutions or commitment to Canada, the formal status of citizenship was found wanting as an indicator of such attributes. Therefore, the only real particular privilege that seems to remain with a citizen is the right to vote or the right to get elected both of which may not be particularly significant for him. The only other privilege that a Canadian citizen would enjoy over others was the protection of the Canadian government in case of any misadventure abroad. Even this is hemmed in by International Law. The International Court of Justice says that for a nation to exercise diplomatic protection, the legal bonds of nationality must reflect a real connection between the state and the individual concerned.
CITIZENSHIP, ALLEGIANCE AND THE STATE
If citizenship in Canada accords no special privileges and the allegiance of the various communities of people also varies in strength, the question arise what kind of a nation state is Canada evolving into. While some commentators have argued that the Canadian state may disintegrate other find the very idea of a nation state anachronistic when we are moving towards the idea of world citizenship.51 On the other side of the spectrum are commentators and writers who are deeply pained at the idea of the weakening of the Canadian state because of fragmentation of identity and loyalty. Dual or multiple citizenships implying several allegiances is an emotive issue. Neil Bisoondnath takes the example of two hundred and fifty young Canadian men of Croatian descent who left Canada to take up arms in defence of Croatia. How, he asks did they define themselves: as Canadians of Croatian descent, or Croatian Canadian or as Croatians of Canadian birth; and which country, he wonders, would they choose to fight for if one day they were forced to make a choice; the land of their birth or that of their parents. And what would one say of a country he further asks that commands such tenuous loyalty from its citizens.52 Further, as Bisoondnath points out, multiculturalism encourages the retention of the past by stressing the differences between groups of people from various ethnic backgrounds rather than emphasizing that Canada was a country with its own ideals. The old hatreds and prejudices were thus passed down from one generation to another and not only led but he feels, “will continue to lead – to suspicion estrangement, vandalism physical attack and death threats.”53
While people took Canadian citizenship for varied reasons, at its best, it should really be because an individual’s loyalty had got committed to Canada over the years. However, as Bisoondnath says, “the diminishing value of Canadian citizenship, the creation of the hyphenated Canadians with divided loyalties, the perception that immigration policy allows the rich to buy their way into the country, the idea that citizenship is a natural right rather than an earned privilege means that Canadian citizenship is frequently seen not as a means of committing oneself to the country but as a way of leaving it with an assurance of safety.”54 A Canadian passport as Bisoondnath points out is an extremely safe one and so for many it merely implies that the individual can return to his homeland with the psychological and emotional comfort that if his plans do not fructify or if his country should become politically instable, he could return to Canada.55
As has been often analyzed, a second or a third passport acts like a glorified travel visa, a license to do business, a stake in a second economy, an escape hatch, and even a status symbol. Citizenship has become a matter of convenience of economic benefits in different parts of the world and ease of travel.56 For many developing countries it is a means of getting a stake in the rich economy of the developed countries. Many countries rely on remittances from countrymen who make decent wages in the West and send cash to their relatives back home. The US faces this problem with regard in particular to the Latin American countries and mexico.57 Several scholars have accepted that dual citizenship will become a norm rather than an exception. Hence, they have tried to explore whether dual or multiple citizenship is only about real estate and opportunity—which some would even argue as opportunism—than about national identity.58 To Pickus, Canada looked “more like an airport than country’ at the time of the transfer of power in Hong Kong because people from there seemed to be using Canada as a security blanket in case China imposed authoritarian rule on their homeland.59 They didn’t particularly want to live in Canada but just wanted it as a backup plan. This kind of an attitude, he felt, could reduce a country to the status of a convenience store for citizenship kits. Or, in the more colorful language of Bisoondnath:”…any country that does not claim the full loyalty of its citizens old or new, any country that counts citizens old or new who treat it as they would a public washroom – that is, as merely a place to run to in an emergency – accepts for itself a severe internal weakening. It is perhaps inevitable that for many newcomers Canada is merely a job. It is desperately sad, though, when, after many years, they see Canada as only that” 60
Conclusion
The truth, probably, lies somewhere between the extreme anxiety about divided loyalties and allegiances exhibited by Bisoondnath and the lofty idealism of being a world citizen. World citizenship will continue to be an elusive dream as long as the economic inequalities remain and systems of government are so diverse and often even antithetical to each other. 61 But the question of divided loyalties is not as difficult to deal with as it would appear at first glance. As Ved Nanda points out “dual nationality is not akin to bigamy. Allegiance is a complex phenomenon because all of us could have multiple loyalties – to family, to community, to temple, to university, to a sports team, and they are not inconsistent with allegiance to a nation.”62 It is always possible to distinguish legislatively between “full citizens” and others reserving for the former only the right to vote and hold elected or high public office. Again, for security or historical reasons, the law may impose certain limitations on occupational rights for example, with regard to joining the armed forces, or holding offices like those of governors, justices or members of legislatives both central and state. Other safeguards can also be taken to protect national interests. The acceptance of dual or multiple citizenship in principle is only recognition of the fact that individuals live with different parts of their being at different places and different time periods simultaneously. They may live physically at one place and emotionally at another, work here and dream of there. Their children may be at a third place. They, as immigrants, may cling to their idea of a culture from back home that may be but frozen in time also eager to take some parts of the new. They may be simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by what they are exposed to in their adopted country. Overcome by nostalgia and national pride they may defend the indefensible both at home and in the new country or condemn the perfectly rational in both. Human loyalties, allegiances and motivations are contradictory and conflicting and dual or multiple citizenship only mirrors the complexity but it should not be difficult to keep within manageable limits with appropriate legislation and firm implementation.63
How the Canadian nation state will develop and what Canadian identity will evolve is as yet to risky to hazard a guess because Canada is still adding new people from new countries to its population and their allegiance to Canada is still getting formed.
Kavita A. Sharma