Abolish US Citizenship
Except for a small number of diplomatic passports, there is no such thing as an EU passport. In practice, to be a citizen of the European Union means to be a citizen of one of the member states of the EU. It is the EU member states themselves which ultimately determine who is a citizen of the EU. As The Economist put it, “Deciding who is and is not a citizen is a jealously guarded right of EU member states.”
The most rabid Europhiles, of course, would be more than happy to abolish member-level citizenship altogether and have Brussels control it all. Among many Europeans, though, there is a lingering reluctance to hand over powers of naturalization to the central European ruling elite. There is good reason to be cautious. Centralizing the power to grant citizenship has long been important to state building, to consolidating political power, and to erasing allegiance to any political institution except the central state.
This centralization of authority over naturalization has helped expand state coercion through both social and political effects. For example, were the member states of the EU to abandon member-state control over citizenship, being a “citizen of Europe” would soon become far more important in everyday life than being a citizen of, say, Italy or Denmark. Transferring naturalization powers to Brussels would greatly accelerate the Europhile program of creating a European megastate under which places like Italy or Poland or Austria become mere administrative units.
That is, Europe would become like the United States where state power over citizenship is only ostensible and citizenship within any particular member state carries very little psychological or political weight. In modern times, the only passport any American carries is a passport issued solely by the US government.
This is all another way of saying that the Americans foolishly centralized their citizenship under the central state while the Europeans, so far, have been wise enough to resist this. Thanks to this surrender to federal power, US member states must now take orders from the central state on all matters of immigration, naturalization and citizenship. If the federal government decides to naturalize a million violent foreign nationals, all member states have de facto naturalized them as well. No dissent from any state or region will be tolerated.
When Americans finally get serious about reining in federal power—and we clearly aren’t serious about it right now—we should be looking for ways to abolish US citizenship and give naturalization powers back to the member states.
The Early United States
When the American colonies emerged from their war for secession from the British state, the original US Constitution, the so-called Articles of Confederation, did not contain any definition of US citizenship, and the constitution did not empower the US government to define it. Rather, the US member states themselves were in charge of naturalization and citizenship. Nor did this change substantially with the ratification of the new constitution several years later. In his history of US citizenship, Wang Xi sums up the situation:
The u
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
