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Bernie Moreno, Ohio’s freshman Republican U.S. senator, wants you to be just like him when it comes to citizenship status.
It is not a suggestion from Moreno, not a fervent wish, not a suggestion you can follow or forget.
He wants to change U.S. law to bar hundreds of thousands — or more likely millions — of U.S. citizens from having dual citizenships. Nobody is quite sure how many people in this country fall into that category; the government doesn’t keep track.
That doesn’t matter to Moreno.
Legislation he proposed earlier this month gave people holding passports of two or more countries a year to make up their minds — they could either renounce their foreign citizenship or risk losing their U.S. citizenship.
Moreno’s legislation is the result of his coming to this country from Colombia as a boy; his family settled in Florida. At the age of 18, Moreno, along with his parents and siblings, became U.S. citizens and dropped their Colombian citizenships.
His proposed legislation has a simple lesson for the rest of the U.S.: My way or the highway.
Requests for an interview with the senator went unanswered. But Moreno offered this explanation on his official website:
“One of the greatest honors of my life was when I became an American citizen at 18, the first opportunity I could do so. It was an honor to pledge an Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America and ONLY to the United States of America! Being an American citizen is an honor and a privilege — and if you want to be an American, it’s all or nothing. It’s time to end dual citizenship for good.”
There are plenty of Moreno’s constituents who came to this country many years ago for professional opportunities and decided to stay, becoming naturalized U.S. citizens without giving up citizenship in their countries of origin.
Robert Probst, Dean Emeritus of the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP), is one of them. He is a native of Germany and still holds a German passport, even though he became a naturalized U.S. citizen decades ago.
“I did not leave Europe because I wanted to be a refugee; I came here because I was teaching in Switzerland and I was invited to come to Cincinnati to teach for one year at DAAP,’’ Probst said. His fiancé, now his wife and mother of their children, came as well, although she chose to retain her British citizenship.
“We fell in love with Cincinnati and with America,” Probst said. He was here for many years on a green card, which gives a non-U.S. citizen permission to live and work here indefinitely.
“But becoming a naturalized citizen only made sense,” Probst said. “We did not intend to leave the U.S. This is our home now.”
When he became a U.S. citizen, the government of Germany required him to justify having their passport as well — which he was happy to do, citing family and professional ties to the land of his birth. The German government granted him citizenship.
“I think I have been a very productive citizen of this country,” Probst said. With his own money, he established a scholarship that has put many students through school at DAAP.
“With dual citizenship, I feel like a citizen of the world,’’ Probst said. “I see nothing wrong with that.”
Neither do most Americans.
A YouGov poll conducted after Moreno introduced his legislation showed that 31% of Americans believe people should be required to give up their dual citizenship, while 45% said they should not.
There was a deep partisan divide in the YouGov numbers: 64% of Democrats said people should not be required to give up their dual citizenship while 59% of Republicans said they should.
Maria Schneider, a well-known immigration lawyer with the Cincinnati firm of Musillo Unkenholt, said it’s unlikely Congress would ever pass such a law.
And, she said, if it somehow became law, there would be a figurative stampede to the federal courthouse of people challenging it.
“There is a very long-standing precedent in the U.S. Supreme Court upholding dual citizenship,” Schneider said. “When people are preparing for U.S. citizenship tests, it really doesn’t matter to the U.S. whether you are Canadian or Portuguese.”
Schneider said that, over her years of practice, she has had clients who wanted dual citizenships and many who did not.
“I’ve had clients who had citizenship in three or four countries,” she said.
“Dual citizenship is a very personal decision,’’ Schneider said. “The result of a law like this is that it would be challenged. And the likely result is that it would be struck down as unconstitutional. Simple as that.”
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