Earned Citizenship by Michael J. Sullivan

Moreover, many European governments justify the citizenship requirements on the grounds of fairness, because they are not discriminatory and because the demands of the requirements are to immigrants’ individual efforts.

In many Western countries, it has become standard to demand immigrants that earn their right to citizenship by coming to meet a set of citizenship requirements. As a whole, this book provides a nonhumanitarian justification for legalizing unauthorized immigrants based on their contributions to citizens and institutions in their adopted nation. This argument is part of a broader project aimed at reconciling the civic republicanism of the first part of the book with a feminist ethic of care and its emphasis on dependency work. Family immigration policies should be expanded to recognize the importance of caregiving duties performed by family members and fictive kin for dependents. After drawing from the military aspect of the civic republican tradition, the second part of the book considers the civic value of caregiving as a service to citizens and the nation, which merits a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants. The book contends that noncitizens who serve in the military during a period of declared hostilities should be immune from deportation for the rest of their lives. Earned Citizenship first applies the principle of civic membership as reciprocity to support the argument that military service by unauthorized immigrants in particular merits naturalization in the United States, given its strong citizen-soldier tradition. communities as restitution for immigration law violations. residents should be able to earn legalization and a pathway to citizenship through service to citizens in their adopted U.S.

immigration reform debate that advances the proposition that long-term, unauthorized immigrant U.S. Earned Citizenship is an intervention in the U.S.

Earned Citizenship by Michael J. Sullivan