Naturalization

NATURALIZATION. - It can be considered as the effect of a prior abandonment of the political organism of which a subject was originally a part, and of his consequent insertion into another political body, to whose citizenship he had no original right, deriving either from the ius soli or from the ius sanguinis, which are the two usually recognized titles. Two acts, therefore, combine to compose the figure: the first called expatriation, and the second consisting in an election, from which, through the intervention of the sovereign authority, a new social and political bond derives. After the birth of such a bond the individual is said to be naturalized, that is, received as a member of the State, like the members naturally belonging to it.

Naturalization therefore has a narrower sense than assimilation, since, while the former has the foreigner as its exclusive subject, the latter can have as its subjects citizens pleno-iure, toward whom, insofar as they belong to a different nationality, the public power exercises a special action to unify them with the majority. The two processes, distinct in content, in extent and in effect — the one juridical and the other social — can sometimes coincide in practice, since the foreigner who naturalizes himself is subjected to a slow assimilative action. The problems thus raised must be considered separately.

The insertion of an individual into a political body originally foreign to him can come about through general laws, which contemplate the cases in which the foreigner, without further intervention of the sovereign power, acquires citizenship — such as, for example, annexation, election, the recovery of lost citizenship, the marriage of a foreign woman to a citizen — or through a positive expression of sovereignty or of its delegated organs, bearing particularly upon his person. In law the term naturalization is used solely to signify this latter mode, and naturalization is consequently defined as the juridical institution formed by the norms relating to the cases in which the foreigner acquires citizenship through the special intervention of the powers of the State. The laws concerning the institution vary from country to country, according as they aim either to facilitate the influx of foreign elements, as happened on the American continent to encourage its settlement, or to contain it within certain limits. It should only be noted that some legislations distinguish great naturalization, which together with citizenship confers upon the foreigner all the political and civil rights possessed by citizens by birth, from small naturalization, which joins to citizenship only administrative rights.

The problems that concern Catholic doctrine with regard to naturalization relate both to the faculty of the individual to break the original social bond, in order to adhere to another political organization, and to the powers of the State in his regard. Their solutions can be reduced to three, two extreme and one intermediate. Among the extreme ones, the first is the liberal one, which, resting on the absolute autonomy of the individual, asserts the unconditional right of the citizen to expatriate and denies to the State any power of interference in its exercise, except in cases of supreme emergency. The second, on the other hand, inspired by the dogma of the absolute sovereignty of the State, attributes to it a discretionary power over the citizen, to whom it can always forbid the breaking of the political bond that binds him to it, by denying expatriation. The intermediate solution recognizes in the individual the freedom to change citizenship, but subordinates it to the common good of the society of origin, and tempers the powers of the State with the limits set by the right of the human person. Catholic doctrine finds this last solution conformable to its principles.

The bond, in fact, that unites man to a determined political aggregate is not of a physical order, but essentially moral, since it consists in the adherence of wills to the same collective end, for the attainment of which they accept social collaboration. As such it can therefore be broken by an act of the same will, a concrete manifestation of the more generic right to liberty, applied to the specific object of the choice of a new civil coexistence. Moreover, for the attainment of the ends of life social collaboration is necessary and therefore a political bond, but since these ends can be attained within any aggregate whatsoever, from the higher exigency there does not derive the necessity of belonging to one determined aggregate. Man consequently has the faculty of changing his place of residence and of assuming a new citizenship, after having renounced that which he possessed, if reasons of life or of convenience move him to this choice.

Nevertheless the use of this faculty remains conditioned by the most universal exigencies of the collective good. Man contracts debts toward the collectivity that gave him birth, nourished and educated him, and he has toward it duties not only of affection, but of collaboration and service, to cooperate for its good, defense and prosperity. The necessities of life or personal preferences, which on the theoretical plane legitimize the change of citizenship, on the concrete plane enter into interference with these duties, to the fulfillment of which man is bound, with a limitation of his right of personal liberty.

The care, moreover, that these social obligations be conveniently satisfied belongs to the public authority, guardian and promoter of the common good. Within the exigencies of this good the State has, therefore, the faculty of intervening to regulate the freedom of expatriation, subjecting it to certain conditions or to the prior performance of certain services, without however suppressing it. For the same reason of the protection of the common good, the society into whose midst the foreigner intends to transfer himself has the power to regulate naturalization, but never to force his will by covertly or openly oppressive methods. It must further be revealed how the power of the State finds an insurmountable limit in the original right of the individual to possess a nationality or citizenship, of which he could only be deprived in punishment of a grave and established crime, and never for ideological and political motives. The most recent violations of this sacred right of the person, committed for political reasons, have created a true international problem with the mass of stateless persons, placed almost at the margins of civil life, the study of which occupies the United Nations Organization.

As regards assimilation, which is connected with naturalization, inasmuch as the naturalized foreigner too can be its object, it is not possible to exclude the right of the State to provide for a slow and peaceful absorption of ethnic minorities or of immigrants into the unity of its culture and its traditions. The perfection of the social entity results from the synthesis of partial perfections in being, in acting in order to the end and in attaining it, which will be all the higher the closer is the unity of minds and wills, and this, in turn, will reach a high degree of cohesion if it rests on the same culture and the same traditions. To tend toward its attainment is therefore an end to which the public power may legitimately direct its provisions, provided that it does not overstep the bounds by suppressing just liberty and the rights of nationality. As St. Thomas already taught, commenting on the text of Aristotle's Politics, "the State must be composed of one single people, since one single people has the same customs and the same habits, which foster friendship among citizens, because of the similarity that reigns among them: States composed of different peoples were destroyed, because of the internal dissensions stirred up by the diversity of customs, for one part, moved by hatred against the other, ranged itself in favor of the enemies" (Comm. in Polit., III, 3).

Antonio Messineo