NATURALIZATION. — It may be regarded as the effect of a prior abandonment of the political organism of which an individual originally formed part, and of his consequent incorporation into another political body, to whose citizenship he had no original right deriving either from the ius soli or from the ius sanguinis, the two titles ordinarily recognized. The figure thus comprises two acts: 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 arises. After the birth of such a bond, the individual is said to be naturalized, that is, received as a member of the State, like those naturally belonging to II.
Naturalization therefore has a narrower meaning than assimilation, since, whereas the former has the foreigner as its exclusive subject, the latter may have as its subjects citizens pleno-iure, toward whom, insofar as they belong to a different nationality, the public authority exercises a special action in order to unify them with the majority. The two processes, distinct in content, scope, and effect—one juridical and the other social—may sometimes coincide in practice, since the foreigner who becomes naturalized is subjected to a gradual assimilative process. The problems thus raised must be considered separately.
The incorporation of an individual into a political body originally foreign to him may take place through general laws, which contemplate cases in which the foreigner acquires citizenship without any further intervention by the sovereign authority, such as, for example, annexation, election, recovery of lost citizenship, or the marriage of a foreign woman to a citizen; or through a positive expression of sovereignty or of its delegated organs, specifically concerning his person. In law, the term naturalization is used solely to signify the latter mode, and naturalization is consequently defined as the legal institution formed by the rules governing 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 seek either to facilitate the influx of foreign elements, as occurred on the American continent in order to promote its settlement, or to keep it within certain limits. It should only be noted that some legal systems distinguish great naturalization, which, together with citizenship, grants the foreigner all the political and civil rights possessed by citizens by birth, from minor naturalization, which combines with citizenship only administrative rights.
The problems that concern Catholic doctrine with regard to naturalization relate both to the individual’s power to break the original social bond in order to join another political organization and to the powers of the State in this regard. Their solutions may be reduced to three: two extreme positions and an intermediate one. Of the extreme positions, the first is the liberal one, which, relying on the individual’s absolute autonomy, asserts the citizen’s unconditional right to expatriate himself and denies the State any power to interfere with its exercise, except in cases of supreme emergency. The second, by contrast, inspired by the dogma of the absolute sovereignty of the State, attributes to it discretionary power over the citizen, whom it may always forbid to break the political bond linking him to the State by denying him the right to expatriate himself. The intermediate solution recognizes the individual’s 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 imposed by the rights of the human person. Catholic doctrine finds this last position consistent with its principles.
The bond, in fact, that unites a person to a particular political aggregate is not physical in nature but essentially moral, since it consists in the adherence of wills to the same collective goal, for the attainment of which they accept social cooperation. As such, it may therefore be broken by an act of that same will, a concrete manifestation of the more general right to freedom, applied to the specific matter of choosing a new civil community. Moreover, social cooperation and therefore a political bond are necessary for the attainment of the purposes of life; but since these may be achieved within any political aggregate, the higher requirement does not entail the necessity of belonging to any particular one. Consequently, a person has the power to change his place of residence and assume a new citizenship, after renouncing the one he possesses, if circumstances of life or considerations of expediency move him to make this choice.
Nevertheless, the exercise of this power remains conditioned by the more universal demands of the collective good. A person incurs debts toward the community that gave him birth, nourished and educated him, and owes it duties not only of affection but also of cooperation and service, in order to contribute to its welfare, defense, and prosperity. The necessities of life or personal preferences, which on the theoretical level legitimize a change of citizenship, on the practical level come into conflict with these duties, the fulfillment of which is incumbent upon a person and limits his right to personal freedom.
The responsibility for ensuring that these social obligations are properly fulfilled belongs to the public authority, guardian and promoter of the common good. Within the requirements of this good, the State therefore has the power to intervene in regulating the freedom of expatriation, subjecting it to certain conditions or to the prior performance of certain services, without, however, abolishing II. For the same reason—the protection of the common good—the society into which the foreigner intends to move has the power to regulate naturalization, but never to force his will by covert or overtly oppressive methods. It must further be recognized that the power of the State encounters an insurmountable limit in the individual’s original right to possess a nationality or citizenship, of which he could be deprived only as a punishment for a serious and acknowledged crime, and never for ideological or political reasons. The most recent violations of this sacred right of the person, committed for political reasons, have created a genuine international problem through the mass of stateless persons, placed almost at the margins of civil life; their study occupies the Organization of the United Nations.
As regards assimilation, which is connected with naturalization, since the naturalized foreigner may also be subject to it, it is impossible to deny the right of the State to provide for the slow and peaceful absorption of ethnic minorities or immigrants into the unity of its culture and traditions. The perfection of the social body results from the synthesis of partial perfections in being, in action ordered to an end, and in attaining that end; these will be all the higher the closer is the unity of minds and wills, and this, in turn, will attain a high degree of cohesion if it is founded upon the same culture and the same traditions. To strive for its attainment is therefore an end toward which the public authority may legitimately direct its measures, provided that it does not overstep its bounds by suppressing legitimate freedom and the rights of nationality. As St. Thomas already taught, commenting on the text of Aristotle’s Politics, “the State must be composed of a single people, since a single people has the same customs and usages, which foster friendship among the citizens because of the similarity prevailing among them: States composed of different peoples were destroyed because of internal dissensions aroused by the diversity of customs, since one part, moved by hatred against the other, sided with the enemies” (Comm. in Polit., III, 3).