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Allegiance is a voluntary status, a decision to renounce all allegiance, ties, with the previous country and to give all loyalty to the new country, the US alone and to not look back to the past relationship..

Since the Framers' plan was to create a system of self-government on the basis of the consent of the governed, requiring the citizen's allegiance to be voluntary fits into this design. At the same time, the government gives its consent to admit the citizen into the national body, too. Compliance with the immigration and naturalization laws satisfies the requirements necessary for that consent.

In other words, U.S. citizenship is consensual, not like what we find in British common law, or ascriptive. Ascriptive citizenship is akin to jus soli doctrine, and is premised on the idea of "subjectship," not "citizenship" in the American concept.

In the CIS article I cited above, Jon Feere mentions that the Founders rejected the mediaeval concept of ascriptive "subjectship" in favor of a model of citizenship based on consent.

The liberty sought by the Founders required citizenship, rather than subjectship, as only the former allowed the individual to leave [i.e., to expatriate himself by withdrawing his allegiance to the U.S.] his nation at any time of his choosing — a freedom not possible under British common law.

There really is no idea of what we mean by "citizen" in British common law. Any person born within the realm of the King was a subject of the British Crown. This subject status dates from the date of birth and is absolutely perpetual. It cannot be revoked; one's natural allegiance can never be canceled or transferred to another. (Which is why the British government continued to regard Americans as British subjects well into the 19th century.)

As Blackstone explained, the “natural-born subject of one prince cannot by any act of his own, no, not by swearing allegiance to another, put off or discharge his natural allegiance to the former… and it is unreasonable that, by such voluntary act of his own, he should be able at pleasure to unloose those bands, by which he is connected to his natural prince.” It was this very type of subjugation that the Founders did not want to bring to the new government.

As Peter Schuck and Rogers Smith write:

“[B]irthright citizenship originated as a distinctively feudal status intimately linked to medieval notions of sovereignty, legal personality, and allegiance. At a conceptual level, then, it was fundamentally opposed to the consensual assumptions that guided the political handiwork of 1776 and 1787. In a polity whose chief organizing principle was and is the liberal, individualistic idea of consent, mere birth within a nation’s border seems to be an anomalous, inadequate measure or expression of an individual’s consent to its rule and a decidedly crude indicator of the nation’s consent to the individual’s admission to political membership."

Schuck and Smith argue that "a constitutional commitment to 'citizenship based on mutual consent' is not only in line with the historical development of the United States but that it is also 'constitutionally permissible and democratically legitimate.'"

Dear Tennessee Nana, your own personal experience completely captures the issues involved here:

"I was required to swear and sign a document to renounce my citizenship in New Zealand about a month before the ceremony to become an American citizen..that meant I could no longer use my New Zealand passport, it was null and void, I could no longer vote in new Zealand, I could no longer expect New Zealand to regard me as their responsibility, I now needed a passport to visit New Zealand as I was a foreigner, an alien to that country."

I found your testimony here so deeply moving! Certainly the illegal aliens that have been busting over our borders in recent times do not think in these terms. They aren't coming for citizenship per se; just to "find a better life."

They don't expatriate from, say, Mexico. Neither do they give allegiance to the United States.

If they don't care about giving their consent of allegiance to America, then America should not give its consent to them.

Thank you so very much for your beautiful essay/post!

Since the Framers' plan was to create a system of self-government on the basis of the consent of the governed, requiring the citizen's allegiance to be voluntary fits into this design. At the same time, the government gives its consent to admit the citizen into the national body, too. Compliance with the immigration and naturalization laws satisfies the requirements necessary for that consent.

This concept of consent as you noted in your message is a very significant, and too often overlooked factor in this debate. Again, as you pointed out, Feudalism underpins the British Common law understanding of owing permanent allegiance to the ruler on who's land you are born. The ruler in effect owns you.

This notion is very inconsistent with a nation that is founded on the "consent of the governed". Likewise that "citizens" can be created automatically without the consent of the people of the nation of which they are claimed to be "citizens" is also an affront to the concept of "consent of the governed."

As I have pointed out numerous times, Naturalization and Adoptions are the same legal phenomena, just on different scales. No one would accept the idea that you may use the family name just from being born in the family house, the usage of the family name requires the consent of the members of the family.

If the idea of becoming a member of a family from simply being born on the family land seems ridiculous on the small scale, why isn't it also ridiculous on the larger scale?

Well it is, but some people simply don't want to see it.

Anyways, very good write up from you. One of the best I have seen in a long while.

There really is no idea of what we mean by "citizen" in British common law. Any person born within the realm of the King was a subject of the British Crown.

I wanted to address this point also. Over my years of researching this issue, I had a sudden realization which I think is true, but of which I am not completely certain.

It is regarding the usage of the word "citizen." It is well known now that when Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence (The document which actually created American Citizens) he originally wrote down the word "Subject", and then erased it, and then replacing it with the word "Citizen."

From what I can determine, the word "Citizen" at this time was seldom used, and generally referred to the inhabitants of a city. I note that in all the works of Shakespeare in which it is used, it refers to the inhabitants of a city. I also note that in Blackstone, the word also refers to the inhabitants of a city.

Why would Jefferson not use the word "Subject"? That was a commonly used English word, and everyone understood what it meant. There was no need to replace it with the word "Citizen" unless there was something distinctly different about the status of a "citizen" versus that of a "Subject".

Many people of today would have you believe they were intended to be used interchangeably and that they follow the same legal principles. But the fact that the word was deliberately changed implies that there was some other influence on Jefferson which led him to believe the two words did not have the same meaning, and likewise there was some influence on him to use the word to describe the members of a Nation rather than just the inhabitants of a City.

I believe that Jefferson chose that word because it had been made popular by the writings of Emmerich Vattel.

Les citoyens sont les membres de la societe civile : lies a cette societe par certains devoirs et soumis a son autorite, ils participent avec egalite a ses avantages. Les naturels, ou indigenes, sont ceux qui sont nes dans le pays, de parens citoyens.

"Citizen" was the word Vattel used to describe the members of a Republic that gained it's independence from a Monarchy. Indeed, Vattel seems to be the only writer of that entire era that claimed people had a natural right to declare independence from a Monarchy, and govern themselves.

This is understandable because he is the only widely read writer of that time that did not live under a Monarchy. A King of any country would have considered the notion that you can throw off his rule and form your own government as treasonous and seditious, and so no writer who lived in a Kingdom would dare write such a thing.

Vattel lived in the Swiss Republic. They hadn't had a King for 468 years.

To sum up my point, it is the very substitution of the word "Citizen" for "Subject" that points to it's origin. "Citizen" is the word Vattel used, and since Vattel was Jefferson's influence in writing the Declaration of Independence, Vattel's meaning is therefore implicit in the usage of the word "citizen."

Had we intended to follow English Common law, the word we would be using would be "Subject."