| "Are you an American citizen?" A good American friend asked me the question some time ago in the middle of a coffee break with friends. When I answered "no" he was shocked - almost stunned. "You've been here 25 years and you’re not a citizen? What! Don't you like us? Too many of the great unwashed on our teeming shores?" He laughed and then asked, "Why?" I wanted to answer him, but at that moment I was at a loss. He and my coffee buddies had taken it for granted, I think, that I was a citizen - for years. I think, too, some of my US friends were hurt - by an implied slight that I never intended. This question of citizenship is not and has never been easy for me. I have two brothers who live in the US. Both see the decision as a slam dunk in favor of citizenship. One brother, in DC, says, "Jeez, Tom, its all upside". My brother in San Jose applied for US citizenship as soon as work and paperwork allowed. I have been here much longer than both of my brothers and have been eligible for citizenship for 23 years. So why am I not an American citizen? I played mind tricks to convince myself becoming an American was not necessary. I lived in Japan. Did that mean I had an obligation to become a Japanese citizen? Would I be Japanese after the swearing ceremony? Would I become a Chinese citizen if I lived there? I looked in the mirror. Irish eyes were smiling back. Thanks be to God. Somehow though America was different, and my reasoning had a shallowness to it that I was ashamed of. It means that I have not voted in 23 years. That is a disgrace. This question of citizenship has cut to the heart of identity. Mine. It unsettles me. I have been avoiding it. I will face it here. My good friend had asked me the citizenship question during a discussion on America and Islam. I am noted for vigorously defending the American position, sometimes countering my US friends as they struggle to be objective and fair. It is a trait of the Americans. They seek compromise and objective understanding. It is to their credit.
But the damn thing is: I am Irish. Have I not given up hearth, home, and craic already? Must I give up that unique and sovereign thing - an official Irish identity? "Breathes there the man/with soul so dead/that never to himself has said/ this is my own, my native land?".
And I will keep my bloody Irish passport thank you very much. Friends say "But Tom you can have two passports. Dual citizenship. So what is the problem?". You can hold two passports - but make sure to remember which country you left under which passport or you will be royally screwed at customs when they find a gap in your visa date stamps. It is said that the law is a teacher. Accepting a new citizenship under the law of my adopted home would legally make me an American. It would not be long, I worry, before I would let go of the last strand of what makes me Irish. My wife, who is American, and therefore blessed with a "whatever floats your boat, man" kind of attitude, cleverly answered my "I am losing my Irishness if I become an American" bleat: "You will always be Irish," she opined, "as long as your lips are moving - which movement in your case, may I say with all due respect, is awesome in its permanence". The real source of the difficulty is that I am sentimental. I think with my heart. Perhaps one day, I imagine, I will go "home" to Ireland. If and when that happens, I feel I would have betrayed the Shegwee by choosing another country's identity. She, Kathleen Ni Houlihan, who has haunted me with her never-ending grip on that part of my heart where cockles are. But…. … America is beautiful. Honorable. Magnamimous. Restless. Deliverer of peoples. Freedom's Athlete. Welcoming of the scattered, tortured, shackled, of other lands. I came here freely. I learnt freedom. Can a good Irishman incorporate these American ideals into his self-understanding? Well of course. Do I need to have a US passport to complete my new self-understanding? As time goes on I begin to feel that the answer is yes. I get goose bumps when I hear "Amhrain na bhFiann" or Yeats "1916" or the GPO proclamation of Irish freedom and just as fully "America the Beautiful", Martin Luther King's "Free at Last " speech, and the beautiful "The Star Spangled Banner". Being an emigrant is like being married. Marriage it is said, only works when each partner gives 100%. I am 100% Irish. If I raise my hand and assent to America's Declaration of Independence and swear fealty to her constitution I am at that moment an American. 100%. And it will not matter in what country I live. I am free. Thomas A. Cahill © tom@moof.com
| 
