Dual nationality

 “I have approved your application for naturalization,” the young Immigration officer said with a huge smile on her face, “but, tell me, why have you waited 25 years to apply for citizenship?” “Why indeed?” I asked myself for the umpteenth time, just as I have asked myself for the past three months since I paid my $710 application fee. The answer is on the face of it simple—so that I can vote in this election, an election I think is critical for democracy. To voice my opposition to lies, fear mongering. Mostly to lies.But it’s also more complex than that and it isn’t just “one” answer, it’s several. And in those answers lies some of my family history, a history of emigration, of looking for a “better” life and defining what that life means. Different things to different members of my family.The first “immigrants” that I am aware of (not counting my great great great grandparents who emigrated from Scotland to Ireland and then back again in the 1600s) were my grandparents. My two grandfathers, one in Scotland, one in England, one the eldest son in his family, one the youngest, had in common that they came from large working class families in Dundee and near Manchester. My father’s father was a ship’s carpenter in Dundee and while my mother’s father was a cotton mill worker from the time he was 10, by the time he was in his middle teens he was a seaman. So they had the sea in common and both travelled the Atlantic to wind up in Quebec City, one to remain a ship’s carpenter and the other to work as a clerk on the growing Canadian railway. But my paternal grandfather’s brothers immigrated to the US, settling in New Jersey where they visited back and forth with my grandfather. My mother’s mother also immigrated to Quebec City in 1906 while her brothers went to New York and, later, Washington State. During WW1, before the US entered the war, three of my great uncles separately traveled to Toronto to enlist in the Canadian Army, fought in Europe and two returned to the US post war while one decided to go to Canada. As a young child living in Montreal, I often went with my parents on road trips to New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and, on one VERY long road trip, to Washington DC. I understood that we were crossing a border, that we would be waved through on the US side but scrutinized closely returning to Canada. “How long have you been away?” Canada Customs would ask. If it was for less than 24 hours we were very restricted on what we were allowed to bring back duty free and, given that goods and, especially, liquor, were so much cheaper than in Canada, many was the time that friends of my parents’ were pulled aside and their bottles confiscated. Or in one instance that my mother happily recounted over her Bridge table, the extra layers of dresses that the ladies were wearing were surrendered. I was often admonished as a small child, as we drew up to the border, not to say anything at all about what was in the car. It’s not that we were bootleggers, there was never more than one bottle of gin or whiskey but still, as this past Tuesday I was asked at my immigration interview whether I had ever lied to a gov’t official those memories of a wide-eyed five year old staring dumbly at the Canada Customs official flitted through my mind. Many years later my sister and brother-in-law immigrated to New York City so that my brother-in-law could take a better-paying job. “The US is the place to be,” my sister would tell my dad when she returned on visits. But while Dad enjoyed visiting them, Canada was his home. And although there was some talk about my moving in with my sister and brother in law after my mother died, I remained in Canada as well. The 1960s and 1970s were a time of turbulence and while our cross-border visits continued, and arguments over the dinner table as to which country was the better place to be in, it was to England that I took myself in my mid 20s (a story for another day.) And it was to Canada, together with my daughter who, while born in London had been registered as a Canadian, I returned three years later. Part of the reason that I returned was because I felt a pull to bring my daughter up as I had been brought up, a Canadian in a country where you weren’t judged by where you had gone to school or your accent. Canada was my home, my story, the story I wanted to share with my daughter, how then would the US story begin and how could I, 43 years later, agree that I would swear an oath of allegiance to the country that had always been just a place where other relatives lived? A fun and exciting place to pop over to. A country of the westerns and tv sitcoms I had grown up with. Magical California. Exciting New York City. The country that, while we had the longest undefended border and it was difficult, almost impossible to tell the difference on first meeting between Canadians and Americans—when I lived in London, people always assumed first that I was “an American”—I knew what the difference was and I knew which country had my heart. And yet, here I am. Is it indeed the vote that finally overcame my 25 year old resistance? As I’ve written this, the other reasons—twice losing my green card and not wanting to pay double fees, not being sure whether I would end up living in another country after R and I retired—these reasons were important in preventing me from applying for naturalization earlier but, yes, it is indeed “the vote” (and the fact that my green card is up for renewal next year) that pushed me into naturalizing. And so the story continues.