In Robert Heinlein’s classic Starship Troopers, citizenship and voting rights are not a given. Citizenship must be earned, through Federal Service (military service is one of, but not the only way, to earn full citizenship). Heinlein’s point, explicitly reiterated in the novel, is that nothing of value is free. For something to have real value, it must be earned.
Citizenship, most of all.
So, why do so many Western countries hand out citizenship like throwing lollies at children? Some of them, particularly nasty, ungrateful children. Such as Muslims who grab at citizenship in the US, UK, or Australia, all the while bellowing their hate for their adopted countries.
It’s hard to see how anyone who made the citizenship pledge in good faith could have participated, for instance, in the shameful antiSemitic protests outside the Opera House, hardly 24 hours after the October 7 atrocity and long before any self-defence retaliation from Israel. Or consistently attended any of the mosques where hate-preachers have routinely engaged in racial and religious vilification of Jewish people. Even those marching in favour of the restoration to Palestinians of the land that’s now Israel would have to be simple-minded not to grasp that this would inevitably involve a new holocaust. Yet in a manifest failure of the current process, these sentiments are utterly at odds with the officially declared values inherent in Australian citizenship.
In 2007, the Howard government introduced a citizenship test. Despite the outraged bleating of the multicult, the test is absurdly easy.
On Anzac Day, we remember (a) all Australians who have fought and died in wars, (b) the creation of an independent Australian nation, (c) the arrival of the First Fleet from Great Britain.
Which is correct in Australian law? (a) men and women have equal rights, (b) men have more rights than women, (c) women have more rights than men.
What is Australia’s capital city? (a) Brisbane, (b) Canberra, (c) Perth.
In Australia, the use of violence against a person is (a) acceptable if they are a different religion, (b) acceptable if they have a different opinion, (c) never acceptable and it is against the law.
The last one is particularly pertinent, in the light of a tsunami of violence against Jewish Australians. As such, it should hardly surprise anyone that figures show that fully one-third of applicants fail the test. Even after they are given three attempts to pass, an online practice test and a booklet that literally gives applicants the answers.
Those on humanitarian visas (putative ‘refugees’, for example) have the highest failure rate overall – rather stunning from a group which apparently has, after travelling through other candidate countries, chosen faraway Australia as their preferred new national home. It almost suggests that many ‘asylum seekers’-cum-citizens may value Australia’s generous welfare system more than our values.
We’re seeing the fruits of this pathetically devalued approach to citizenship play out in the streets of Australian cities every week.
At a time when a number of overseas-born Australians of Muslim background had been convicted of terrorism offences, the test was meant to ensure that all migrants understood what was expected of them as Australians. If it ever did weed out people who don’t share our values, it’s certainly not working now, given the scale of ostensibly anti-Israel but effectively anti-Jew protest on our streets. And there’s the real worry that Australian-born descendants of people unwilling to leave hatreds behind are following their parents rather than embracing the values of their homeland.
That includes the swarms who fell over themselves to rush to join the Islamic State. Only for our pathetically weak establishment to welcome them back with open arms, after their head-chopping, slave-taking ‘Caliphate’ collapsed.
Contrast such a citizenship-for-the-asking approach with that of Switzerland.
The sensible Swiss require: 10 years of lawful residence in Switzerland including three of the five years immediately preceding the application. The applicant must be well integrated, be familiar with life in Switzerland, have respect for public order and security and respect the values of the federal constitution. Furthermore, the applicant must be able to communicate, orally and in writing, in one of Switzerland’s national languages.
The applicant must not endanger Switzerland’s interior or exterior security.
All Swiss cantons forbid citizenship to anyone who has claimed welfare for between three and 10 years of applying.
In some municipalities, citizenship can be denied if your neighbours object. In one famous case, a woman born in the Netherlands to Swiss citizens and resident in Switzerland since the age of eight, was denied citizenship.
Because, despite all the ways she is Swiss, [Nancy Holten] – a vegan who is extremely vocal about that life choice – has also stridently opposed one of the most beloved cultural traditions of Gipf-Oberfrick, and of Aargau, and of Switzerland itself: the practice of putting large bells around the necks of cows, for reasons both practical and ceremonial […]
As Tanja Suter of the Swiss People’s Party made clear: Holten’s peers would not grant her citizenship “if she annoys us and doesn’t respect our traditions.” That kind of thing, Urs Treier reiterated, “can cause the community to not want such a person in their midst.”
As it happens, Klaus Schwab, who has lived in Switzerland for much of his life, and has multiple Swiss family members, does not have Swiss citizenship.
Smart bunch, the Swiss. If only Australia would take a leaf from their book.
