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Loyalty of Israeli Citizens Serving in the US Congress

Arkady

President
One of the more common bits of bigotry directed at minorities is the idea that they're not really loyal citizens. That includes anti-semitic implications that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the US, or anti-Catholic implications that Catholics have primary loyalty to the Vatican. I certainly don't want to support that idea. I see nothing at all about being a minority that would undermine a person's claim of loyalty to the US. However, there is a special case of Americans who are actually citizens of more than one country. With them, it's legitimate to ask with which of the countries their primary loyalty lies. That's why I would require all elected officials in our federal government to give up any second citizenship before serving: essentially, to make a choice indicating where their real loyalty lies, before being entrusted to help lead our nation.

There are, unfortunately, a number of US citizens who have divided loyalty. Take Barbara Boxer, for example. She holds dual citizenship with Israel. When people with legally divided loyalty demonstrate a tendency to side with a foreign government's interests ahead of the US's, I don't think it's out of bounds to suggest that their primary loyalty is not with us. Barbara Boxer has introduced a bill that would create a special exception to normal reciprocity rules for foreigners to be able to visit the US without a visa. The rule in every single case, up to this point, is that we won't grant that right to citizens of other countries unless they do the same for our citizens. For example, you can visit the UK without a visa and a Brit can visit the US without a visa, but if some other country requires you to get a visa to go there, then its citizens will be required to get visas to come here. Boxer wants to make Israel the single exception, so that Israelis aren't inconvenienced when coming to the US, but Israel can continue to discriminate on the base of race, religion, and ideology, when allowing American citizens to visit Israel.

A US Senator is pushing for a bill that would put the US in a subservient asymmetrical relationship with a foreign country, and she's actually a citizen of that country. Is it wrong to question her loyalty?
 

RickWA

Snagglesooth
"For example, you can visit the UK without a visa and a Brit can visit the US without a visa, but if some other country requires you to get a visa to go there, then its citizens will be required to get visas to come here. Boxer wants to make Israel the single exception, so that Israelis aren't inconvenienced when coming to the US, but Israel can continue to discriminate on the base of race, religion, and ideology, when allowing American citizens to visit Israel."

I'm not sure I follow you here. I travel to Israel regularly as I have a branch office there. There is no requirement for a visa for Americans to visit Israel.
 

Arkady

President
"For example, you can visit the UK without a visa and a Brit can visit the US without a visa, but if some other country requires you to get a visa to go there, then its citizens will be required to get visas to come here. Boxer wants to make Israel the single exception, so that Israelis aren't inconvenienced when coming to the US, but Israel can continue to discriminate on the base of race, religion, and ideology, when allowing American citizens to visit Israel."

I'm not sure I follow you here. I travel to Israel regularly as I have a branch office there. There is no requirement for a visa for Americans to visit Israel.
Presumably you don't have any Palestinian heritage. Israel has a racist policy on the topic.

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1064.html

So, the lack of reciprocity would only apply to a subset of American citizens. If you had any parents or grandparents who were born or lived in the west Bank or Gaza, Israel could consider you a Palestinian, even if your only legal citizenship were US, and Israel could them apply special conditions for you to enter and leave the country.
 

RickWA

Snagglesooth
Ok, I see - so you are referencing screening upon entry/exit rather than selective requirement/reciprocity of visa documents, because visas are not required for American citizens.

I'm not sure how you broker reciprocity of "security screening" subsequent to actual entry documentation. At that point, you enter the realm of sovereignty issues. I don't think you can ever achieve reciprocity of security policy as one country is functionally in a permanent war zone while the other is not. That's a tough one.
 

Arkady

President
Ok, I see - so you are referencing screening upon entry/exit rather than selective requirement/reciprocity of visa documents, because visas are not required for American citizens.

I'm not sure how you broker reciprocity of "security screening" subsequent to actual entry documentation. At that point, you enter the realm of sovereignty issues. I don't think you can ever achieve reciprocity of security policy as one country is functionally in a permanent war zone while the other is not. That's a tough one.
Lots of countries have ongoing security issues that they could claim required them to discriminate against some US citizens visiting them. I assume that generally, for them, the US simply doesn't extend non-visa entry rights in return. The question is why we'd have a bill that makes a special exception for Israel, all alone among nations. I'm completely open to setting up new rules that get applied generally around the world, according to standards expressed in neutral, substantive ways. I'm not open to special exceptions set up for the exclusive benefit of one country, sponsored by a legislator who owes loyalty to that foreign country.

Here's an Israeli newspaper story on the subject:

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/u-s-visa-waiver-bill-stymied-over-arab-americans-entering-israel-1.515227
 

Friday13

Governor
Why did you not mention Cantor? He also holds dual citizenship...and held an unprecedented private meeting with Bibi the night before Hillary met with him.

Eric stressed that the new Republican majority will serve as a check on the Administration and what has been, up until this point, one party rule in Washington. He made clear that the Republican majority understands the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of each nation is reliant upon the other.

LINK

LINK
 

EatTheRich

President
Not being a citizen of another country isn't one of the constitutional requirements for being elected to Congress. If you think Boxer and others who have dual Israeli-U.S. citizenship shouldn't be serving in Congress, you should try to convince the constituents who elect them.
 

EatTheRich

President
Also, I can't find any confirmation (except on sites such as Stormfront, Daily Paul, etc.) that Boxer or other members of Congress do hold dual citizenship.
 
Presumably you don't have any Palestinian heritage. Israel has a racist policy on the topic.

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1064.html

So, the lack of reciprocity would only apply to a subset of American citizens. If you had any parents or grandparents who were born or lived in the west Bank or Gaza, Israel could consider you a Palestinian, even if your only legal citizenship were US, and Israel could them apply special conditions for you to enter and leave the country.

Ark - so to sum up, you're pissed because israel requires entry visas for visitors from countries which have vowed to destroy israel? THATS your evidence that Barbara Boxer is working on behalf of the Israel's interests?

Try this thought experiment - take a poll of the entire US senate, and tell me which senators think israel is wrong to have this policy.
 

EatTheRich

President
The sites I have been able to find saying that Boxer and Cantor have dual citizenship list all Jews in Congress as having dual citizenship--which carries precisely the "anti-Semitic implications that American Jews are more loyal to Israel." If you can find a credible source showing that Boxer or Cantor is an Israeli citizen, I apologize and grant your right to make these insinuations; but I'd again point out that they are elected, responsible to their constituencies, and I suggest that they should be judged based on their political platforms.
 

Arkady

President
Ark - so to sum up, you're pissed because israel requires entry visas for visitors from countries which have vowed to destroy israel? THATS your evidence that Barbara Boxer is working on behalf of the Israel's interests?

Try this thought experiment - take a poll of the entire US senate, and tell me which senators think israel is wrong to have this policy.
No. Your reading comprehension needs work. Try again. We're talking about AMERICAN CITIZENS here, not people from countries that have viewed to destroy Israel.
 

Arkady

President
Also, I can't find any confirmation (except on sites such as Stormfront, Daily Paul, etc.) that Boxer or other members of Congress do hold dual citizenship.
I found references to her having dual citizenship in dozens of places online, many of which had no clear anti-Semitic flavor. However, I just searched again and could find no official-looking confirmations, so I'll retract that point. I do, however, think there should a rule requiring dual citizens to give up other alternative citizenships to serve in Congress. And I say that as a former dual citizen myself.
 

Arkady

President
The sites I have been able to find saying that Boxer and Cantor have dual citizenship list all Jews in Congress as having dual citizenship--which carries precisely the "anti-Semitic implications that American Jews are more loyal to Israel." If you can find a credible source showing that Boxer or Cantor is an Israeli citizen, I apologize and grant your right to make these insinuations; but I'd again point out that they are elected, responsible to their constituencies, and I suggest that they should be judged based on their political platforms.
If it turns out to be anti semitic disinformation, I'm going to be embarrassed to have passed it along. I took it from a site with no clear anti-Semitic flavor, but they may ultimately have been passing it along from an anti-Semitic site. I'll see if I can find something better.
 

Arkady

President
Yeah, I'm definitely retracting it. The site I first found the "fact" on presented it with no anti-Semitic flavor, in the context of discussing actual dual citizenship of Michele Bachmann(Swiss), and also mentioning it in passing in reference to Schwarzenegger (Austrian), both of which I'd seen mentioned in news stories, so it didn't set off my alarms. But the conspicuous absence of any references to Boxer being a dual citizen in any reputable news stories, and the frequency of the claim on disreputable sites suggests there's actually no basis for it. Sorry, group, for passing long bad info. It wasn't done in bad faith.
 

EatTheRich

President
I appreciate your candid follow-up and will assume good faith. I found out about Bachmann's Swiss citizenship (which she has since renounced) in the course of looking into this ... so that's a weird bit of trivia.
 

Days

Commentator
This was the original 14th Amendment, passed in 1812 and ratified in 1815. And published in all the states right up until the Civil War, whereupon it was vanquished from our Constitution.

strange going ons.
 

Zam-Zam

Senator
You start out with this:

One of the more common bits of bigotry directed at minorities is the idea that they're not really loyal citizens.

And this: I certainly don't want to support that idea.


And then go on to say it's okay to do that with Jews. You say they are a 'special case'. You're trying to mitigate, as if you know it's not exactly right.

If you feel that Jews are less likely to be as loyal to this country as those of another ethnicity or faith, just say so.
 

Arkady

President
You start out with this:

One of the more common bits of bigotry directed at minorities is the idea that they're not really loyal citizens.

And this: I certainly don't want to support that idea.


And then go on to say it's okay to do that with Jews. You say they are a 'special case'. You're trying to mitigate, as if you know it's not exactly right.

If you feel that Jews are less likely to be as loyal to this country as those of another ethnicity or faith, just say so.
No, I'm not saying it's OK to do it with Jews. I'm saying it's fair to do so in the context of a supposed DUAL CITIZEN who is sponsoring something that gives her supposed other nation the ability to discriminate against American citizens. The fact that Boxer's Jewish doesn't matter to me at all. I'm an atheist, so I have no horse in that particular race. Her loyalty is no more in question, based on that, than anyone of any other religion. What made me suspicious was my belief (apparently incorrect) that she was a dual citizen and had proposed a bill favoring the country with which her other loyalty lay. She could be a Zoroastrian favoring Iceland, a Wiccan favoring Australia, or an Agnostic favoring Mexico, for all her religion matters to me, in that analysis. What mattered was the dual citizenship claim.
 
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