Why Can’t I Sell My Canadian Citizenship?
Treating citizenship as a commodity to be bought and sold would be good business — and might cure us of our pesky nationalisms.
I am a freak of sorts. I hold, am at least eligible to hold, three citizenships. I consider myself Canadian first and foremost — it’s the country where I live and have spent most of my life, but I also possess a UK passport thanks to my father. I am also eligible for US citizenship thanks to the fact that I was born on US soil, where my parents were living as graduate students at the time.
So yes, I am, technically, a citizen (or a de-facto citizen) of three countries. Which is really overkill when I think about it. It’s not like I’m ever going to live in three countries simultaneously. So far I’ve had no cause to take up residency in either the US or the UK, which means that the only advantage of having one of those lovely crimson British passports in my possession is that it gets me through Heathrow Airport slightly quicker. Otherwise, it’s pretty much redundant. As far as passports go, Canadian is one of the best you can have in terms of ease of travel. I am not Jason Bourne. I don’t need a whole bunch of passports.
Citizenship is a strange thing. It’s something that millions people the world over will risk life and limb to obtain in search of a better life, and yet it’s one of the very few…
