Thursday, February 19, 2015

There is no incentive to falsely take a citizenship oath

Recently in the news is the story that the government intends to appeal the Federal Court ruling that it is unlawful to require people to remove their clothing (in this case, a niqab) before taking a citizenship oath.

Sitting here steeped in white girl cultural hegemony, I tacitly assumed that they wanted people to uncover their faces during the oath for identification or fraud prevention purposes.  But it occurred to me in the shower this morning that no one would cover their face during a citizenship ceremony for nefarious purposes, because there's no incentive to do so - nothing would be gained or achieved by doing so, and it wouldn't change anything.

Let's unpack this.

Scenario: Cindy the New Citizen has gone through the entire immigration process and permanent resident process and citizenship exam and all the hoops and paperwork and everything, and has just received an invitation to attend a citizenship ceremony and take the citizenship oath.  Congratulations, Cindy! But Cindy doesn't attend the ceremony and take the oath.  Instead, Irene the Imposter attends the ceremony, pretending to be Cindy, and takes the oath in her place.

So what would the outcome of this scenario be?

Would Irene become a citizen by taking the oath?  Of course not - it's not a binding magical contract like in Harry Potter!  The record would show that Cindy, who is fully qualified to be a citizen, is now a citizen.  So Cindy would be a citizen and Irene's status would not change. 

This means that Irene has no incentive to impersonate Cindy, because it would have no impact on Irene's status.

But what if it's not Irene whose intentions are nefarious, but rather Cindy?  What if Cindy is trying to get citizenship without being beholden to the oath?  Let's think about this.

Suppose, Cindy breaks her oath and is caught.  When called out on it, she says "Nope, you can't hold me to that!  I didn't take the oath - I sent an imposter on my behalf!"  She's still in trouble, since the content of the oath is, essentially, promising to fulfill your duties as a citizen and obey the law, so she'd be in trouble for being derelict in her duties and/or breaking the law.  And, on top of everything else, she'd also be guilty of fraud! 

This means that Cindy has no incentive to send an imposter on her behalf, because that would only make things worse.

But what if Irene isn't there on Cindy's behalf?  What if she's there without Cindy's knowledge?

I can think of two possible motives for that: either Irene is trying to steal Cindy's identity, or she's trying to inflict citizenship upon Cindy without her knowledge.

If Irene is trying to steal Cindy's identity, she would have had to start long before the citizenship ceremony.  She could only find out about Cindy's citizenship ceremony if she has access to Cindy's mail, in which case she's either successfully stolen her identity, or has access to far more useful things like credit card statements and tax documents.  Going to the ceremony and taking the oath as Cindy will have no impact on the extent of her identity theft.

If Cindy doesn't actually want citizenship and Irene is trying to inflict it upon her without her knowledge, Cindy wouldn't even be having a citizenship ceremony.  There's quite a lot of work to do and steps to take to become a citizen, and if Cindy didn't want it, she could just do nothing. 

There is simply no reason why anyone would falsely take the oath with nefarious intentions, because it would do nothing to help them achieve their nefarious intentions and basically wouldn't be worth their time.  Therefore, there's no reason to fret about being able to see everyone's faces at all times.

1 comment:

laura k said...

Very nice analysis, which confirms my conclusion that the requirement to remove clothing for a citizenship oath is based on Islamophobia and xenophobia, and nothing more.