Before embarking on a proper discussion of pathways to citizenship, the differences between visitors, citizens, etc., must be clarified. The Introduction’s note on citizenship and residency treated this point briefly, but to reiterate, the congeries of statuses applied to persons standing on a given country’s soil can be consolidated into four broad categories: citizen, legal resident, visitor, and illegal.
Addressing the last first, regardless of the noun used—immigrant, alien, resident—a person here illegally has entered the country through means other than government-sanctioned channels and, definitionally, has no legal standing in the country, neither as a citizen nor guest.
Visitors are foreigners who enter the country legally without expectations of employment, lengthy stays, or attaining citizenship. Families on holiday, vacationers, and those on business trips fall into this category; they have plans neither to tarry nor plant roots.
Legal residents are students on visas, sponsored employees, asylum seekers, and other long-term residents who are, nevertheless, not citizens. Many in this category are actively working toward citizenship, yet many are not, as large numbers of legal residents, especially students, might plan to return to their countries of origin. For those who aspire toward citizenship, legal residency is the pathway thither. Even still, until attaining that goal, legal residents have no claims to the prerogatives of citizenship.
Citizenship is qualified by full-fledged membership in the country. Citizens, either from birth or through the immigration process, are afforded all constituent and concomitant privileges of citizenship, the most salient of which are voting and receiving aid from the government.
It is worth further noting that the category to which one belongs has no reflection on his or her character or worth. A citizen can be just as deplorable as an undocumented immigrant can be upstanding. The nation, however, must look to its citizenry and country the way that good parents look to their families and houses.
Illegal people have entered the house without invitation or notice. Perhaps they came with good intentions, perhaps they did not know where to knock and came around the back fence, but there is also a chance that they have come as thieves, or worse. Visitors are dinner guests. Their presence is welcomed, but they were not invited to spend the week.
Legal residents are second cousins who come to spend the summer. They are quartered in the guest room and allowed to put their personal touch to it. They help with the dishes and cover their fair share of the grocery bills; notwithstanding, they are not members of the household. They do not get to excessively rearrange the furniture to accommodate their preferences. The house is not theirs to influence; in the same vein, leaky ceilings and moribund appliances are not their burdens to bear.
Citizens are the family, and the nation is their house. Each member of the family is mutually obliged to care for the house, guard it from malefactors, and see to its prosperity. As they are the ones who live there, they determine its fate.
The final point that needs consideration, or rather reiteration, is that the pathway to citizenship is through legal, long-term residency. It is the bridge between foreigner and citizen. Even though some non-citizens might spend many months or longer in the country, until they become citizens, there is a marked distinction between the two. Such is only appropriate, as the government’s first duty it toward its citizens—those who are vested in the country, contributory thereto, and inextricably bound to its fate.
