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Notes -
The meaning of naturalization in Article I of the US Constitution
The US Constitution provides that Congress has the power "to establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization". The Courts have generally pointed to this as evidence of legislative authority here, going so far as to say "Whatever the procedure authorized by Congress is, it is due process as far as an alien denied entry is concerned".
There is much discussed about what it means and what are the rules around excluding or removing non-citizens, but missing (for me, maybe I'm reading the wrong sources) is the flip side of the question: what does it mean to admit or naturalize one.
Back to Blackstone
Blackstone is usually the baseline for founding-era American legal thought, so let's peruse through his treatise on the matter and "the first and most obvious division of the people is into aliens and natural-born subjects."
Foremost for Blackstone is allegiance (weirdly shortened to ligeance in a few places) -- those born within the realm owe "natural allegiance" immediately on their birth. Indeed, Blackstone doesn't even believe you have the right to renounce this, stating that it is "a debt of gratitude; which cannot be forfeited, cancelled, or altered, by any change of time, place, or circumstance, nor by any thing but the united concurrence of the legislature". Visitors, on the other hand, owe "local allegiance" for so long as they are around and not a moment longer. There is also a middle state, "denizens", akin to a lawful resident, that owes allegiance and is permitted to reside but is not granted the duties of natural born citizens.
The more interesting piece to me is what it means to naturalize. Blackstone here says that parliament gets that power, by which "an alien is put in exactly the same state as if he had been born in the king's ligeance; except only that he is incapable ... of being a member of the privy council, or parliament".
Vattel's Natural Law
Vattel likewise starts with the core distinction between natives and aliens. He surveys though, that England is relatively unique in requiring the consent of the legislature (and not just the ruler) to naturalize. Like Blackstone, he also refers to a half state of those allowed to inhabit but not granted citizenship that he calls "inhabitants".
[ As an aside, Vattel also saw that no citizen with a useful skill be allowed to leave: "Every citizen owes his personal services to his country; and a mechanic, in particular, who has been reared, educated, and instructed in its bosom, cannot lawfully leave it, and carry to a foreign land that industry which he acquired at home, unless his country has no occasion for him, or he cannot there obtain the just fruit of his labour and abilities." -- I didn't set out to read about bars to emigration here but it's interesting that it comes up on a repeated sense. Maybe that's worth another post. ]
Federalist #42
Madison looks more to alignment between the States, looking at the unworkability of individual states both being required to protect the privileges of all Americans. To him, subsuming the authority in the United States was as essential to harmony between the States having a uniform rule of bankruptcy, uniform rules on weights/measures and the like. This flows again from the above -- citizenship is singular and indelible.
My Take
Really for my own curiosity, I think I understand a lot better the intent. On a meta note, I reiterate that it's weird to have so much discourse on exclusion/removal without anyone talking about the inverse operation.
OT side notice:
While I get that Blackstone was an Englishmen, I find it a bit rich that US legal thought should be based on him.
The US was founded by people who defected from what Blackstone would consider their rightful king. In fact, eight of the signers of the declaration of independence appear to have been born in the Old World. One might perhaps weasel around how the declaration of independence was not a defection for the people born in the colonies, because they remained loyal to the government of their colony or some such, but someone born in England coming to the New World and renouncing the king has pretty much rejected the natural allegiance thing. As did any immigrants who came later.
Not that I have a problem with any of that, I firmly believe one's allegiance to one's country of birth is a useful default but certainly not unconditional. If one's country is fucked up enough, an utilitarian has a duty to defect.
I think this misses something very crucial. To borrow from another revolutionary, they came not to abolish English Law but to fulfill it.
Moreover, there is significant verbiage in the Declaration of Independence first, on not renouncing one's due allegiance for trivial or transient causes, and second on claiming that it was the King that had violated his duties first and foremost.
It was certainly quite different than revolutionary France that swept away the Ancien Regime and replaced it root and stem with their own devising. Of course, England had a centuries long tradition that, at least imperfectly, matched their ideology.
It's true that there's a fair bit of language like that early on in the American Revolution, but I think it would be a mistake to read too much into it? Some early petitions are framed in terms of the colonists' rights as Englishmen, and the Declaration of Independence claims that it is the king who has abolished "the free System of English Laws", but I think much of that makes more sense if read tactically. Certainly the overall course of the Revolution would seem to undermine any claim that the rebels meant to be loyal to English law or tradition, and later on in the Revolution they seem to be very conscious that they are doing something new and without precedent.
In my experience it's quite common for right-leaning Americans to deny any kinship between the American and French Revolutions, perhaps noting Burke's sympathy to the Americans and hostility to the French, but that's always smacked of special pleading, to me. You can find early on in the French Revolution plenty of people considering constitutional monarchy, or some sort of more limited reform, before, like the Americans, they settled for something more transformative. It's true that the American Revolution was relatively 'civil', and the French Revolution more bloody, but I don't think that was a result of differing ideologies. I put that down more to two things. Firstly, the American Revolution was more of a secession than a true revolution - there were existing governing authorities that the rebels took over and largely maintained. It was not only possible but conceivable for the British to let America go, whereas the ancien regime did not have that option in France, and fought tooth and nail. Secondly, the Americans were not immediately tackled by every other European power. They had more breathing room to establish themselves and figure out how this newfangled republic idea was going to work. Nonetheless, both the American and French Revolutions were liberal humanist revolutions, and the number of American Founding Fathers who saw a kinship between their own work and that of the French suggests to me that the comparison is more than coincidental.
Neither of them are totally unprecedented - the English Civil War plays out many of the same issues as the French Revolution, and I'm sure the Americans were aware of it - but they are, I would say, two different instances of the same type. In a sense I think that, in a macrohistorical sense, the American Revolution is most significant as a kind of prototype for, and a contributing cause of, the French Revolution.
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