I wrote a brief history of the United States as well as my understanding of the founding documents. The documents are important to me because I am a U.S. Citizen and the documents lay out the foundation of my rights within the U.S.A. Historically, Citizen Rights are different from humanitarian or human rights and different than the privileges granted to visitors of an empire, nation or state. To give an examples; Roman Citizens had rights that not every inhabitant of the Roman Empire had, citizenship had a meaning beyond merely being a visitor of a place within Rome or living within a region of the Roman Empire. The Jews for instance, lived within Rome around 0 B.C. but did not have all the rights of a Roman Citizen, they had to petition a Roman Citizen to make a request to the Roman Government on their behalf. The Jews received similar treatment under all the empires that came before Rome including Persia, Babylon and Egypt which is why Queen Esther, Daniel and Joseph are such great historical figures for Jewish people.
The USA continues to follow this format for Governance and Citizen Rights as do the majority of developed nations. In the USA, green card holders, visa holders, diplomats and temporary or permanent residents do not have all the rights that a U.S. citizen has within the United States. A U.S. Citizen has constitutional rights in addition to common law rights and any other privileges and immunities granted to citizens of a nation through their own government or through international treaties and agreements. These Citizen Rights override any conflicting penal codes and any requirements for licenses or permits on items or activities that are necessary for a citizen to fully exercise their rights as a citizen.
In the USA, only 140,000 permanent visas are available per year and they now require work certification. President Donald Trump is further strengthening enforcement powers of the Executive Branch and making background checks a mandatory part of the immigration process. Like with felons seeking employment, getting in trouble once or twice does not necessarily bar you from entering the USA or from becoming a citizen later on. However, It is possible that you may only be granted permanent residency which means you will need to obtain the licenses and permits any of the State’s require for any activity they have made legislation for and you will not have constitutional rights or citizen rights that override any of the State Penal Codes or Licensing and Permit requirements. This is an important distinction because a non citizen can be arrested, deported or put in prison or fined for not having required permits or licenses; a US Citizen can not. While the term “permanent visa” implies an indefinite stay, there are terms to an immigration contract that can be breached by an immigrant to cause their visa to be revoked, during their first 5 years of residency. After that, while it becomes more difficult to deport people who were granted a permanent visa, it is not impossible and the U.S. has legally deported people who were residents of the USA for over 40 years due to breaching local and international laws. Out of the 140,000 permanent visas allocated each year, it is also not guaranteed that every person will be granted citizenship. This means, that for immigrants to the USA, only 1.4 million opportunities exist for US Citizenship between every 10 year census period.
With these things in mind, having a solid understanding of the founding documents, my Citizen Rights and how my rights relate to Federal Laws and State Penal Codes became of utmost importance because if I were to immigrate out of the USA, I would lose my Citizen Rights and have to start all over as a resident unless I found a place where I already had Citizenship through Jus sanguinis or “right of blood”.
I spent about 4 to 6 hours at a time researching and typing up the following documents over a period of about 2 months and I had prior knowledge of many of the topics. Here is a list of the articles I wrote related to the founding of the USA and what that means for U.S. Citizens.
- A Brief History of the United States
- Founding Documents – The Declaration of Independence
- Founding Documents – The United States Constitution
- Founding Documents – The Bill of Rights
- Founding Documents – US Constitution Amendments 11 through 27
Writing these documents required a lot of legal research and references to not only founding documents but also to documents that were initially written in Latin, Old French or Medieval English and appropriate translations were used issued by the British Library, US Library of Congress, French Parliament and Royal Households. Translators and translations from Canada’s Parliament were also used because Canada has a solid history of translating English to French and vice versa through their Government in Quebec.
Two follow up topics to these articles are going to be
- Comparing Notes with the Library of Congress
- Organizing Legislative Text