YOu are again confusing 2 non-related items. As Mason says, the title American is describing citizenship. Not how it was earned or granted. un-American is describing an activity. One is a noun (person, place or thing). The other is an adverb, qualifying or describing an action. Each can be used as the other (he had an american run or He is Un-American - when infact the speaker is saying that his activities are un-american) as the english langauge can be bastardized to suit the users purpose. However, the words remain essentially different.

If un-american were a noun, it would mean that yes, you have renounced your citizenship and are no longer american. Other than some brain dead actors (who can be very eloquent while never understanding what they say), the accusation of "un-american" is used to say that the activity or statements are against america.

I understand your point here. But I believe that to be able to enjoy everything this country has to offer that so many other countries don't should not be as easy as signing on the dotted line, shaking your hand and saying "Welcome to American you are now an American". I do also believe that the system should be reviewed and made a bit easier, you are correct that they have to jump thru so many hoops that by the time they become legal citizens they will have cramps for years to come.



I have to admit that the concept of stripping major criminals, such as "child molesters, murderers, and rapists" and the likes, of their citizenship sounds like an interesting punishment, but where would we send them? I seriously doubt any country would take our criminals, well, except maybe those who wouldn't mind using them as target practice or something. Besides, it's not as if they really care about being an American, they don't respect the law as it is.

Cuba has a good track record.

is this site now going fascist? are you people kidding me? talk about "closing the door behind you."

gonna start stripping citizenship of "certain criminals?" like that isn't the slippery slope to end all slippery slopes. after we strip the murderers and rapists (and let's all remember how far that definition has gotten stretched in the last 20 years)should we include the white collar criminals? after all, an embezzler or CEO that defrauds their investors can negatively affect hundreds or thousands of lives, where a murderer might only affect 1 or a handful of lives. same with rape.

then let's not stop there, let's strip all the dissenters and political enemies of the governement their citizenship ...after all, according to W, "yer either with us or against us."

i'm going to assume that some didn't think thru their comments above. and perhaps forgot the words of our 1st President, George Washington..."Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

I find it kinda funny that you picked my comment to say something about it when it was Baker all along who has been pointing this idea out.

Anyways I said the idea sounds interesting. I never said lets do it, I agree 100% or it's a great idea. You really need to get your head out of that hole it's in. Besides while jail times may be similar you can not compare a CEO stealing money to a murderer or a rapist. That is just plain stupid. A murderer took a life, a rapist took something by force physically, a CEO took material, granted not his but the odds of this kind of situation result in a death unless planned ahead of time would in the end be considered a murder. The only reason we care about white collar crimes is because somewhere along the line the Gov't loses valueble taxes they may have gained if the CEO would have not tried to steal the money. Stealing money and murder is not in the same category, you analogy (I'm starting to like that word a lot) is stupid. For that matter we should all call ourselves unAmerican cause in some way or another we steal from each other. How often does anyone return money if the store clerk gave you $.10 to much? How often does anyone get an ad letter from a neighbor and keep it or throw it away? How often do people connect to wireless networks that are not locked and use the internet for free? All the illegal music, movies and software flowing thru the internet, etc. It affects people as well, should we all have our citizenship taken away as well? You take you ideas way too far, talk about extremist. It's no wonder we can't find solutions to anything in this country, it's people like you who believe if a person throws a pebble over a bridge it could hit a car window, the driver could freak out, lose control crashing into a school buss that could then fall over a cliff landing on a train track killing all the kids inside while a train come by, crashes into the bus on the track derailing and spilling all the quemicals it carried that would then start fires and kill people in a 20 mile radius due to tha fumes being fanned by the wind. And you would probably think this cound happen for every pebble dropped over a bridge if it was done 10 times in a row.

sorry charles, it wasn't personal. i disagree with anyone who wants to start stripping citizenship because of their deeds being deemed unworthy by anyone. i disagree with criminals losing their voting rights after they have paid their price. if they truly pay the price, the right should be restored.

it is just a variation of the "thought police."

but i didn't mean to go after you there personally...my apologies.

Did we think through the criteria for becoming a US citizen? This is the abridged version:



If you look at the real thing, you'll find that we refuse people because of lots of things. They are refused because of diseases they have, addictions, various crimes (blue and white collar), whether they are likely to require public support (welfare, etc.), lack of knowledge of the US legal system and US history, lack of proficiency in the English language, etc., etc. It goes on forever.



The fact is, if we applied what it takes to become and "American" to people who already are, a double digit percentage would be stripped of citizenship. You can look here at JU and see how much the average citizen knows about law, history, the English language, etc. It just seems sad to me that we can't apply our standards to ourself.

YOu cant choose your family. ONly your friends.

well put guy

Huh? The naturalization process IS choosing your family, right? This is more like saying you can't be in my family because you have a disease or can't speak good enough English, but never mind the sexual predators we let roam the back yard...

The fact of the matter is if America turned the mirror it used to control immigration on itself, we'd probably lose about a third of our population. Isn't it a tad apeshit silly to claim we are protecting ourselves from people who can't speak English and keeping self-confessed predators in our society?

No, as usual of late, you missed the point.

Let me make it simple. No one who is Born American CHOSE to BE American. But America can CHOOSE who will become American who was not born here.

The black sheep in your family may not be your friends, but regardless of their crimes and transgressions, they are part of your family. However, you dont have to become friends with a rapist, murderer or pedophile.

Lets see a newborn has not commited any crimes yet, they can't pay taxes till they old enough to work and chances are they usually do if they get jobs, there is no draft anymore so I don't see the point in that.



The odds of someone being born and raised here no knowing the language would be a first for me. But the are you including children who are mentally ill and can probably not learn the language?



Well if you were born here chances are you might have gone to school here (if you could afford to go, homeless children etc.) and chances are somewhere along the line you took American history and probably passed a test or 2, unless you just didn't care.



The average child probably doesn't even understand the concept of swearing.

Baker,

Do you realize that by this concept every child that does not understand at all any of these criterias are automatically stripped of their citizenship? And what about the mentally ill that are incapable of reading, writing or even speaking the language, should they too be stripped of citizen ship? And what about those billionaires that get away with murder, how can we strip them of citizenship if we can't even prove they are guilty because they rig the system. I'm sorry buddy but your living in a Borg universe where perfection if the goal.

? You guys are straining hard, lol. It would be perfectly resonable to allow those born here citizenship until they prove unworthy of the title American. You guys are dodging clumsily. The fact of the matter is we set what it takes to become an American, and then ignore the fact that a great many people here don't meet those expectations.

Thus, the term is basically meaningless. It's like the idea of infallibility in the Catholic Church. It's only really meaningful as some esoteric ideal, in function it is meaningless. Well, the standards imposed as defining American citizenship are basically meaningless in the same way, since they really only count in name only.

This idea that we can't deport people or strip them of their citizenship is false too. The Patriot Act II had a section that gave them the power to strip anyone that renders material support to terrorist groups of citizenship. Hrm, 15k murders a year, and 3k deaths to terrorism in more than a decade. Sounds like our priorities suck.



Now you are just playing ignorant. We graduate kids from High School all the time that are functionally illiterate. We are constantly hearing how the NCLB thing isn't fair because we can't expect inner city kids, etc., to be able to meet those standards. There was something just the other day about how any testing at all under the age of 12 is supposedly unfair.

So, no, there are plenty of people in the US that don't meet the language requirement, and that aren't immigrants or kids of immigrants.

P.S. By the way, before people keep saying I don't get it, you might want to reread and figure out that no one that has replied to me yet, no one, has gotten what I am saying, and most of you are just knee-jerk assuming the opposite.

Oh I got it alright. You are advocating kicking people out based upon the criteria we use to take people in. All I have been saying, and trying to say, that you are either not addressing or ignoring, is that the RULES state. Rules are not perfect and one of them is that if you are born here, that trumps all other rules. If you are not born here, then you have to qualify.

I never said it was perfect, indeed I stated the opposite. What I have said is that America cannot take in every one, no matter how saintly they are, who wants to come here. WIthout sinking the boat.