Service to the community

Gordon Brown, the Chancellor and Labour Prime Minister in waiting wants immigrants to do "community service" before they can become citizens. Gordon Brown has a lot of crackpot ideas.

Now at first glance, that sounds like not such a bad idea. I mean, after all, shouldn't you be contributing something to the society you want to formally become a part of? Gordo - as reported in The Evening Standard says:

"Being a British citizen is about more than a test, more than a ceremony; it's a kind of contract between the citizen and the country involving rights but also involving responsibilities that will protect and enhance the British way of life. "

I think that's right. I think that citizenship is a kind of social contract. In some ways akin to marriage - a new relationship - as strong as blood, but based on choice. Too many British people have no sense of what it means to take on citizenship of another country and seem to think that it amounts to getting a new passport that entitles you to go through the short line at Heathrow. I can't tell you how many Brits have just assumed that I had a British passport automatically upon marriage to a Brit (plus the three cereal box tops and £1.99 shipping and handling). I just don't think that's right.

But it hasn't really been thought through, it seems. Gordon Brown says he wants applicants for citizenship to understand British institutions. If that's the case, then studying for the citizenship test and applying for benefits ought to be quite enough.

The Conservate Party was, naturally, scathing:

Mr [David ]Davis [Shadow Home Secretary] declared: "Gordon Brown's proposals are ill-thought out and could be actually damaging. What about a doctor who has been here for some years, decides to become a UK citizen, and then has to stop working in the NHS for a period of time to do Mr Brown's community service?"

Indeed what about folks like me? I certainly have a pretty good understanding of the British public sector through my work, I'm reasonably politically active and I even give time at a local school. But we don't know if I'd have to quit my job (thus favoring all those lounge-about types who actually never seek employment at all) in order to do community service. I'm not sure that Mr Brown would see my Conservative leafleting as working in the community.

And as Mr Davis points out, there are bigger fish to fry in terms of handling citizenship applications:

He stated: "It is not that long since a minister lost her job after allowing citizenship applications to be granted without the proper passport checks being carried out. Gordon Brown should concentrate on remedying that, and answering our call to establish a dedicated UK border police - measures that will actually get a grip on the
problems in the immigration service."

Apparently, some kind of proposal for compulsory volunteering was developed, but the Treasury rejected the measure as too costly. Goodness knows what kind of ridiculous bureacratic nonsense was cooked up to check up on quality community work. Still, if people take British citizenship with its rights and obligations more seriously or perhaps consider contributing to their local communities (which is rewarding in its own right) perhaps it's not such a bad thing. But not like this.