“Few things can be as important to an individual as their citizenship. Along with a person’s name, sex and age one’s citizenship (or nationality) is a key defining individual characteristic.”

Baloney in the very first sentence. Citizenship has nothing to do with nationality, or at least the way people see themselves. People, who have been Australian citizens since the year dot, including those people born here but of “ethnic” background, still think of themselves as something other than Australians.

In Australia, citizenship – thanks to its devaluation by politicians and other multiculturalists - is a matter of convenience: a nice country to live in with all of the benefits mentioned by the author, but with the right to hold dual citizenship so that the “Australians” can travel back and forth at will and even live full time in their country of origin – there is always the bolthole of Australia thanks to the citizenship of convenience.

The author claims that there is no evidence that immigrants are taking their citizenship seriously.

Fiddlefaddle! There is evidence in the media everyday in the comments and actions of minority groups living in their ghettos, whining for their old ways and criticising ours.

Robb’s paper might “fail to provide any evidence that people are refusing to learn English”. Van Vliet’s article fails to provide evidence that they are!

Van Vliet gets one thing right: Howard’s stupid remark about Greeks. They are among the worst offenders in hanging onto something they no longer should. Give me Asians any day if we really need migrants at certain times for the good of Australia.

There is need for only one change to current immigration: stop it altogether. We are overpopulated as it is. Bringing more ‘future eaters’ to Australia – unless they are absolutely essential for the good of Australia, is suicide – culturally, economically and environmentally

‘…citizenship is being thrown around “like confetti”. The implications here are that people are not taking their new Australian citizenship seriously. Yet there is no evidence provided to back up this claim.’ Might the evidence be found in the 20,000 loyal Australian citizens recently found living in South Lebanon some of whom include enthusiastic supporters of Hezbollah? It is a paradox that a person can swear allegiance to two countries.

The author reminds us that the right to vote is part of being granted citizenship but the right to vote should be removed from all of us until we learn to elect a federal ALP government.

The author expresses concern about a misstep that may take us back 40 years yet doesn’t have any worries about a group wanting to take us back to the 7th century. This sort of sloppiness creeps in when some policies are quarantined from public scrutiny.

The author has taken the opportunity to remind us of UN protections for individuals and following on from that Article 24 of the Universal Book of Commonsense quite plainly states that a country can achieve more if we all move in the one direction.

The welcome mat is still out it’s just that we seek genuine citizens rather than people who are no more than citizenship ‘tourists’.

Wow this bloke wants to have an even looser idea of what it is to be Australian and uses the fact that many people already live in Australia cant speak a word of English as good reason why it is not necessary to teach it to them or for them to be bothered to learn it. I mean hey when you come from a third world country and earn a $1 a day why would you be bothered learning English when centerlink will give you hundreds of dollars a week for doing nothing? You just ring them up in your native language demand to speak to someone who speaks that language, (other wise cry foul and sue them for discrimination) then just sit back and watch the money flow in turn on al jizra and chant death to the west!

Citizenship is a huge privilege and ever since we have been giving it out every time someone buys a big mac at mcdonalds its value to those who receive it has declined from “I am happy and proud to be an Australian” too “Give me my f*$#ing citizenship aussie I deserve it as much as the last ungrateful son of a b!tch does”

It makes me sick!

I live and work in a remote Aboriginal community. In 1996 some people came here from Fiji as supposed 'missionaries' for a church. They were granted access to the Australian Aboriginal CDEP employment program by accident, because like our locals they were coloured and also did not speak good English. Their foreign nationality may have been missed.

They collectively received over $150,000 undeservedly and now show absolutely no intention of returning that money that was ill gotten, albeit given in error presumably, if not as result of outright fraud. They would have known no doubt at the time that they should not have been accepting Australian support as foreign workers. Their Church which is world wide certainly should have known Australian laws.

The family has recently become Australian through citizenship. I raised the matter of the mistaken money payment and one family member merely shrugged and said...'well why should you worry...it is only the government's money...not your's?".

So that is the stance of a brand new Australian! Boy am I proud to know that lot! (Banpokies1 WA)

Heaven forbid that we should discriminate against non-English speaking migrants! I mean, it's not like Australia's immigration program should primarily be for the benefit of Australia, or that English speakers (of whatever skin colour) integrate better into our society. No, that wouldn't be the case would it! Personally I've always thought the fact that we make English our national language is horribly racist. All government forms should be printed in all languages spoken in this country. Let's not discriminate (shudder!).

And what about those horrible barriers we put in front of citizenship. Of course citizenship will be taken much more seriously if we put up no barriers at all!
And we don't want to be like those nasty Germans do we! After all, if an immigrant population fails to integrate (like the Turks in Germany) it's all the fault of the host country, isn't it! I mean, that's just obvious!

Autralia(uns) care little about citizenship - so much so we gave it to a squillionaire snow monkey from Canada just so he could win a gold medal at the winter Olympics - cant say I have seen too much complaining about that little fiasco

Very few of us have even pledged allegance to the country - at least new immigrants actually have to do that - if we're born here we just get the mantle by default - I find it rather amusing that some actually take inordiante pride in something they had nothing to do with - being a citizen by birth right is certainly no achievement - some of us just got lucky

the citizen ship debate has been raised - and quite some time ago as another barrier to immigration - another means of stalling the arrival of "those people" with out having to say we dont want them out loud -

There is not overly much wrong with the authors position on this topic - and I think many Australians are tiring of the Vanstone Howard take on this subject - I think the fact that they, Cosgtello and Nelson have shut up about it suggest it didnt get the traction they desired - and these guys, past masters of leading from behind, know when the sentiment blows against them.

The political pendulum is swinging against them on this issue - and a few otthers as well.

Leigh claims citizenship has been devalued by politicians and multiculturalists - I do need some education on this matter - but when were the days when we as a nation valued it all that much - when were the heady days of citizen ship fever?

Citizenship never had a value here