Does citizenship require political participation Discuss Essay

Does citizenship require political participation Discuss - Essay Example This essay will illustrate the question: Does citizenship require political participation. Is any bona fide member of a state or community or country expected and required to participate in the politics of a state whether actively or passively? This argument has raged on for some time now. Citizenship is also a sensitive issue whose stipulations have been drafted in most country’s constitutions. For some countries, in order to become a citizen, it requires a matter of hours or minutes. To some, however, like the US and the stable western economies, acquisition of citizenship by foreigners is very tedious and extremely grueling. It also takes a longer time span for one’s documents to be analyzed and vetted. The law has further set aside rules that govern acceptance of application for citizenship in a country. The essay will try and answer the question whether Citizenship requires political participation. The paper will first exhaust the issue of citizenship. It will then further analyze the concept of political participation. In my opinion, citizenship truly requires political participation. It is, therefore, every citizen’s responsibility to ensure they take part of the political events of their place of region. Citizenship There are different approaches to the issue in different countries, but the principles of citizenship are alike. Citizenship is any form of status given to an individual either in the form of rights and privileges or in the form of duties and benefits. These forms of status are given to an individual by the state. In the US, for example, citizenship confers to a person a number of rights for example the right to living and having jobs or working in the US. The person is further accorded federal assistance and any form of government services. As a result of this, citizenship confers to an individual the right to own a US passport. This type of document identifies a person anywhere in the world as being from the country. C itizenship is a stepwise procedure. In Canada for example, about 170,000 people from many parts of the world flock to Canadian embassy offices to apply for citizenship. As a result of this, becoming a citizen of Canada requires a stepwise process so that the land can sustain the new citizens. The first process is determining whether the applicant is eligible to become a citizen. In case the individual is eligible. The individual is then allowed to apply for the citizenship. A citizenship test will then follow. This test is extremely grueling. Only persons between 18 to 54 years are allowed to take the tests, otherwise if one does not lie within the age bracket, they are not expected to prepare (Glassman 2008, p46). Just like Canada, the process of Citizenship is so grueling making many interested visitors not succeed in the exercise. Different countries have different aspects of citizenship. There are different aspects of Citizenship. Dual citizenship is an example of this aspect. I n the US, for example, a citizen of the US has the freedom to be a citizen of another country. The citizen will be accorded the benefits that are specific to the country in question. However, this is not the case in most countries especially for countries of the third world (Glassman 2008, p45). There are different ways through which one can become a citizen of a country. For example, one becomes a citizen of a country automatically through birth. If one is born within the quarters of a country, he/she