YES: Rejecting the referendum would be a betrayal of those who truly belong in Ireland through effort and achievement, writes Constantin T. Gurdgiev.
On June 11th, this country decides whether to follow the imaginary cries of the distant unborn demanding Irish citizenship, or to affirm validity of those who seek their naturalisation through effort and achievement.
In this context, the real question remains unasked: should Irish citizenship be a geographic right or a privilege one earns?
It is a daunting task for anyone to define the value and worth of Irish citizenship. At times in the past that value was drawn down by the state that presided over the society of desperation. Such was the case as recently as in the 1980s.
Since then, Ireland belatedly regained its self-confidence, engaging in a soul-searching process of redefining its identity.
In that regard, forget for a moment all the moralising about the "poor" souls rescued out of their "misery" by the loopholes of automatic citizenship and asylum process. Forget that only the relatively well-off of the Third World can finance baby-tourism by satisfying the Irish visa requirements and affording their travel; that in many cases such opportunistic migration enriches criminal smuggling networks in the country of origin.
Listen, for a change, to the numerous foreigners working often obscene hours in jobs that the Irish cannot, or will not, fill, paying taxes in return for no service and obeying the laws often violated by others around them with impunity. They outnumber the refugees and the fly-in parents 40 to 1.
For them, establishing the track record of caring for Ireland is a reasonable hurdle on their way to naturalisation. It is their presence that contributes to this country's emerging new identity.
Should they be told that others have a jump-start on their efforts to become Irish simply because they were born at the taxpayers' expense - indeed, at their expense as well?
Some of us make an effort, others claim their rights; some of us belong, others are here to collect on their claimed desperation.
If desperation were to become the measure of belonging, would you want to hold an Irish passport? When desperation did characterise what it meant to be Irish, our compatriots fled this land in millions, abandoning that identity which held no value to them.
When desperation defined Irishness, the country drove away its brightest and its best, reducing itself to the state of greyness and intolerance.
We've learned the lesson, or did we? If we are striving to achieve a truly open and just society, we must reward those who are willing to prove their worth to this land, not those who are ready to claim their rights before fulfilling any of their obligations.
If we simply want to fake compassion for the sake of foreign and domestic zealots of equality, we will give our citizenship away to the undeserving, leaving those who toil hard to earn it with a depreciating sense of being exploited.
The nation of the desperate may look good on the surface to those who seek to paint every argument concerning our rights and obligations the colours of racism.
Yet, such a nation surrenders the vibrant merit-based society for a pond-life of refugees: foreign ones and home-grown ones side by side. It breeds the intolerance and hatred of success, of foreigners, of anyone who is not "miserable, like us".
Today, as tens of thousands of foreign workers dream of becoming a part of this nation, their efforts are commonly confronted by some delinquent members of Irish under-classes. The only answer to the problem of rising negative attitudes toward the foreign residents in Ireland is the process of legitimising the foreigners' contribution to our society. Naturalisation is such a process of empowering the foreigners to become Irish. Birth-right to citizenship and other loopholes are the forces that corrupt the legitimacy of the foreigners, leading to a less civil society at large.
Thus, the notion of being Irish through naturalisation deserves to be awarded a higher moral and legal status than the opportunistic migration.
The proposed referendum attempts to reintroduce this balance between the citizenship and the obligations it implies, between the notion of belonging and the legitimacy of those who prove that they do belong.
For those who work their hardest, it reaffirms the rights to belong, both vis-à-vis the other foreigners and vis-à-vis the native Irish.
Citizenship is not a right. It is a privilege conditioned either by the past generations contribution to the society, or by the naturalisation's legitimacy.
Such citizenship affirms society's values, recognises individual efforts and rewards the worthy. Such a notion of citizenship drives social progress, for progress is born out of the force of caring and contributing, and not from claiming and exercising rights ahead of respecting obligations.
Constantin T. Gurdgiev, a Russian national, is a lecturer in Economics at TCD and the director of the Open Republic Institute, Dublin.