Should the government change the Oath of Allegiance immigrants take when they naturalize?

This was the central question at a hearing before the House Immigration Subcommittee on Thursday. Rep. Jim Ryun (R., Kan.) has offered a bill that would make the words of the current oath a part of federal law, rather than a product of federal regulation. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) has introduced similar legislation in the Senate.

“The text of the Oath of Allegiance can be changed on the whim of the government bureaucracy,” said Ryun in testimony before his colleagues. “Codifying the words of the Oath of Allegiance is a logical, necessary step to ensure that the oath is held in high regard and protected from destructive changes.”

Last September, the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) tried to revise the oath in an attempt to simplify its language. The proposed alteration was leaked to the press, condemned by the likes of the American Legion and former attorney general Edwin Meese, and finally scuttled. Critics said the revision contained grammatical errors and threatened to dilute the oath’s meaning. (NRO reported on the controversy here and here.) Ryun and Alexander decided that the best way to protect the oath from future meddling was to enshrine it in statute.

Alfonso Aguilar, head of the citizenship office at BCIS, said in his testimony that the Bush administration opposes a congressional fix–and that it still plans to move forward with a revised oath in the near future. “We’re currently working on new language that is considerably different from what was circulated last year,” he said. He also indicated that the forthcoming proposal would retain the words “I will bear arms” on behalf of the United States–a turn of phrase that was dropped from last year’s aborted proposal.

“We want to make sure that people taking the oath should clearly recognize what they are swearing to,” he said.

Everybody on the panel agreed with that sentiment. After all, the first clause of the current oath says: “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or a citizen.”

Abjure? Potentate? Of whom or which I have heretofore? These are tough words for native-born Americans, let alone immigrants who have learned English as a second language.

Ryun, however, suggested that such language causes people to think more seriously about the oath they take.

That’s essential, as John Fonte of the Hudson Institute pointed out in his testimony. “It is vitally important to have an oath that is rhetorically unambiguous and inspiring, and substantively significant to the meaning of American citizenship,” he said. “The language should be solemn and majestic. It must not be pedestrian. Above all, it should both focus the mind and stir the heart.”

Last year, 455,000 immigrants took the Oath of Allegiance when they became American citizens.

“The naturalization process,” said Fonte, “should be a ‘rite of passage,” much as a communion, confirmation, bar or bat mitzah, graduation, or wedding ceremony.”