It is fitting that in America’s 250th year of independence, public discourse is centered around the meaning of citizenship.

Last summer brought a debate accompanying the “One Big Beautiful Bill” over whether non-citizens, particularly illegal migrants, should be receiving government welfare benefits. In the winter, new revelations were unearthed regarding the many problems with birthright tourism. Each year, thousands of mainly Chinese nationals visit the U.S. to give birth, obtaining citizenship for their babies under the modern interpretation of the 14th Amendment before returning home. The children are U.S. citizens with the right to receive benefits and vote in American elections, despite being raised in a foreign country and under the indoctrination of the Chinese Communist Party.

On April 1, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on birthright citizenship. Does citizenship extend to any child born in the United States to parents who are in the country illegally? Or does the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment refer only to those who give their full allegiance to the United States?

In addition to these developments, the Senate is stalled in deliberations over the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. The legislative fight goes to the deeper issue of whether suffrage is the express right of a citizen or something that can be handed out at will.

At the heart of these issues is whether citizenship has deep roots in American history or is simply a means by which one accumulates personal benefit at the expense of the state. This latter attitude is encouraged by policies that liberally confer privileges like suffrage, Medicare, and Social Security on illegal migrants, or exotic legal theories that allow foreigners to exploit loopholes in the Constitution to extract profit. The product of such practices is the existence of separate ethnic enclaves whose people care nothing for America beyond how it benefits them personally. If America falters and the gains cease, would these groups rise to its rescue?

Citizens have a duty to serve their country in times of need. However, a culture of consumers with no real attachment to America’s political principles, history, and traditions does not.

Thomas Jefferson and the founders saw citizenship not as a transaction, but as a compact in which the country protects the rights and privileges of the citizen, who has the duty to seek the good of the U.S. in return. They believed the success of the fledgling American republic depended on a citizenry that sought the best interests of the country above all.

Jefferson’s ideal citizen was the independent farmer: “Cultivators of the earth,” he wrote to John Jay, “are the most valuable citizens.” Though Jefferson later came to acknowledge the importance of manufacturing in light of the trade disruptions caused by the Napoleonic wars, he remained convinced that the American farmer was a great benefit to a free, self-governing society. The farmer’s fate is tied to the country in a way unlike any other profession. He is bound to the land; if the land prospers, so does he. Therefore, the farmer will naturally seek the well-being of that land—and, as a whole, the country.

For historical precedent on the meaning and character of citizenship, the founders looked to the Roman Republic.

Rome’s clash with Carthage in the Second Punic War was an existential struggle between two great powers, but it was also a war between two conflicting ideas of citizenship. Citizens of both regimes enjoyed the franchise, legal protections, and eligibility for political office. The Carthaginian armies, though, were composed mainly of mercenaries; citizens were not the primary fighting force. Conversely, the Roman citizen had a duty to fight for Rome, no matter the cost.

When Carthage brought Rome to the brink of annihilation after inflicting the worst defeat in Roman history at Cannae, surrender never crossed the Roman mind. Rome raised a new army as more citizens rushed to defend her. This was the duty of a Roman citizen. When Carthage faced a similar crisis, the Carthaginians surrendered. Its citizens and mercenary soldiers were purely transactional. They enjoyed the benefits of Carthaginian citizenship, but when greater sacrifice was required, their interest in the country waned, and they gave in. 

G.K. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy that men “did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.” George Washington embodied this ethic. He, “with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my country can inspire,” subjected his personal benefit and gain to seek the good of the country he loved. He saw “an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage,” because no country could expect the “smiles of Heaven” if the country disregarded “the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.”

Washington set the example for his country of what a good citizen of the new United States would be. He saw his interests as inseparable from the duty he had to support his country. Washington’s selfless example for his fellow citizens rested on the “preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government,” an “experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

If that experiment is to last another 250 years, Americans must remember what Carthage forgot: American citizenship is not a ledger of benefits to be acquired but a duty to be honored.