[Surely you have probably received an email encouraging you to sign the Bičiulystė e-petition asking the Seimas to grant dual citizenship to NATO member nations and Australia. I think the petition is junk in its reasoning (and in its practice, but that is a different issue). Amerikos lietuvis asked people to write in with their opinions on this petition, and so I did. Then I translated what I wrote into English, and now I am printing the English translation here. The Lithuanian original is available on lietuviams.com.]

When I first heard the news about the recommendation to the Seimas that they not allow US citizens to also be citizens of Lithuania, I immediately guessed the US Lithuanian community would flip the hell out. I knew I'd be reading screed after screed with an LB logo affixed to it.

In fact, I was so on point with my prophecy that I should’ve bought a lottery ticket that same day. On the other hand, maybe it’s best that I didn’t, since one thing I failed to predict was the bizarre turn that the dissatisfaction with the Seimas work group's recommendation would take.

Simply, there are a lot of great reasons why Lithuania should allow US citizens to hold dual citizenship. It would clearly strengthen relationships between both nations, especially financially. We so quickly forget that it was capital provided by the denigrated “first-wave” Lithuanian-Americans that kept the economy of first Lithuanian Republic solvent. So though Lithuania is now in better economic shape, it doesn’t make sense to ignore such a potentially large set of human ATMs. Furthermore, should there be some kind of crisis (terrorist, say) that befalls Lithuania but does not invoke the NATO charter, the presence of many US citizens in Lithuania might encourage the US to take a more active approach in helping defuse (as it were) the tension. Finally, dual citizenship is hardly unprecedented, and Lithuania can boldly incorporate it.

However, among the great reasons for US/Lithuanian dual citizenship, you will not find the reasoning of choice in the Lithuanian-American public sphere: the fact that both the US and Lithuania are in NATO. I don't understand why both PLB chairperson R. Narušienė and the Amerikos lietuvis editorial board have taken this path, especially as it leads to ludicrous attempts at equating NATO with the EU.

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[This is a hastily assembled translation of the article, “Tolerantiški lietuviai — grėsmė senajai išeivijai” by Mykolas Gudelis, published in Vakarai. I’m providing the translation here for those (both who consider themselves Lithuanian and not) who care about these sorts of issues. The translation is reprinted here with permission from Vakarai.

Personally, anyone who read my letter in Lietuvos rytas (English) about this issue can see that I have much in common with Gudelis’s viewpoint—a less charitable soul would even whine that he seems not to have read my piece. He loses the plot a bit with his invocation of a slippery slope, which furthermore risks an equivalence of anti-Semitism with other forms of intolerance. It is definitely not as simple as he makes it seem. Furthermore, he runs into his own set of dichotomies between old and new, which reek of their own prejudice.

Still, it is important that this issue of intolerance writ large remain in the public forefront when it comes to affairs of the Lithuanian diaspora. 

I may change the translation around in parts as corrections are given to me. Some tricky or key words I've reproduced with their Lithuanian (original) counterparts in brackets.

--m] 

In the seventeen years of Lithuanian independence, more than half a million Lithuanians have left their homeland. As such, an existential question arises both among Lithuanians in Lithuania and Lithuanians abroad: is the Lithuanian nation [tauta] vanishing? Clearly, there’s no single answer to this question, and, upon further investigation, it seems to me that there is nothing to worry about: Lithuanians are surely not becoming and will not become extinct.

The Lithuanian nation has a unique property, which protects it from globalization, cosmopolitanism, internationalism, the migrant workforce, and so on. It’s tricky to name this defense mechanism. I wouldn’t want to call it “hatred” [neapykanta], but perhaps “dislike” [nemėgimas] works better. This word, “dislike,” is based on the Lithuanian verb “to like.” It’s simply the negative form. We often say, “well, it’s not that I can’t stand it. I just don’t like it.” But what is the difference between hating and disliking? Where do we draw the line, past which disliking becomes hating? Surely disliking and hating are two different things, but how do the two concepts really differ? Leaving aside the subtleties of the Lithuanian language as well as the ontological explorations, I think that everyone has a different answer to these questions.

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1. Presidential exceptions
2. Political prisoners and deportees, as well as their descendants
3. Exiles who left Lithuania between 1940 and 1990
4. Ethnic Lithuanians who live in traditionally Lithuanian lands (Puńsk, etc.)
5. Children of current Lithuanian citizens born outside of Lithuania
6. Lithuanian citizens who, living in other nations of the EU, acquire citizenship in the other EU nation.

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