Bill 1408

Google Groups : soc.culture.polish:



"June 14, 2000




Senator Dianne Finestein
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D. C. 20510




Dear Senator,




I am asking you to address serious legal, economic, and security problems
arising for US citizens, including US government employees and members of US
Armed Forces, from a Bill presently passing the Parliament of the Republic
of Poland (The Sejm).




The draft Bill presented in the Polish Parliament is contained in the
parliamentary document known as 'Druk Sejmowy No. 1408', and is referred to
in this letter as the Bill 1408. Bill 1408 provides the legal definition of
who, and under what conditions, is a citizen of the Republic of Poland.




When Bill 1408 becomes the law of Poland, US citizens travelling to Poland
will be subjected to arbitrary redefinition of their citizenship at the
Polish border, based on the Polish authorities presumption of their Polish
citizenship. The presumption of Polish citizenship will be based on a crude
and highly biased form of ethnic profiling, taking in an individual's place
of birth, parental place of birth, language spoken, and/or an apparently
Polish surname. The Polish Government authority charged with administering
the profiling is the Polish Border Guards. The critical computer databases
of the Polish Border Guards will not be open to the public or Polish
Parliament's scrutiny.




Once the Polish Border Guards arbitrarily declare a US citizen a Polish
national, he/she is deprived of the US consular protection, and his/her
right to depart Poland on the US passport is denied. The US citizen in this
situation is forced to acquire the passport of the Republic of Poland
through a process that may take many weeks, and has no guarantee of being
successful. Meanwhile, the person may be denied access to the US Consul and
prevented from leaving the Polish territory, or indeed be held incommunicado
at the discretion of Polish authorities. It is important to mention that the
Polish Bill 1408 provides no exemption from this process for foreign
Government officials and members of allied armed forces, many of whom are of
Polish origin by birth or descent.




The above described provisions of Bill 1408 are in violation of the United
States law. Sec. 1448. of the US Code (Oath of renunciation and allegiance)
requires all naturalized US citizens to "renounce and abjure absolutely and
entirely all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate,
state, or sovereignty of whom or which the applicant was before a subject or
citizen". Accordingly, a naturalized (as well as a natural born) US citizen
owes allegiance to no other state but the United States of America.




The Government of the Republic of Poland offers a purported remedy from the
effects of Bill 1408, by offering to the presumed Polish citizens in the
above described situation access to a process of renunciation of Polish
citizenship. According to the information available from Polish Consulates
in the United States, this process takes a year or more. Information from
the Polish-American community in the United States indicates that the
renunciation of Polish citizenship has been designed by the Polish
Government to be a deliberately punishing bureaucratic quagmire.




An applicant for renunciation is required to provide documents virtually
impossible to obtain without physically being in Poland, and difficult to
obtain while in Poland. His or her application will not be processed unless
these documents have been presented in full. A Catch-22 paradox is therefore
created where a US citizen, rightly or wrongly presumed by the Polish
Government to be a Polish citizen, cannot free him or herself of the
presumed obligations of Polish citizenship without presenting him or herself
personally in Poland, thus placing him or herself entirely in the hands of
the Polish Government, and outside the reach of the legal or consular
assistance of the Government of the United States.




Many US citizens, in particular those who are former refugees from
Communism, may not be able at to obtain any documents at all to satisfy the
Polish authorities; this is due to the length of time elapsed since their
emigration form Poland, obstruction by local officials in Poland, and the
generally poor state of minor Polish civil records that are the required
source of these documents. The Bill 1408 makes no allowance for such
situations.




It should be noted that the presumed Polish citizenship cannot be
surrendered, renounced or resigned at will. While a citizen of the United
States is free at any time to renounce his or her US Citizenship by making
an appropriate declaration before a US Government official, no comparable
liberty exists in Polish law. A Polish applicant for renunciation of his or
her presumed Polish citizenship is required to make a detailed application
for release from citizenship to the President of the Republic of Poland. The
President makes an executive decision to release the applicant from the
presumed Polish citizenship or otherwise. The executive decision is final,
and is not appealable to Polish courts. The matter will not be placed before
the President unless and until all complex supporting documentation has been
assembled and submitted, and high administrative fees have been paid to the
Polish Government.




Lack of action of the US Senate and Congress regarding the effect of this
repressive foreign law upon citizens of the United States may result in
damage to the US national interest as follows:




- loss of business and income by private US citizens and US corporations;




- arbitrary detention in Poland of US military personnel and US Government
officials who are of Polish origin by birth or descent;




- denial of consular protection due to all US citizens abroad;




- inability of the US Armed Forces to fulfil their NATO alliance obligations
while stationed in Poland within the framework of NATO.




If the Polish Government cannot be prevailed upon to scrap the Bill 1408, an
alternative solution could involve an urgent conclusion of a Consular Treaty
between the Government of the United States and the Government of the
Republic of Poland. Such a Treaty would have to provide for full US consular
protection of all US citizens entering the territory of the Republic of
Poland, and in particular for their unrestricted right to leave Poland as US
citizens. The rights of US citizens temporarily in the territory of the
Republic or Poland must be free from arbitrary abrogation by the Polish
Government.




I urge you to immediately take appropriate actions with a view to ensuring
the safety and dignity of US citizens, and to preserving the national
interest of the United States, currently threatened in Poland by the
impending operation of the Bill 1408.




Yours truly, "