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, "