Allegiance is not love. Allegiance is recognising yourself as part of some whole. It’s not impossible to feel that and also dislike or even hate the whole, though it probably would not come without psychological issues unless you channel that into political activity to effect what you think is a positive change to the whole. It’s complicated.
In terms of what dictates your action, true allegiance is more significant: it is possible to really love somebody and not do something for their sake, but if you really are a part of something then it’s not much of a choice.
Some people, culturally or temperamentally, have an allegiance to their family and do not care beyond that. Some feel allegiance to a community (whether defined religiously or geographically or elsewise). Some people feel allegiance to nothing. In the US specifically feeling belonging to one’s state I presume could be more powerful than belonging to the country. It is not always or not everywhere that people feel a strong allegiance to a country, even if they always lived in one and never thought of moving.
Among people who do feel country allegiance, I would imagine it is rare to feel belonging to two different countries with a similar force. Perhaps those people do exist (e.g., someone who mostly lived in country A but was born to immigrants from country B and also spent a lot of time in country B), and then it would be mighty unfair if they had to pick one, but people I know can usually classify one citizenship as “convenience” and another one as “true”.
Comprehensively assessing true allegiances (or lack thereof) of a prospective citizen is fraught, but as phrased the question does not actually require that. For 99.9% of people, “do you feel allegiance first to a foreign state?” is pretty unobtrusive and has a clear answer. The main caveat is, of course, that those for whom the answer is positive will almost certainly just lie.
In case using tangentially related quotes is considered smarter than original thought, I looked one up too and I raise you Orson Scott Card:
“Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to and the ones she doesn’t belong to… a person who really believes she doesn’t belong to any community at all invariably kills herself, either by killing her body or by giving up her identity and going mad.”
In terms of what dictates your action, true allegiance is more significant: it is possible to really love somebody and not do something for their sake, but if you really are a part of something then it’s not much of a choice.
Some people, culturally or temperamentally, have an allegiance to their family and do not care beyond that. Some feel allegiance to a community (whether defined religiously or geographically or elsewise). Some people feel allegiance to nothing. In the US specifically feeling belonging to one’s state I presume could be more powerful than belonging to the country. It is not always or not everywhere that people feel a strong allegiance to a country, even if they always lived in one and never thought of moving.
Among people who do feel country allegiance, I would imagine it is rare to feel belonging to two different countries with a similar force. Perhaps those people do exist (e.g., someone who mostly lived in country A but was born to immigrants from country B and also spent a lot of time in country B), and then it would be mighty unfair if they had to pick one, but people I know can usually classify one citizenship as “convenience” and another one as “true”.
Comprehensively assessing true allegiances (or lack thereof) of a prospective citizen is fraught, but as phrased the question does not actually require that. For 99.9% of people, “do you feel allegiance first to a foreign state?” is pretty unobtrusive and has a clear answer. The main caveat is, of course, that those for whom the answer is positive will almost certainly just lie.
In case using tangentially related quotes is considered smarter than original thought, I looked one up too and I raise you Orson Scott Card:
“Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to and the ones she doesn’t belong to… a person who really believes she doesn’t belong to any community at all invariably kills herself, either by killing her body or by giving up her identity and going mad.”