RE: czernowitz-l digest: February 26, 2011

On passports and nationalities as reported by Nigel Siederer from London. In Canada they may still spell it Roumania which irritated me going all the way back to the 1940s, so much so, in fact that I adopted the American way of spelling on words such as "color" vs "colour," etc., my private little rebellion.

When I applied for a U.S. immigration visa in 1950, the U.S. Consulate in Toronto put me on a waiting on THE SOVIET QUOTA. I rushed down there protesting that I had never set foot in Russia and they explained that Uncle Sam had set the quotas during a period when the Russians were in Cz, possibly dating back to a 15 minute period around WW I. They calmed me by assuring me that the Soviet Quota was a very good one because at the time it was next to impossible for Russians to get out of their country.

Before my quota came up I married a Canadian girl and then the U.S. Consulate advised that I could now enter America as a non-quota Canadian. There was no quota for Canadians at the time. All of Canada could have moved across the border at that time, giving back the land to the Indians who would have been distraught without their welfare checks.

By the time we were ready to move to New York, we had two boys aged two and six months. I had taken a job in New York and my plan was to go down alone, find an apartment, get it settled and then bring down my wife and children. "Oh, no," said Uncle Sam, I was only a naturalized Canadian and the non-quota privilege was granted only to born Canadians. I was not allowed to enter the country alone. I needed to be chaperoned by my Canadian wife. My mother came to the rescue and looked after our infants while my Canadian wife came with me to assure Uncle Sam that I wouldn't wet my pants or do something un-Canadian or un-American.

Some years later, Canada, in an effort to out-dumb Uncle Sam introduced a law that the children of men who took out U.S. citizenship between certain years would lose their Canadian citizenship. Over 100,000 Canadians, some fifth generation Canadians, lost their citizenship. One of these, a professional golfer who needed to tour frequently was grounded since he no longer had a citizenship (of any kind) Many of the Canadians who lost their citizenship didn't even know it because they didn't travel.

Now do any of you dispersed Czernowitzers have any idea about our present citizenship status vis-a-vis Romania? In 1994 I visited Bucharest and when I presented my passport at the airport, the uniformed guard, seeing my birthplace, said in a surprised voice, "But you are one of us!" I was tempted to say, "You better first consult with Antonescu's descendants, but I just grinned and said, "Da."

I once had dealings with the commercial attache at the Romanian consulate in Toronto and when I told him I had dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship, I got a silly thought and asked, "Could I get a Romanian passport, too, since I was born in Romania?" He said, "Quit while you are up. The American's wouldn't like that."

There was an item in the news a couple of days ago about a possible technicality that would have Gadaffi Jewish and that if he sought refuge in Israel, because of Israeli law, he would have to be allowed to settle there.

Every time I come across one of these situations I think of a Woody Allen film in which by accident he becomes a Latin American dictator and he immediately announces new rules: "The official language in our country will now be Swedish!"
Then he added, "And men will change their underwear every hour. And they will wear them on the outside, so we can check."

Andy Halmay,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: czernowitz-l_at_list.cornell.edu
> Sent: Sun, 27 Feb 2011 00:19:41 -0500
> To: czernowitz-l_at_list.cornell.edu
> Subject: czernowitz-l digest: February 26, 2011
>
> CZERNOWITZ-L Digest for Saturday, February 26, 2011.
>
> 1. [Cz-L] Manholes.
> 2. [Cz-L]Heavy snow
> 3. [Cz-L]Old gate.
> 4. Re: [Cz-L]Old gate.
> 5. [Cz-L] Ziegeleigasse.
> 6. RE: [Cz-L] Are we Rumanians?
> 7. [Cz-L]*New - special new Holocaust section*
> 8. [Cz-L]Occupations/Trades Database
> 9. RE: [Cz-L]Old gate.
> 10. Re: [Cz-L]Old gate.
> 11. Re: [Cz-L] Yiddish Theatre - Scala
> 12. [Cz-L] Sorting the address books data according to street address
> 13. Re: [Cz-L] Yiddish Theatre
> 14. Re: [Cz-L] Are we Rumanians ?
>
>
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Received on 2011-02-27 09:06:29