So far, all of the information I have found pertaining to the duties of a citizen have been found in resources not specifically geared towards the citizen by our federal government. Our government doesn’t seem to have very much to say about it. I did find one site that had at least something to say about it – the Citizen and Immigration Services web site. What does it say?
In searching I came upon the Citizen and Immigration Services web site. When you click on the Citizenship link it takes you to the US Citizen Resource Center page/section of the site. I thought I would find everything I was looking for here. Unfortunately, similar to my google search, all I found waas information on how to study for, take and pass the US Naturalization test.
I looked in the Index A-Z: D – Duty is not listed. R – Responsibility is not listed. O -Obligation is not listed. I looked in the section called How Do I Guides: Nothing about what I’m required to do as a citizen can be found there either. I looked under the Topics section and nothing to be found here either. I use the Search feature using the keywords ‘Duty‘ which only brings up a bunch of military stuff, none specifying anything regarding citizenship duties to the military. ‘Good Citizen‘ only brings up things about what’s needed to become a citizen, i.e. good moral character naturalization requirement.
Surprisingly, the ‘Responsibilities’ keyword search returns up a document called What are the benefits and responsibilities of citizenship. Here’s what the US Government says about our responsibilities as citizens.
Responsibilities in the Oath
- Give up all prior allegiance to any other nation or sovereignty
- Swear allegiance to the United States
- Support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States
- Serve the country when required
Responsibilities other than those mentioned in the Oath.
- Participate in the political process by registering and voting in elections
- Serving on a jury
- Respect the different opinions, cultures, ethnic groups and religions found in this country.
- Tolerance for differences.
- Participating in your community.
There may be an entire section on this site where they outline all the possible responsibilities of a citizen, dive into them in detail, expand on them, compare and contrast them to other countries, dig into differences of duties by communities, outline limits to those duties, etc. If they are there, I couldn’t find them and they must be well hidden, because I looked! My guess is no one’s written those up and put them on the site. I wonder why my government doesn’t clearly outline something, that I would think, is a cornerstone of my living here?
So, with only a small addition and a small edit coming from this source, here is my version eight (v 008) of Citizens List of Duties, now just a few lines bigger.
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