The Personal Value of Citizenship
Wait, can I get a picture with it?”
I smile at my client, whose eyes are wide with anticipation and pride, and nod. I hand back her application packet and exchange for it her smartphone camera, which I use to snap a couple of pictures to capture the moment. “Sorry for being annoying,” she adds, “I’ve just been waiting forever for this moment.”
I work at the Citizenship Application Support Service (CASS), a consultation service that assists individuals with the Irish citizenship process. After learning the intricacies of the process and how difficult the application can be at parts, I wholeheartedly believe in the value of our service. In fact, I hear on a daily basis from our clients that they couldn’t have done it without us. Unfortunately, CASS is currently in a tight spot. The organization lost its funding from the Department of Justice and Equality at the end of May, just one week before I arrived in Ireland ready to work, and had to begin charging in order to keep its doors open.
The problem with introducing money into the matter is that you sometimes lose sight of the important things. Every day I sit at the front desk and watch potential clients walk in, hear of our price change, and walk right back out in shock. Between my supervisor’s frustration and the hushed conversations with board members that I heard pieces of, I knew the office could not operate much longer if we didn’t start making more money. I desperately wanted to help and began to put what I’ve learned in school to the test – I analyzed our situation, considered costs and revenues, and finally created a business strategy to maximize profit margin based on the value provided by our service. Long story short, all of this analytical work required me to assign a numerical value for citizenship.
It’s difficult for me to discern the value of CASS’s service because citizenship means different things to different people, but my closest point of reference is my parents, both of whom are first-generation immigrants. I still have memories from when I was young of sitting on the floor of my parents’ study as they filled out forms, stayed up late memorizing information for the citizenship test, and scouring mountains of documents to prove their residency. All in all, it took seven years for my parents to achieve citizenship in the United States. I can’t wrap my head around how exhausting that process must have been, but according to my parents, it was worth it for the sense of belonging and ownership that comes with being a citizen of the country you live in. I think about my parents, and the countless commemorative photographs I’ve taken for proud clients, and I can’t help but think that there’s no number big enough to capture the true value of citizenship.
Now, when I walk into work and sit down with another client, I try not to think of them as another figure on our annual report but rather an individual taking another step closer to becoming an Irish citizen. I think of my parents and the pride they take in citizenship, and remember that the value of citizenship is too intrinsic to be quantified for a cost-benefit analysis. As I input another entry into our database for “approved” applications, I don’t think about how that’s our 305th approved application thus far this year and how great that’ll look on our annual report. Instead, that’s another person who gets to take pride in Ireland and call it his/her own, and that’s valuable in itself.
