It is commonly stated that history repeats itself. Now, we are able to look back and see One of the struggles of the modern world is the divisive discussion of what constitutes a citizen. In the United States, we have been dealing with this problem for decades, with it becoming hot-topic debate in the recent years. However, Ancient Greece Rome had similar disagreements between its people over 2,000 years ago. After the Peloponnesian War, Athens had to decide whether or not metics and slaves were going to be allowed citizenship as the city was rebuilding.
During our the second assembly meeting in class, we discussed the electorate, or how we were going to define Athenian citizenship as. I was a moderate democrat, so we proposed a bill that people with Athenian parents will be granted citizenship prima facie, while metics could apply to be citizens and be screened to see whether or not their allegiance is with Athens. The assembly must be filled with those who will take the best into account for Athens and its citizens. The main argument we had is that Athens is already having to fight with external adversaries, why should we have to deal with major internal strife as well? This is also seen in current disputes over immigration.
It seems as though immigration has become the focus of major political campaigns. The American public feeds off of political debate regarding the border between the United States and Mexico. In 2012, Barack Obama developed the “Dreamers” protected under The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, also known as DACA. Children that have been living in the States for their whole lives have an attachment to this country and should be able to have the opportunity to become citizens. They have grew up with a different familial culture, but that just adds to the diversity of the population in the United States. We are already able to see that some things never change, because even with DACA, the people applying are “vetted for any criminal history or threat to national security and must be students or have completed school or military service” (The Guardian). This goes back to our assembly meetings in class where we decided that metics may be granted citizenship after our own vetting process that determined their loyalty to Athens. In reality, metics and other loyal supporters did receive Athenian citizenship (UChicago). It is interesting to see the parallels between two situations thousands of years apart.
Honestly, I did not even recognize the similarities in current problems we are dealing with today. I think that is the importance of history. We need to be able to understand the historical significance of events and learn from them for the future. Writing this blog and doing some more research has definitely refined my views on DACA and Dreamers. I would have never been prompted to do more research on the modern problems without learning more about the past.
Corinne DeSpain
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/04/donald-trump-what-is-daca-dreamers
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/4B*.html
The West in the Pre-Modern World 