英语专业四级阅读理解高分特训100篇-第4章 英语专业四级能力提升篇(社会生活类)【圣才出品】

社会生活类（Passage 95～100）

Passage 95 题材：社会生活类字数：472 建议用时：6.5分钟

At the height of the Dutch golden age, merchants exported their goods and their families to colonies on four continents. Four centuries later their descendants are less impressed by such adventuring. A new law proposed by the Dutch government aims not only to limit dual nationality among immigrants but also to make it easier for the authorities to strip members of the 850,000-plus Dutch diaspora of their nationality, should they secure a second citizenship abroad.

Guus Bosman, a Dutchman living in Washington, DC, calls the proposal “mean-spirited”. Eelco Keij, a Dutch citizen in New York and one of the loudest critics of his government's proposals, thinks that these days dual nationality is no more than “a har mless side-effect of globalization”.

By seeking to toughen its nationality laws, the Netherlands is bucking a global trend. Other governments have increasingly abandoned such policies. In 2008 the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank, found that almost half the world's countries tolerate dual nationality in some form. Armenia, Ghana, the Philippines, Kenya, Uganda and South Korea are all recent reformers. Haiti and Tanzania have new laws in preparation. Even Denmark, which places strict restrictions on citizenship, is mulling a change.

The idea that it is possible, let alone desirable, to allow multiple citizenship is relatively recent. In1849 George Bancroft, an American historian and diplomat, said

that for a man to have two countries was as intolerable as for him to have two wives. In 1930 the League of Nations proclaimed that “every person should have a nationality and should have one nationality only”. A treaty in Europe required countries to limit dual citizenship, until it lapsed in the 1990s. Immigrants have commonly had to renounce their old citizenship when taking on a new one; the countries that they left have often disowned emigrants naturalized abroad. These practices were intended in part to preserve the sacredness of citizenship, but they have also been aimed at closing loopholes that might allow migrants to escape taxes or conscription.

One reason for more liberalization is practicality: dual nationality has become harder to control. Increased migration and rising numbers of cross-border marriages mean that ever more children are born to multinational families. The number of Dutch citizens holding a second nationality, for instance, almost tripled to 1.2m between 1995 and 2010, with newborns accounting for a significant share of the growth. Governments could once force women to take only their husband's nationality, says Maarten Vink of Maastricht University. In an era of sexual equality such policies are untenable.

Governments that take in many immigrants also see benefits from allowing them to keep their old passports. Research suggests that immigrants who do not fear losing their existing nationality are more likely to pursue naturalization in their adopted countries—and subsequently more likely to integrate than those who maintain long-term residence as aliens.