“These Are the Things You Gain If You Make Our Country Your Country”: U.S.–Vietnam War Draft Resisters and Military Deserters and the Meaning of Citizenship in North America in the 1970s

Abstract

In the mid‐1970s, many U.S. citizens who had not complied with the requirement that they participate in the military of the United States during the Vietnam War faced a dilemma. In the preceding decade, tens of thousands of them had immigrated to Canada—both legally and illegally—to resist compulsory military service. Richard Nixon refused to allow these resisters to return to the United States. His successor, Gerald Ford, allowed expatriates to return if they agreed to do alternative service. Jimmy Carter attempted to resolve the crisis with an amnesty. Canada did not participate in the Vietnam War and refused to extradite American men to the United States for violations of most conscription and military laws. However, in 1973, in the middle of an immigration crisis, Canada forced the hand of many Americans and others who had entered the country clandestinely by giving them only sixty days to reconcile their residency status with the Canadian government or to risk becoming illegal immigrants and to face deportation. The shifting matrix of laws on both sides of the U.S.–Canada border forced American exiles to decide whether to risk having a status that officially satisfied neither country, to accept the terms of the Ford or Carter repatriation plans and reclaim the perquisites of life in the United States, to remain illegal immigrants in Canada, or to acquire Canadian citizenship. Residency in Canada opened the possibility for a different type of citizenship for American men, one less concerned with their potential contribution to the military might of a nation and more tolerant of their freedom of expression, which might include opposition to war.