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Irregular migration and the growing problem of undocumented migrants is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century.
Millions of people around the world are leaving their countries, driven out by war or poverty, looking for better opportunities in more developed countries.
In response, the governments of these countries spend billions of dollars each year trying to stem this human flow.
Some have proposed solutions.
A day after taking power last January, the new President of the United States, Joe Biden, presented a plan to give a path to citizenship for more than 10 million undocumented migrants in this country.
And this week, Colombian President Ivn Duque surprised with a proposal that aims to regularize the migration situation of more than a million Venezuelans who live irregularly in the South American nation.
These initiatives were applauded by many migration experts and refugee agencies, who called the plans “historic.”
However, Biden and Duke’s proposals pale next to an initiative taken by a Roman emperor in the third century.
Marco Aurelio Severo Antonino Augusto – better known by his nickname, Caracalla – ruled the Roman Empire between the years 211 and 217, during the so-called Severus dynasty.
Although not one of the most memorable emperors, Caracalla has left his mark in history by achieving an unparalleled milestone: the biggest citizenship award of all time.
30 million
When Caracalla took power, the Roman Empire stretched from the Middle East to Hispania (as the Iberian Peninsula was known) and from Egypt to Great Britain (the island of Great Britain).
But only the inhabitants of Italy, the Romans living in other provinces (and their descendants) and a small group of inhabitants of the Empire had the full Roman citizen.
This changed overnight on July 11, 212.
Historical records indicate that the The constitution Anioniniana (Antonine Constitution), also known as the Edict of Caracalla.
The edict gave all free men in the Empire full Roman citizenship and all free women in the Empire the same rights as Roman women.
“This means that, dIn one fell swoop, 30 million people obtained Roman citizenshipSaid University of Cambridge historian and classical studies expert Mary Beard.
“This was the largest grant of citizenship in the history of the planet, and made everyone, including those who live in this remote province (which is part of today’s UK ), a part of the wider world, ”the scholar underlined in 2015 during a debate on the contributions of Roman civilization.
Equal rights
Carmen Lzaro Guillamn, professor of Roman law at Universitad Jaume I in Castelln de la Plana, Spain, explained to BBC Mundo the impact of Caracalla’s decision on the lives of those who were granted citizenship.
“At once opened up a whole range of possibilities for these people, ”said the lawyer.
“Getting the Roman citizen was considered something very precious because at that time Rome was the center of the world,” he explained.
“Having citizenship allows the inhabitants of the provinces to have the same rights as the Romans. It meant having access to the whole sphere of Roman civil law.”
This not only facilitated access to public office. It also granted equal rights in civil matters such as marriage or inheritance.
Moreover, it had a major impact on those who traded in the vast Roman Empire.
Lzaro Guillamn is one example.
“It’s as if today a Swiss company wanted to do business in Uruguay. And suddenly she can do it on equal terms. It made your life easier, ”he noted.
The reasons
Some historians point out that Caracalla’s decision to grant citizenship to the majority of his subjects was not motivated by a desire to expand rights, but had much less noble ends.
In his work “Roman History”, the politician and military man Cassius Dio (also known as Dio Cassius), a contemporary of Caracalla, stated that the emperor’s intention was to increase tax revenues of the Empire by increasing the number of people who have to pay taxes.
The aim would have been to finance costly military campaigns on the northern border against the Germans and in the east against the Parthians.
The strategy, if true, has failed.
Two decades after the publication of the Constitutio Antoniniana, the Roman Empire entered what is known as the crisis of the third century, a period of great political, economic and social disorder that divided the territory into three distinct entities: the Roman Empire, Gaul and Palmyra.
It’s also curious – Lzaro Guillamn admits – that the Edict of Caracalla seems to have left some records, despite its massive effects.
“There are very few subsequent sources, both historical, legal and literary, which cite the Constitutio Antoniniana and this is curious for such a relevant stage whose impact must have been profound”, he observes.
“Capable was a long overdue measure that did not have the impact expected,” he speculates.
“Or maybe it didn’t quite please the jurists and scholars of the day and the past on tiptoe (quietly).”
Comparisons
Beyond that, Lzaro Guillamn believes that the universalization of the Roman citizen some valuable lessons for today’s world.
In 2019, the Spanish jurist wrote a thesis entitled: “The notion of Roman citizenship as a tool for reflection in European construction”.
However, academia is the first to notice that be careful when you compare what happened in the third century with what is happening today.
“It is clear that the granting of Roman citizenship to all the free peoples of the Roman Empire was a revolution, but the comparison with some current situations is perhaps forced, because the situations were very different.”
To begin with, he points out, the circumstances of the granting of citizenship in Caracalla have little to do with those experienced by the majority of undocumented migrants who today claim a nationality.
“Caracalla grants Roman citizenship to people who had conquered, they were not migrants. It is not the same thing,” he observes.
However, he states that “what is clear is that the teaching is that if the person living in a certain state is considered nothing, most likely being out of the system ends up delivering something harmful for this system “.
Today, undocumented migrants, more than clandestine migrants, are “illegal”, he underlines, that is to say people without rights.
“You have to activate a mechanism so that these people can begin to integrate into the system.”
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