There are natural reasons why getting clearance should be harder for those who aren't 3rd/4th generation native though, right.

Like, if I apply for a job in Nigeria that needs clearances, if the other guys are all from Nigeria then investigating their backgrounds are consistent, talking to their neighbours, etc., is relatively easy. Especially if they all have parents who already have files with identity info.

If I'm from Kenya, then first up you're going to need translators, then you're going to need political accord or covert operatives, birth records in rural Kenya possibly don't exist.

Also you want to leave me for a while on observation to see if I do anything suspicious; that needs time.

It doesn't matter if the Nigerians want me, to do the same level of investigation would take far longer.

> There are natural reasons why getting clearance should be harder for those who aren't 3rd/4th generation native though, right.

Why do you assume that non-white people are not "3rd/4th generation natives"? Black people have been in America since before the country even existed, whereas my own (white Italian) lineage has been here less than a hundred years.

I don't understand, where do you think I made that assumption?

The GP stated they were Asian, so presumably they at least have less establishment in USA than a person from USA.

Perhaps they meant their family at some point in the past came from Asia, but if they couldn't describe their heritage clearly that wouldn't really be my fault.

>The GP stated they were Asian, so presumably they at least have less establishment in USA than a person from USA.

Asian is just used as a description of someone's race in the US. It doesn't imply that a person was not born there. The OP also mentioned black coworkers without saying anything to indicate that they were not from the US.

In other words, you'd readily give Snowden a high clearance?

Yep! TBH I think it really says alot about the general failure of the US whistleblower statutes/protections that Snowden had to release information in the way that he did and has subsequently been so easy to vilify. IMHO ol' Eddy actually went about the leaking of classified info in a pretty responsible way with the whole Poitras/Greenwald "Big Trouble in Little Hong Kong." However you feel about the guy personally the import of his revelations is pretty undeniable insofar as it stimulated legitimate reforms of the systems he was criticizing (see: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275019554_The_Conse... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-the-nsa-spying...) which seems to me to be the basic test for legit whistleblowing. So, yeah, I would give the little eccentric a pretty high clearance given his track record... I'd probably let him out of russia too.

Sorry I don't know Snowden's heritage or if he would check out under security clearance. He looks to me like he could have East European heritage. If his parents were from the country of Georgia, say, then I'd expect clearance processes to take far longer (with their local script I imagine far fewer security cleared translators, and that acquiring documents on parents/relatives would be much harder).

Does that not seem reasonable?

Where the BME from native families your parents background plays a big part

And for some clearances not having all four grandparents be natives is a big hurdle - it certainly use to be that way in the uk civil service when I started work

Black Americans are about as likely to have native born grandparents as white Americans, though. (I would guess.) It's amazing how strong the subconscious correlation between "not white" and "foreign" is in the US.

The use of "native" in this thread is confusing. My understanding is that in the US, the term is normally used to refer to "Native Americans"

I'm not sure what the correct term would be though. "Natural born citizen" normally means someone who is a citizen through birthright, usually, but not always, because they were born within the US.

The phrase that I've most commonly heard is "Nth generation American", but does this require all members of N generations to be citizens? My daughter is eligible to be a "Daughter of the Revolution", but I'm not (yet) a citizen

"Native American" is used to refer to Native Americans, but the term "native" by itself just has the normal range of meanings.

I always wonder how the word alien in the USA points to either a non-american human or a being from another planet. What kind of world view causes people to think there are 2 kinds of sentient beings in this universe: Americans and everything/everyone else.

Is easy to read to much things into something you don't have a good understanding of. But from my experience, assuming racism or something similar is usually premature and overly simplistic. There may be many reasons why a white persons process can take less time than someone black, when if he is naive born. Similarly if two white candidates have very different backgrounds.

>There may be many reasons why a white persons process can take less time than someone black, when if he is naive born

Obviously there can be reasons in specific cases, but there should be no reason why it takes longer in general. At least, no reason that I can see. What are you thinking of?

It is no doubt overly simplistic to assume conscious racism, but as this thread demonstrates, Americans who are not KKK racists nonetheless have a lot of subconscious attitudes regarding race that can have an influence.