TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been
placed at the end of the book. Many of the Tables have associated
footnotes, which have been kept at the bottom of that table and
labelled as a ‘note’ rather than a footnote. These note anchors are
denoted by {number}.
Some Tables were very wide; these have been split into two or more
parts, with the first column of the first part being repeated in the
other parts. When relevant, the first two columns have been repeated.
In those Tables with ‘court number’ from 1 to 29 as a header, court
number 11 is always missing; this is not an error, it is absent in
the original text.
Some other minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
AMERICANS BY CHOICE
[Illustration: (decorative icon)]
_Americanization Studies_
SCHOOLING OF THE IMMIGRANT.
Frank V. Thompson, Supt. of Public Schools, Boston
AMERICA VIA THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
John Daniels
OLD WORLD TRAITS TRANSPLANTED.
Robert E. Park, Professorial Lecturer, University of Chicago
Herbert A. Miller, Professor of Sociology, Oberlin College
A STAKE IN THE LAND.
Peter A. Speek, in charge, Slavic Section, Library of Congress
IMMIGRANT HEALTH AND THE COMMUNITY.
Michael M. Davis, Jr., Director, Boston Dispensary
NEW HOMES FOR OLD.
Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, Professor of Social Economy, University
of Chicago
THE IMMIGRANT PRESS AND ITS CONTROL.
Robert E. Park, Professorial Lecturer, University of Chicago
ADJUSTING IMMIGRANT AND INDUSTRY. (In preparation)
William M. Leiserson, Chairman, Labor Adjustment Boards,
Rochester and New York
AMERICANS BY CHOICE.
John P. Gavit, Vice-President, New York _Evening Post_
THE IMMIGRANT’S DAY IN COURT. (In press)
Kate Holladay Claghorn, Instructor in Social Research, New
York School of Social Work
SUMMARY. (In preparation)
Allen T. Burns, Director, Studies in Methods of Americanization
_Harper & Brothers Publishers_
AMERICANIZATION STUDIES
ALLEN T. BURNS, DIRECTOR
AMERICANS
BY CHOICE
BY
JOHN PALMER GAVIT
[Illustration: (publisher colophon)]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1922
AMERICANS BY CHOICE
Copyright, 1922
By Harper & Brothers
Printed in the U. S. A.
_First Edition_
G--W
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The material in this volume was gathered by the Division of Health
Standards and Care of Studies in Methods of Americanization.
Americanization in this study has been considered as the union of
native and foreign born in all the most fundamental relationships and
activities of our national life. For Americanization is the uniting
of new with native-born Americans in fuller common understanding
and appreciation to secure by means of self-government the
highest welfare of all. Such Americanization should perpetuate no
unchangeable political, domestic, and economic regime delivered once
for all to the fathers, but a growing and broadening national life,
inclusive of the best wherever found. With all our rich heritages,
Americanism will develop best through a mutual giving and taking of
contributions from both newer and older Americans in the interest
of the commonweal. This study has followed such an understanding of
Americanization.
FOREWORD
This volume is the result of studies in methods of Americanization
prepared through funds furnished by the Carnegie Corporation of New
York. It arose out of the fact that constant applications were being
made to the Corporation for contributions to the work of numerous
agencies engaged in various forms of social activity intended to
extend among the people of the United States the knowledge of their
government and their obligations to it. The trustees felt that a
study which should set forth, not theories of social betterment,
but a description of the methods of the various agencies engaged in
such work, would be of distinct value to the cause itself and to the
public.
The outcome of the study is contained in eleven volumes on the
following subjects: Schooling of the Immigrant; The Press; Adjustment
of Homes and Family Life; Legal Protection and Correction; Health
Standards and Care; Naturalization and Political Life; Industrial and
Economic Amalgamation; Treatment of Immigrant Heritages; Neighborhood
Agencies and Organization; Rural Developments; and Summary. The
entire study has been carried out under the general direction of Mr.
Allen T. Burns. Each volume appears in the name of the author who
had immediate charge of the particular field it is intended to cover.
Upon the invitation of the Carnegie Corporation a committee
consisting of the late Theodore Roosevelt, Prof. John Graham Brooks,
Dr. John M. Glenn, and Mr. John A. Voll has acted in an advisory
capacity to the director. An editorial committee consisting of Dr.
Talcott Williams, Dr. Raymond B. Fosdick, and Dr. Edwin F. Gay has
read and criticized the manuscripts. To both of these committees the
trustees of the Carnegie Corporation are much indebted.
The purpose of the report is to give as clear a notion as possible of
the methods of the agencies actually at work in this field and not to
propose theories for dealing with the complicated questions involved.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Publisher’s Note v
Foreword vii
Table of Contents ix
List of Tables xvi
List of Diagrams xxi
Introduction xxiii
CHAPTER
I. OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL 1
These Are Our Voters! 2
Primitive Attitudes Toward Immigrants 3
Legal Position of the Alien 5
What Is an “American”? 7
The American Has No Racial Marks 10
Not Racial, but Cultural 12
Essentials of “Americanism” 14
II. NEW MEMBERS AND AN OLD GAME 17
Factors in Immigration 18
Politics Welcomes the Irish 21
They Always Have Been Democrats 21
Early Germans Became Republicans 24
Effects of the Gold Craze 25
Vast Naturalization Frauds 25
First Choice in Politics 30
The Politician Close to Humanity 33
Political Aspects of Social Clubs 35
Politics a Great Americanizing Force 37
III. CITIZENSHIP: UNDER THIS FLAG AND OTHERS 40
Roots of Political Society 42
Influence of Emigration to America 43
The Right to Emigrate 44
The Subject _vs._ the Active Member 45
Essentials of Citizenship: Ancient--and American 46
Bases of American Citizenship 49
Common-law Definition Taken for Granted 50
Concerning Americans Born Abroad 51
Children Born at Sea 52
Question of Dual Nationality 53
Countries Denying the Right of Expatriation 54
Conditional Recognition 55
Naturalization Treaties With the United States 55
Great Britain 56
Germany 57
Citizenship Takes No Account of Sex 62
“A Woman Without a Country” 63
The American Under Three Jurisdictions 64
IV. DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATURALIZATION LAW 69
Our “Charter Members” 69
First Naturalization Laws 70
Efforts Toward Uniformity 73
Bars Up Against Alien Anarchists 77
Various Presidents Discussed Naturalization 77
Definite Reform at Last 80
Naturalization Commission Appointed 80
What the Law Requires 83
V. THE LAW IN OPERATION 89
Restrictions of Race 92
Limitations Regarding Age 95
The Declaration of Intention 96
“Declaration Invalid” 98
Should Declaration Be Abolished? 102
Naturalization Judges Favor Its Retention 105
The Seven-year Limitation 107
The Certificate of Lawful Entry 109
The Vexatious Question of Names 112
The Petition for Naturalization 115
Ninety Days’ Interval Before Hearing 119
The Final Hearing in Court 119
Must “Speak” the English Language 120
Attached to the Constitution 123
In the Matter of “Continuous Residence” 124
The Absurdity of the “Incompetent Witness” 126
Judges Denounce the Absurdity 129
Depositions of Witnesses 133
“Good Moral Character” 135
The Final Ceremony--Oath of Allegiance 137
Ceremonies of Initiation 138
VI. PERSONAL EQUATION IN NATURALIZATION 143
A Function of Local Courts 145
“Personal Equation” of the Judges 147
Bird’s-eye View of the Questionnaire 154
General Trend of Judges’ Opinions 158
The Clerks of the Courts 161
The Question of Adequate Clerical Force 163
When the Clerk Pockets the Fees 164
Forms of Petty Graft 165
“Personal Equation” in the Naturalization Service 167
A Scrupulously Honest Service 169
Need of Unifying Influence 170
“Nothing to Litigate!” 171
Confused State of the Educational Test 173
The Craze for “Americanizing” Somebody Else 177
Extra Responsibilities Self-sought 180
Enormous Arrearage in Bureau’s Work 186
The Aliens Support the Bureau 189
Fitness of Candidates 193
“Personal Equation” of the Public 195
VII. SOME STATISTICS CONCERNING IMMIGRANTS, “NEW” AND “OLD” 197
Paucity of Dependable Information 199
Vast Arrearages in Examinations 202
Report of Immigration Commission of 1907 204
Legend of “The New Immigration” 204
Disparity in Numbers Among Racial Groups 206
The Factor of Length of Residence 208
The Factor of Language 214
Length of Residence and Earning Power 215
Voting on “First Papers” 217
What Becomes of the Declarations? 218
VIII. LATER STATISTICS--IN WHICH SOME TWENTY-SIX THOUSAND
PETITIONERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES 225
More Than a Fifth of All Petitioners 226
From Twenty-eight Representative Courts 226
In a Reasonably Normal Year 227
The Racial Groups Are Typical 228
Relative “Civic and Political Interest” 231
How Did These Petitioners Fare? 231
As Regards “Immoral Character” 234
The Showing as to “Ignorance” 235
Time-intervals in Naturalization 236
How Do the Racial Groups Compare? 238
They Are Young People 241
Relative Age and “Political Interest” 242
The Real Racial Distinction 243
Race and Relative Age at Arrival 244
At the Beginning of Married Life 247
As for “Stability of Residence” 247
Intellectual Equipment and Occupation 250
General Conclusions 252
IX. CITIZENSHIP VIA MILITARY SERVICE 255
Position of the Alien Soldier 256
Revolutionary Legislative Action 258
Citizens at Heart, but “Enemy Aliens” 260
All Safeguards Abandoned 263
All Race Restrictions Removed 265
Ordinary Naturalization Disputed 265
Statistics of Alien Registration 267
Aliens and Military Service 269
Foreign Born Eager to Serve 272
Austrians Who Were Not for Austria 274
There Was Human War-time Psychology 275
Diplomatic Requests for Exemption 276
Reciprocal Conscription Among Cobelligerents 278
Of German Descent, but Loyal Americans 278
Desertion, Among Aliens and Citizens 279
War’s Test of “the Melting-pot” 281
An Old Practice with a New Significance 282
What Some Judges Thought of It 283
Here Was “Attachment to Our Principles”! 285
Assimilating the Enemies of Tyranny 287
Episodes of Military Naturalization 288
Those Who Went Without Citizenship 292
A Great Composite Record of Loyalty 294
X. THE FOREIGN-BORN WOMAN, HER HOME AND HER CHILDREN, IN
AMERICAN POLITICS 296
Regardless of Qualifications 298
Unmarried Women Have Male Rights 298
Dangers of “Derivative Citizenship” 299
Children of Aliens Here American Born 301
“Derivative Citizenship” Almost Equals the Direct 302
Woman Suffrage Was Widespread 303
Applicants Came as Young Married Men 304
The Mother Must Be “Americanized” 305
Must Learn Politics by Political Activity 307
Few Women Seek Naturalization 309
Some Courts Notice the Wives 311
Obstacles of Distance and Expense 312
Woman Suffrage Opens a New Era 314
Opinions of Naturalizing Judges 315
650,000 “Derivative Voters” Extant 317
Largely an Ignorant Vote 318
Political Indifference Not Peculiar to Foreign Born 320
Many Were Called, but Few Responded 321
Foreign-born Women Without Political Experience 323
They Are Good Material 324
How the Women Can Be Reached 327
A Specific Example--It Works 330
What the Children Did 333
XI. THE FOREIGN-BORN VOTER IN ACTION 335
Divided by Racial Traditions 338
Aliens Not Without Political Influence 339
There is no “Foreign Vote” 340
Old Evils Abolished 341
Corruption Was Not an Importation 343
Home-grown in Adams County, Ohio! 344
Who Is the Buyer of Votes? 345
Attempts to Find the “Foreign Vote” 347
Response to Progressive Ideas 354
Some Results from Cleveland 357
“Civic Interest” in Grand Rapids 365
Municipal Voters’ League of Chicago 369
Some Other Instances 373
XII. THE FOREIGN BORN IN RADICAL MOVEMENTS 377
The Socialist Press 380
Dues-paying Socialist Members 381
Racial Groups of Socialists 383
The Socialist Vote 385
German Influence in Socialism 387
Jews in Socialism 390
Effect of the War on Socialism 391
The Single-tax and Agrarian Movements 393
The Nonpartisan League 397
Ultraradical Movements Nonpolitical 401
The “I. W. W.” and the Homeless Worker 403
XIII. SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 410
No Lowering of Standards 416
A Function Administrative or Judicial? 420
Physical Conditions and Dignity 422
Function of the Naturalization Bureau 425
APPENDIX 429
INDEX 435
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE PAGE
1. Immigration from Ireland and Germany Each Year,
1820-1840 22
2. Aliens Naturalized 1856-1867 in two Courts in New
York City 26
3. Applicants for Naturalization in Supreme Court, New
York City in October, 1868 28
4. Number of Replies from Judges in Each District 149
5. Appropriation for the Naturalization Service for each
fiscal year, 1908-1919 185
6. Receipts from Naturalization fees and disbursements,
1907-1920 190
7. Number of Declarations of Intention and Petitions
for Naturalization issued, 1907-1920 201
8. Per Cent that fully Naturalized Male Employees are
of Total Male Employees who were twenty-one
years of age and over at Time of Coming and who
have been in the United States ten years or over,
compared with the per cent that Male Employees
in the United States ten years or over are of those
here five years and over, by race 207
9. Per Cent of Foreign Born Male Employees Reporting
Citizenship who have been in the United States
each specified period of years, by race 209
10. Present Political Condition of Foreign Born Male
Employees who have been in the United States five
years or over and who were twenty-one years of age
at time of coming, by race 211
11. Average weekly earnings of male employees, by race
and specified industries 216
12. Per Cent of Foreign Born of Voting Age having First
Papers and also per cent in states Permitting
Aliens to Vote on first papers, compared with certain
states not Permitting Aliens to Vote on first
papers for 1900 and 1910 218
13. Number of Declarations filed each year 1908-1912
with Average Number and Ratio of Petitions consummating
in five-year period ending each year 220
14. Yearly Number of Declarations Filed 1908-1912 and
Number of final Petitions for Naturalization Assumed
to have been based upon those Declarations 221
15. Ratio of Declarations of Intention to Petition for
Naturalization by States 223
16. Comparison by Races of (1) Naturalization Petitioners
Studied, (2) Unnaturalized Males twenty-one
years of age or over in nine cities and in the
country as a whole, in 1910 229
17. Comparison of Causes of Denial for the years 1908-1918
and 1913-1914 232
18. Racial Distribution of Petitioners Denied 1913-1914,
and the Per Cent Denials for six Principal Causes 233
19. Per Cent of Denials due to “Immoral Character,” by
Race 235
20. Per Cent of Denials due to “Ignorance,” by Race 236
21. Average Time Elapsing between Arrival and Declaration
of Intention; between Declaration and Petition
and between Petition and Naturalization 237
22. Average Interval before filing Petition after Attainment
of twenty-one years, for those arriving at
ages, 1-14, by Race 239
23. Average Interval before filing Petition after Arrival
at Ages 16-20, by Race 240
24. Average Interval before filing Petition after Arrival
at Ages twenty-one or over, by Race 241
25. Number and Per cent of Petitioners for three age
groups 242
26. Racial Distribution of Petitioners for the age periods
“over twenty-one” “15-20” and “1-14” 246
27. Number of Declarations made in “Other” States 249
28. Principal Occupations Represented in Petitions for
Naturalizations filed in seven Cities 1913-1914,
ratio between Number of Petitioners and total of
Foreign Born White Males in those Occupations in
those Cities in 1910 251
29. Number and Per Cent of Petitioners in Each Occupation 252
30. Allegiance of Aliens Registered under the Selective
Service Act 268
31. Fitness for Service of Alien Registrants 269
32. Neutrals withdrawing from the Service 273
33. Diplomatic Requests for Discharge of and Total
Registration of Aliens by Country of Birth 277
34. Comparison of Reported Desertions of Alien and
Citizen Registrants 281
35. Years in which full and partial Suffrage was Granted
to Women, by States 303
36. Maximum Enrollment in Citizenship and English
classes, in United States in 1919 322
37. Per Cent of New York City Vote Cast for McCall in
1913, Dix in 1910 by Voters of Native Parentage 350
38. Per Cent of New York City Vote Cast for McCall in
1913, Dix in 1910 by Russians and Austrians 350
39. Per Cent of New York City Vote Cast for McCall
in 1913, Dix in 1910 by the Irish 351
40. Per Cent of New York City Vote Cast for McCall in
1913, Dix in 1910 by Germans 352
41. Per Cent of New York City Vote Cast for McCall in
1913, Dix in 1910 by Italians 352
42. Per Cent of Socialist Vote in New York City in 1910
and 1913 by Nationality 353
43. Distribution of Dominant Nationality in ninety-two
precincts in Cleveland 358
44. Distribution of Democratic and Republican Votes in
Cleveland in 1913-1915 among Certain Racial
Groups 361
45. Per Cent of Certain Races Exercising Second and
Third Choice 362
46. Vote Cast in precincts of Varying Racial Make-up in
Three Wards of Grand Rapids, 1918, 1919 366
47. Per Cent of Women Registered in thirteen Michigan
cities 368
48. Number of Socialists paying dues each year from
1903 to 1915 382
49. Ranks of Race Groups in Relative Socialist Strength 384
50. Socialist Vote for President from 1880 to 1898 385
51. The Socialist Vote for President by States from 1900
to 1920 386
52. Per Cent Circulation of the German Press in nine
states 388
53. Socialist Vote for President in nine states from 1900
to 1916 389
54. Membership of the Nonpartisan League by states
in December, 1918 398
55. Distribution of Petitions Studied, by Courts 429
56. Sex and Marital Condition of Petitioners 430
57. Petitioners’ Children Under twenty-one years of age 431
58. Age of Petitioners at Arrival and Time Elapsing
between twenty-one years of age (or later arrival)
and Petition, 1913-1914 432
59. Number and Per Cent of Petitions Denied for each
Cause, by Courts _Facing_ 432
60. Number of Petitions Denied for each Cause, by
Country of Birth _Facing_ 432
61. Distribution of Petitioners, by Country of Birth and
Courts _Facing_ 432
62. Distribution of Petitioners, Length of Time from
Arrival to Petition, by Country of Birth _Facing_ 432
63. Distribution of Petitions, by Occupation and Courts 433
64. Average Number of Years from Date of Arrival to
Date of Petition, by Occupation 434
65. Number of Petitioners, by Country of Birth and
Occupation _Facing_ 434
66. Ratio between Naturalization Petitions filed in 1913-1914
and Total Foreign Born White Males ten
years of age and over in 1910, by Occupation for
seven cities _Facing_ 434
LIST OF DIAGRAMS
DIAGRAM PAGE
1. Average interval before filing petition after attainment
of twenty-one years (or time of
arrival, if arriving after twenty-one years)
for petitioners arriving at ages of one to
fourteen, fifteen to twenty, and twenty-one
years and over 242
2. Average interval before filing petition after arrival
at age twenty-one or over by races.
The bars which are in black represent
countries from which the subject people
constituted almost entirely the immigration
to this country 245
INTRODUCTION
It would require a very long list of names to give specific mention
of all those who have rendered substantial aid in gathering the
information on which this volume is based. The Commissioner of
Naturalization, Mr. Richard K. Campbell; the former Director of
Citizenship, Mr. Raymond F. Crist, and the chief examiners under
their direction, have done all in their power to afford information
and other assistance. Several hundred judges of naturalization
courts in all parts of the country, took pains to answer our
questionnaire and personal letters on special questions. Students of
immigration and naturalization problems have been ungrudging in their
co-operation.
The tedious and painstaking work of compiling the information
contained in more than 26,000 petitions for naturalization, analyzed
in the statistical chapters of this book, was done more especially
under the direction of Professor Raymond Moley, then at Western
Reserve University, Cleveland; Hornell Hart, of Cincinnati; Professor
S. C. Kohs, of Reed College, for Portland, Oregon; Professor T. T.
Waterman, of the University of the state of Washington, for Seattle,
and Professor L. H. Hawkins, of Clark University, for Worcester,
Mass. Aside from the service of these volunteer assistants, thanks
are due in more than perfunctory manner to the members of the staff
of the Americanization Study who devoted long hours to this exacting
task.
Professor Moley compiled most of the material used in the chapter on
the legal aspects of citizenship, and afforded information of the
utmost value woven into other parts of this volume.
The thanks of the author are due in particular to his personal
associates in the work, Mr. Paul Lee Ellerbe, formerly Chief
Naturalization Examiner at Denver, and Miss Elizabeth Miner King,
then of the staff of the New York Evening Post, now Mrs. Harold
Phelps Stokes, of Washington, D. C.
JOHN PALMER GAVIT
AMERICANS BY CHOICE
AMERICANS BY CHOICE
I
OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL
From the point of view of citizenship there are two kinds of
Americans--those who are American involuntarily by birth, and those
who are _American by choice_.
This book devotes itself to those who have become Americans not
by birth, but of their own free will and accord, by that process
of voluntarily adopting a fatherland known as Naturalization. It
endeavors to tell generally what happens to them in that process,
and something of what they do and contribute to our _political_
life after they have been admitted to active membership in our body
politic.
The subject is one much talked about--especially since the
beginning of the World War--and little understood save by those
who administer, or who in some way profit by, the operation, the
shortcomings, and confusions of the existing law and the system which
has grown up under it. That system is handicapped and beclouded by
public indifference and by the survival of ancient attitudes and
limitations, and bedeviled by the theories and prejudices of persons
and interests who, innocently or willfully--often with impeccable
intentions--stand in the way of progress or adhere for various
reasons to ideas and methods long since outgrown, or in the light of
to-day actively mischievous.
THESE ARE OUR VOTERS!
It is a current fashion of unthinking persons, contemplating the
seething masses of immigrants congested in our cities and in certain
rural sections, beholding the polyglot store signs and newspapers,
sensing the existence of languages, manners, and customs unfamiliar
and perhaps grotesque and even outrageous to their own habits and
ideas of propriety, and reflecting vaguely upon the real and supposed
evils of our political methods and machinery, to exclaim:
“And these are the people who corrupt our politics! These are the
voters who elect our presidents!”
Many who should know better indulge in such absurdities, and even
cite statistics to support them. A characteristic manner of reasoning
would read something like this:
“In 1910 there were 13,000,000 foreign-born persons in the United
States, and only a little more than 3,000,000 of them were
naturalized!”
Leaving the unreflecting hearer to forget that of the 13,000,000
only about half (6,646,817) were males of twenty-one years and over;
that more than half a million (570,772) had declared their intention
to become citizens; that there was no report as to the citizenship
of more than 775,000; so that the alien population of voting age,
and of the then voting sex, known to be unnaturalized, was only
about one-sixth of the total foreign born, or 2,266,535. This was
bad enough in all conscience, and the Woman-Suffrage Amendment to
the Constitution of the United States certainly has aggravated it,
since through it married immigrant women were made possible voters
through the naturalization of their husbands. But nothing can be
gained by exaggerating the facts, or constructing mare’s nests by
inferences from false assumptions. It is worth while to examine the
conditions, to observe the extent to which the foreign born actually
do participate in our political processes, and on the basis of such
facts as are available, to judge the effect that foreign birth does
tend to have upon the quality of that participation.
There is no disposition here to overlook or minimize the menace to
our social and civic life involved in the presence of vast masses of
undigested, unassimilated population of whatever race or kind--even
of our own people, herded in colonies, dominating large communities,
illiterate as regards our history and ideals, ignorant of our
language, traditions, and customs. It constitutes a social problem
of great magnitude and intricacy--though probably by no means so
menacing as it is our fashion to believe. But it is not one directly
affecting our political life or the operation of our political
machinery to any such degree as it is the custom to declaim. There
is little substantial evidence in these days that the foreign-born
voter, as such, is a source of corruption or other evil influence in
our politics.
PRIMITIVE ATTITUDES TOWARD IMMIGRANTS
Whether it is called an instinct, native in animal psychology, or an
inheritance of mental habit and tradition handed down from remote
times of family and tribal necessity, the fact is that we all regard
the stranger with a suspicion, diminishing perhaps as we broaden with
years, experience, and culture, but never entirely lost. Exceedingly
few are those great souls who have no trace of it. Especially if the
stranger wears a differently colored skin, expresses his thought
by unfamiliar vocal sounds and inflections, practices customs of
clothing, eating, marriage, religion, different from our own; lives
in houses of peculiar shape and use--these things all partake, for
the average person, of the outrageous and the dangerous, and usually
subtly offend those habits of group taste which we somehow feel to
have their roots in essential morality and the nature of things.
From time immemorial, all states and communities have laid special
disabilities and limitations upon the alien--all based ultimately
upon this habitual suspicion of those who belong to another tribe or
clan. As Edwin M. Borchard says:[1]
The legal position of the alien has in the progress of time
advanced from that of complete outlawry, in the days of early Rome
and the Germanic tribes, to that of practical assimilation with
nationals, at the present time. In the Twelve Tables of Rome, the
alien and enemy were classed together, the word “hostis” being
used interchangeably to designate both. Only the Roman citizen had
rights recognized in law.... The Germanic tribes, in the early
period, were hardly more hospitable to the alien than were the
Twelve Tables of the Romans.
With the extension of trade and travel, and especially with the
upgrowth of the feudal system, however, the utility of intercourse
with peaceable strangers, and the advantage of adding their personal
prowess, capacity, and assets to the resources of the community, came
to be more and more recognized, and the stranger within the gates was
accorded an increasing measure of tolerance, not to say welcome. But
this tolerance was at best of a very limited character; practically,
it was not much more than a rigid systematizing of the ways of
making the immigrant useful and contributory. It is not the province
of this report to dilate upon this branch of the subject. Suffice it
to say that to this day, over nearly the whole earth, the alien is
still subject to marked limitations, and that the exploitation of him
is neither a modern nor an American invention.
As for political rights, let alone any degree of participation in
the functions of government, no nation ever has contemplated the
possibility of such a thing--until a few of the American states,
clamoring for population from any corner of humanity, offered
virtually full political participation to the alien immediately upon
his mere declaration of intention to apply for citizenship--some
day! Until the excitement of the World War brought public attention
to the whole question of the position and influence of the foreign
born in America, this anomaly remained in force in at least a dozen
states: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan,
Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, and Oregon.
Since then it has been abolished by constitutional amendment or other
legislation in all but two--Arkansas and Missouri.[2]
LEGAL POSITION OF THE ALIEN
Thus far, from the point of view of international law and custom, it
has been left to each nation to regulate the privileges of, and the
restrictions upon, the alien, with the exception that certain nations
strong enough to enforce it have established in certain countries
held by them to be less than fully “civilized,” the principle of
_extra-territoriality_, by virtue of which their nationals must be
tried before special tribunals supervised by representatives of their
own nation. Generally speaking, and subject to the rule that aliens
of all races must be treated alike under processes of law, a nation
may deprive the alien of liberty of action, may prohibit or restrict
his ownership of property, may forbid or delimit his employment in
certain kinds of work or enterprises, and may expel and deport him,
at its pleasure. In other words, the status and rights of an alien
are determined almost absolutely by the municipal law in the country
in which he is domiciled. The only limitations upon this power are
those established by treaties, and by the general spread of humane
ideas, and the growing feeling--discouraged, perhaps, but by no means
halted, by the World War--of the solidarity of the human race.
In the United States, the rights of the alien include personal
protection, protection of property already acquired, and the use of
all means of redress and judicial protection enjoyed by citizens.[3]
The alien’s plight in this country has been complicated by the
peculiar relation subsisting between the Federal government and
that of the individual states. For it has frequently happened that
the government of the United States has been practically unable
to enforce the rights of aliens created by treaty when traversed
by state law. On more than one occasion threatening diplomatic
situations have been created by the existence of this condition.
This ancient feeling toward the alien, and the treatment, legal,
extra-legal, and illegal, to which he has been subjected in
respect of his person, his family, and his property, undoubtedly
have affected substantially his sentiments toward this country.
Disillusionment about the atmosphere and ways of the “Land of
the Free” is responsible for our loss of the citizenship of many
desirable immigrants. The man who will not submit quietly to
injustice is of the material of which our best citizens from the
beginning have been made. The kind of aliens who can accept without
resentment some of the things to which those of foreign birth and
speech have been subjected within our borders during very recent
times, are not fit to be Americans![4]
WHAT IS AN “AMERICAN”?
We are concerned just now, however, with the alien, not in his
general legal or social relations, but as material for active
membership in our community as an American citizen, as a voting
participant in the sovereignty held in this country by the people. As
such, he comes to a position unique in all the world. It is not yet
true--perhaps it will be very long before it can be true--that there
is absolutely no bar to any person on account of race; for the law
and its interpretations exclude from citizenship Chinese, Japanese,
and certain people of India not regarded as “white”--although the
blacks of Africa are expressly admitted. Nevertheless it may be said
broadly that, regardless of race, the immigrant can come to America
and win his way upon his own merits into the fellowship of what all
the world calls “Americans.”
Now, what is “an American”? What is it that makes a nation of us if
not a distinctive race? What is it that the immigrant joins, body and
soul, when he becomes “an American”?
Every little while somebody arises with ashes upon his head and
bemoans the threatened disappearance of what he is pleased to call
“the American type.” He never describes it--it is exceedingly
difficult to learn what may be meant by the phrase. This is not
strange, for there is no such thing if a racial type is meant. There
never has been any such thing.
Perhaps we know what the expression might mean in New England--a
combination of English, Scotch, or Welsh, who in turn would be bred
of Dane, Pict, and Scot, Saxon and Norman and Kelt, with perhaps a
strain of French, or maybe of Dutch. In Pennsylvania very likely
it would be English Quaker--or Plattdeutsch. The French-Spanish
combination in the Gulf region, the Scandinavian or German in the
Middle West and Northwest, the Spanish-Mexican along the Rio Grande
and in Southern California, and so on, are “American” by a title
as good as that of those who trace their descent from the Pilgrim
Fathers.
John Graham Brooks[5] remarks that “our piebald millions” are now
so interwoven with all that we are “that to silhouette the American
becomes yearly more baffling.” Says he:
The early writers have no such misgivings.... In 1889 I met
a German correspondent who had been four times to the United
States.... He said he brought back from his first journey a
clearly conceived image of the American. He was “sharp-visaged,
nervous, lank, and restless.” After the second trip this group of
adjectives was abandoned. He saw so many people who were not lank
or nervous; so many were rotund and leisurely, that he rearranged
his classification, but still with confidence. After a third trip
he insisted that he could still describe our countrymen, but not
by external signs. He was driven to express them in terms of
character. The American was resourceful, inventive, and supreme
in the pursuit of material ends. “My fourth trip,” he said, “has
knocked out the final attempt with the others. I have thrown them
all over like a lot of rubbish. I don’t know what the American is,
and I don’t believe anyone else knows.”
Prof. Franklin H. Giddings, in an informal address at Columbia
University, undertook, albeit somewhat casually, to point out the
characteristics which should mark a good American. He must be loyal,
must “play the game”; must have a local pride not only in the quality
of his country but in his home community, feeling and exemplifying
a moral and civic responsibility for the betterment of conditions
actuated by a wise and constructive idealism. Recognizing, no doubt,
in the very saying of this, that these things would mark the good
citizen of _any_ nation, he protested that after all was said, and
despite the difficulty of precise definition, there was something
distinctive, perceptible, and, in fact, perceived by the discerning;
real, however subtle and elusive, distinguishing the true American
from all other folk--“a certain sensitiveness to the finer values of
life; an admiration for these things.”
Well, certainly the ideal American is, and has, and does all of this;
certainly all Americans ought to be, and have, and do all of it! But
in all candor and fairness it must be acknowledged that it would be
invidious and altogether insupportable to claim it or _any_ of it as
in any proper sense racially distinctive of America.
THE AMERICAN HAS NO RACIAL MARKS
We cannot isolate any physical characteristics; we cannot segregate
any particular racial descent; one may search in vain for any
definable hereditary mental or spiritual characteristic that will
fit or typify all, or even many, of the “piebald millions” who
inhabit and vote, attain success and honor, and, at need, enlist
or be conscripted for war, in the varied jurisdictions of our
tremendous stretch of territory between the ancient French-Canadian
colonies of Maine and the Philippines; between the Virgin Islands and
Alaska. Even local adherence to our slogans of liberty, democracy,
consent-of-the-governed, and all the rest of our ecstatic vocabulary,
no longer insulates or distinguishes us in the world. The upspringing
democracies of the Old World, to which we have given example and
inspiration as well as emancipation from old autocracies, swear by
all these phrases as exuberantly as we, and may even outstrip us
in the political incarnation of the ideals which hitherto we have
regarded as so peculiarly our own!
If, then, we can distinguish “the American” neither by any physical
attribute of race nor by adherence to political forms and formulæ,
what is there left for us to conserve and to boast about--as our very
own?
Let us come straight to the fact that this absence of exclusive
racial marks is the distinguishing physical characteristic of the
American. True of him as of no other now or ever in the past, is the
fact that he is, broadly speaking, the product of _all_ races. It is
of our fundamental history and tradition from the beginning that in
America all peoples may find destination, if not refuge, and upon a
basis of virtual race equality mingle, and for good or ill, send down
to posterity in a common stream their racial values--and their racial
defects. Whether we like it or not, this is the fact. We are not a
race, in any ethnic sense. At most, we are in the very early stages
of becoming one.
Prof. Ulysses G. Weatherly, of Indiana University, said:[6]
Every great historical race is a composite of originally separate
elements merged into a unity whose ruling characteristic is an
increasing integration of culture rather than of blood. This
process of merging is believed by Gumplowicz to constitute the very
essence of world history.
And he quotes Gumplowicz, in _Der Rassencampf_, to this effect:
Throughout the whole history of men stretches a continuous process
of amalgamation which, beginning with the smallest primitive
synthetic groups and following a race-building law to us unknown,
binds together and amalgamates small, heterogenous groups into
even larger unities, into peoples, races, and nations, perpetually
bringing them into conflict against other similarly constituted
and amalgamated peoples, nations, and races, and through this
conflict into ever new fields of conquest and culture, which again
consolidates and amalgamates the heterogenous elements.
The American people has been and is being made by exactly this
process. We are in the midst of the making of the “American.” It does
not yet appear what he shall be, but one thing is certain, he is
not to be of any particular racial type now distinguishable. Saxon,
Teuton, and Kelt, Latin and Slav--to say nothing of any appreciable
contribution by yellow and brown races as yet negligible in this
aspect of the question--each of the races that we now know on this
soil will have its share of “ancestorial” responsibility for the
“typical American” that is to be.
NOT RACIAL, BUT CULTURAL
Leaving for the long future, then, the evolution of the hereditary
type, is there so soon something “home grown,” some “integration
of culture,” that is peculiarly our own? Every American knows in
his heart that however subtle and elusive, however difficult of
definition, there is something real that distinguishes “America.”
In the attempt to fix the boundaries for the new Poland, the Peace
Conference sought in vain for some limits of language or of political
unity on which to base their demarcation. It came down at last to a
simple question:
“_Do you want to be Poles?_”
And the question was enough.
Who doubts the answer to the question: _Do you want to be American?_
There is something more than love of home, something higher than
the liking of a cat for the warm place under the familiar stove,
that stirs the heart of every normal American when he sees the Stars
and Stripes. The alien who declares it his intention to become a
citizen of the United States may not be able to put it in words,
but he means, and he knows that he means, something real and vital,
recognizes a substantial distinction, when he says that _he wants to
be an American_!
There must be, there is, there has been always, in the midst of the
racial chaos which to-day constitutes perhaps our greatest social
problem, something that may be called nationally even if not yet
racially _American_; something indigenous on this soil as on no
other. It belongs to us. Up to a time beginning a quarter of a
century ago, when the so-called “new immigration” from Southeastern
Europe and southern Russia set in in full flood, and now anew in
the experiences of the World War, it was and has again become, a
thing shared by all of our racial groups and elements--_peculiarly
American_. It answers the test set forth by Professor Weatherly in
the paper already quoted, of the completion of the nationalizing
process: “... when the things of the spirit are held in common
and cherished by all, even if some specific ethnic or linguistic
differences survive.” Or, in the words which he attributes to Renan:
To have a common glory in the past, a common will in the present;
to have done great things together, to desire to do still
greater--these are the essential conditions for being _a People_.
Professor Weatherly repeatedly emphasizes the great point--that “it
is not sufficient that peoples should merely have undergone similar
experiences” in order to be knit into a nation; “they must have
undergone them _together_.” Most of the great modern nations, as he
says, have passed through the same processes of social change, “but
in actual adjustment to such change each has had its own separate
career.”
Twenty-five years ago it was true that the term “American” meant
one who, of whatever racial descent, represented something very
definite, of tradition, experience, and achievement--and of promise,
too--“a common glory in the past, a common will in the present”;
“great things done together, and a desire to do still greater”; unity
determined not by external facts alone, but by sentiment.
Now, dimly as we yet realize it, it is true again. A baptism of
blood and suffering, of sacrifice and self-denial, and of common
experience in a vast world emergency, and out of it a vision of
better understanding and a great work before us to be done, have
gone far to restore that unity of appreciation of “great things done
_together_” and of will to do still greater which was our common
glory--and was getting lost. We had, we have now, a right to be
both proud and jealous of the heritage left us by our fathers of
many races, and now watered by the blood of our own generation, and
to look with concern, if not with dismay, upon what might portend
a swallowing up of this moral, this sentimental unity, in a great
inundation of newcomers, who, however well intending as individuals,
have not shared our tradition and experience, and who seem not to
have been fitted by any experience of their own to assimilate either
the tradition of our past or our aspiration for the future.
ESSENTIALS OF “AMERICANISM”
There are essentials distinctively American upon which we can base
our definition of “America” and typify her in the human being who
by spirit, vision, and vigilance best represents our tradition and
our aspiration. Such a definition will hold against the world--even
against those of our own household who neither exemplify nor
understand it. The sum total of these essentials is not paralleled
now, nor in history, anywhere else on earth. For of America alone it
may be said:
That however lamely and insufficiently we have lived up to it, _our
country is traditionally the refuge for the oppressed of every land_.
That here the individual has found a fuller freedom to seek his
happiness in his own way. More than any other nation, America has
never recognized a political autocracy, has reckoned Man above every
consideration of property, class, or dynasty.
That here only has _the individual male from the beginning been
deemed the ultimate political unit_--“one man, one vote.” The
country-wide adoption of Woman Suffrage extends this concept to
include women.
That however crudely we have practiced it, we have aspired
_to estimate essential justice and the common sense of right
relationship--fair play between man and man--as the final standard
and appeal of human conduct, over against every claim of precedent
and authority_.
That from the outset of this nation, the distinguishing spirit of
America has been _a protest against Militarism and the domination of
the professional soldier, against compulsory military service in time
of peace_. Our army and navy, always thought of as instrumentalities
of last resort, reserved almost wholly for defense against aggression
from without, have on principle been always under the control and
direction of _civilians as such_, and in peace time have been
recruited by voluntary enlistment. This one fact of freedom from
military conscription has been the distinction of America which, more
than any other thing, has attracted Europeans to our fellowship. They
have fought for us and with us, but always with the American motive,
embodied in the final great fact, which is America’s alone:
That when _we have gone to war, our civilians armed and fighting
with the devotion, courage, and effectiveness inspired only by the
sense of a righteous cause, it has always been for liberty_. At the
beginning, in 1776, and again in 1812, we fought England to free
ourselves. In 1845, despite the motive of the Slave Power to extend
the area of slavery, so far as the motive of the people in general
was concerned we were fighting Mexico to free our fellows in Texas.
In 1861 we fought a great civil war to maintain our free Union and
to liberate the negro slaves. In 1898 we fought Spain to free the
Cubans, and notwithstanding this, our sole sin of imperialism, in
the long run we shall have freed also the Filipinos. In 1917 we
participated, no doubt decisively, in the struggle to free Europe
from the threat of domination by the military autocracy of Germany.
“To make the world safe for democracy”--that was the appeal which
brought the hearts of the American people into the war. Of no other
great nation can it be said that _it never went to war except for
liberty_.
This is “America.” This ensemble of tradition and significance is
what makes native and newcomer alike want to be an American. This is
what stirs our hearts when we see the Stars and Stripes. We prize
these things not alone because they are ours, not alone because in
their power and glory they are peculiarly, exclusively American; but
still more because they are worthy to be prized, and because they
promise the ultimate incarnation of the dreams of men of good will
since ever man first lifted his eyes from the ground and visioned
Brotherhood.
II
NEW MEMBERS AND AN OLD GAME
It would be too much to say that the average immigrant from any
country visions when he leaves his home the “America” outlined in
the previous chapter, or even that he perceives it when, at some
time after he arrives, he files his declaration of intention to
seek citizenship. Doubtless in the ordinary case he comes merely
to improve his personal, social, and economic condition; to put it
bluntly, to get a better job. Nevertheless, we should do ourselves
and our long-standing reputation in the world a great injustice if we
did not recognize and take pride in the fact that the people of all
races turn their faces hither not only with hope of opportunity to
better their condition, but with a stirring of soul at the thought
of what they believe awaits them in a land of wider liberty. That
they do not always find us living up to our boast, so far as they are
concerned, is the defect not of our tradition or, in the long run, of
our intention, but of our practice.
At the outset the immigrant does not think about citizenship at
all. The statistics gathered by this Study show conclusively that
the average alien waits more than ten years before applying for
citizenship. That even if he comes as early as sixteen he waits until
he is twenty-eight before he files his final petition. And the vast
majority of the men come between the ages of sixteen and thirty--just
at the time of life when, it would seem, active participation in the
political life of the country ought to be most appealing.
FACTORS IN IMMIGRATION
The alien does not come with any direct interest in citizenship.
He comes to improve his status. And this motive has two aspects;
the impulse is twofold--a push from behind and a pull from in
front, sometimes one, usually both. The statistics displaying
the fluctuations of what Prof. Frank J. Warne calls “The Tide of
Immigration” are luminous in their reflection of this purely human
fact. In order to see it stand forth, one must keep it vividly
in mind that these tables of statistics are not mere exhibits of
mathematical digits, but lists of human beings, inspired by motives
precisely like our own. The 148,093 subjects of His Britannic
Majesty--mostly Irish--who came to America in 1848 were, _each_ of
them, a specific individual human soul, impelled by the fact that
the potato famine, or whatnot else at home, interfered with the
adequacy of his meals; and attracted by the belief that he would find
things better in America. The one lone Russian recorded in that year
presumably represented precisely the same interplay of motives. The
heavy German immigration in 1852, 1853, and 1854 was made up of men,
women, and children who found conditions intolerable because of the
repressions ensuing upon the revolutionary movement of ’48. And so
on. On the other hand, the shrinkages in the figures in various later
periods, in a general way, coincide with the times of industrial
depression, unemployment, etc., in this country; things were not
so attractive here as to offer substantial improvement upon the
situation at home.
The six sources whence we have derived the bulk of our new population
are Great Britain and Ireland; the three Scandinavian countries of
Norway, Sweden, and Denmark; Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and
Russia--in the seventy-eight years from 1840 down to and including
1918, when immigration virtually stopped owing to the conditions
created by the World War. Immigration since then has been subject to
influences so different from those prevailing before, and as yet so
little understood, that intelligent comparisons would be perilous.[7]
Students of immigration have usually built their generalizations upon
totals of inflow, frequently overlooking the striking disparity of
time and numbers among the various racial groups. Yet there is much
significance in this disparity. Professor Warne, for example, in the
_Annals of the American Academy of Political Science_ (1920), in an
analysis generally of the upward and downward curves of immigration
from all countries during the century since 1820, says:
By studying the yearly figures ... and relating them to events of
industrial or economic history, we are able to understand what
is probably the most significant of all the operating forces or
influences at work behind this great movement of population across
the Atlantic. For illustration, the number of immigrant arrivals
strikingly decreased from nearly 482,000 in 1854 to 200,877 the
following year, a decrease of more than one-half. This falling
off reflected the effects of the greatest financial panic ever
experienced in the United States up to that time.
Well enough for a generalization based on totals; but it is not
to be overlooked that at that very point the then comparatively
small immigration from Italy more than doubled between 1853 and
1854, jumping from 535 to 1,263, and remained above 1,000 with the
exception of one year, until 1860. Again Professor Warne:
The ensuing industrial depression was followed closely by the Civil
War, and it was not until 1873 that the yearly inflow again reached
as large a volume, the number being nearly 460,000.
But it was precisely during the hottest and most critical years
of the Civil War that German immigration increased. It had been
relatively low between 1854 and 1865 (in which latter year it was
58,153), but jumped in 1866 to 120,218, and (with the exception of
1871, when it fell to 82,554) remained high until and including 1873,
when it almost touched 150,000. It would seem that something must
have been going on in Germany to drive these people out against the
adverse economic conditions prevailing here.
The year 1873 [continues Professor Warne] marks another panic, and
a striking decrease the following years in the number of alien
arrivals is again recorded.
But the Austrian, Italian, and Russian immigration, which had been
relatively insignificant up to 1869 and 1870, was higher in 1870-75
than ever before, and with minor ups and downs increased more or
less steadily up to the very high figures of the past two decades,
which gave rise to the widely believed legend entitled, “The New
Immigration.”
The question of means of livelihood, of a better job, is doubtless
the chief factor, but it is not the only factor. Any job at all in
a free country is better, for any man worth his salt, than a far
better-paid job under conditions of oppression. The man who leaves
his homeland to adventure even under adverse conditions, because
he cannot tolerate political tyranny, used to be regarded _per se_
as fit for American citizenship. He is still fit, even though he
belong to the traditional “New Immigration”; even though of late
we have tended rather to discourage the idea that personal liberty
is valuable in and of itself. It is still true that along with our
fame as a land where economic opportunity is to be found, the men and
women of other lands are attracted by what they still believe to be
our atmosphere of liberty.
POLITICS WELCOMES THE IRISH
The Irish immigration was earliest in the field, and first to profit
by the hit-or-miss methods of naturalization which prevailed in the
old shiftless days. They occupied socially at the outset very much
the same position that the “New Immigration” has occupied during the
past twenty years; but the American politician, to whose mill any
kind of a biped who might vote was grist, welcomed it, and quickly
taught the Irishman the methods of the game.
How solidly the Irish were installed before the Germans began to
arrive in large numbers appears in Table I, showing the two streams
of immigration between 1820 and 1840. Prior to 1840 there was no
appreciable inflow from any other countries. It should be added that
it was not until 1854, and then only for that one year, that the
German immigration overtook the Irish. It did not again equal it
until 1867.
TABLE I
IMMIGRATION FROM IRELAND AND GERMANY EACH YEAR FROM 1820 TO 1840
=============================
YEAR | IRELAND | GERMANY
----------+---------+--------
1820 | 3,614 | 968
1821 | 1,518 | 383
1822 | 2,267 | 148
1823 | 1,908 | 183
1824 | 2,345 | 230
1825 | 4,888 | 450
1826 | 5,408 | 511
1827 | 9,766 | 432
1828 | 12,488 | 1,851
1829 | 7,415 | 597
1830 | 2,721 | 1,976
1831 | 5,772 | 2,413
1832 | 12,436 | 10,194
1833 | 8,648 | 6,988
1834 | 24,474 | 17,686
1835 | 20,927 | 8,311
1836 | 30,578 | 20,707
1837 | 28,508 | 23,740
1838 | 12,645 | 11,683
1839 | 23,963 | 21,028
1840 | 39,430 | 29,704
=============================
THEY ALWAYS HAVE BEEN DEMOCRATS
The traditional fidelity of the Irish to the Democratic party began
forthwith. The elements in the population which were Whigs, and
afterward became Republicans tended, on the whole, to be the more
prosperous folk of the community; also they were largely of the
Protestant faith. Very early in our political history, therefore,
there came to be, to some extent, a division in which both social
standing and religion played a part. Most of the Irish were poor, and
nearly all of them were Roman Catholics. The Democratic party was
rather the party of the poor and the foreign born, and when the great
influx of Roman Catholic Irish injected also the religious issue, it
was only natural that a kind of racial allegiance should attach the
Irish to the Democratic party. The Know-Nothing and Native American
agitations of the middle of the last century deepened the rift, and
confirmed the Irish in their political faith.
Gustavus Myers says, in his _History of Tammany Hall_:[8]
About the year 1840 ... Tammany began to be ruled from the bottom
of the social stratum.... The policy of encouraging foreigners,
at first mildly started in 1823, was now developed into a system.
The Whigs antagonized the entrance of foreign-born citizens into
politics, and the Native American Party was organized expressly to
bar them almost entirely from the enjoyment of political rights.
The immigrant had no place to turn but Tammany Hall. In part to
assure itself this vote, the organization opened a bureau, a
modest beginning of what became a colossal department. An office
established in the Wigwam, to which specially paid agents or
organization runners brought the immigrant, drilled into him the
advantages of joining Tammany, and furnished him the means and
legal machinery needed to take out his naturalization papers....
Tammany took the immigrant in charge, cared for him, made him feel
that he was a human being with distinct political rights, and
converted him into a citizen. How sagacious this was, each year
revealed. Immigration soon poured in heavily, and there came a time
when the foreign vote outnumbered that of the native-born citizens.
It is true, but irrelevant, that in an earlier day Tammany had been
as anti-foreign as anybody--originally it was decidedly aristocratic
in tone. Myers recites how, on the night of April 24, 1817, two
hundred Irishmen marched to the Wigwam “to impress upon the Committee
the wisdom of nominating (for Congress) Thomas Addis Emmett, as well
as other Irish Catholics on the Tammany ticket in the future.”
All this had long since become ancient history by 1840. Long before
that time the Irish devotion to the Democratic party in general, and
to Tammany Hall in particular, had become deeply rooted.
EARLY GERMANS BECAME REPUBLICANS
The Germans, who, as has been shown, formed the second great wave in
the “tide of immigration,” began to come in formidable numbers about
1836, passing the 30,000 mark in 1845. While they were, on the whole,
better educated and possibly more intelligent than the Irish, they
were handicapped, as the Irish were not, by difference of language;
so that for the practical purposes of the native American politician
they were equally ignorant. And the mass of the immigrants of both
races were peasants without experience in relation to political
participation.
Very many of the Germans, however, had fled from the repressions
at home preceding, accompanying, and following the revolutionary
movements about 1848; they were to a great extent Protestants, and
they were naturally opposed to slavery--though this is not to say
that the Irish ever favored it. Generally speaking, Germans reacted
favorably to the Republican party.
Both races took American politics as they found it. Let it not be
supposed that corruption was the exclusive invention or hall mark of
Tammany Hall! Even in England, at this time, politics was a dirty
business. The Whigs did their best to beat Tammany at the game in
which it had become expert. Myers says:[9]
In the fall election of 1838 the Whig frauds were enormous and
indisputable. The Whigs raised large sums of money, which were
handed to ward workers for the procuring of votes. About two
hundred roughs were brought from Philadelphia, in different
divisions, each man receiving $22.... Ex-convicts distributed Whig
tickets and busily auctioneered. The cabins of all the vessels
along the wharves were ransacked, and every man, whether or not a
citizen or resident of New York, who could be wheedled into voting
a Whig ballot, was rushed to the polls and his vote smuggled in.
This was the election which made William H. Seward Governor of the
state of New York!
EFFECTS OF THE GOLD CRAZE
The whole situation was intensified during the years when corruption
reached its greatest heights by the conditions ensuing upon the
discovery of gold in California. The port of New York welcomed ships
from the west coast bringing gold, and ships from across the Atlantic
bringing immigrants. The “bulge” in the curve of immigration from
Great Britain and Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia in the period
1849-54 undoubtedly represents preponderantly the reaction abroad to
the tales of gold to be found on the street corners of America.
And the immigrant stepped into an atmosphere of corruption in every
field--including politics. The whole country was more or less money
mad. The effect of the gold craze, as Myers (page 154) says, “was a
still further lowering of the public tone; standards were generally
lost sight of, and all means of ‘getting ahead’ came to be considered
legitimate. Politics, trafficking in nominations and political
influence, found it a most auspicious time.”
VAST NATURALIZATION FRAUDS
It is hard to realize now the public attitude of those old days on
the subject of naturalization. There was a fabulous amount of virgin
territory to be opened; new communities needed population, and
especially muscle labor; lavish inducements, including the right to
vote, were held out to anything in the form of a man who could be
brought to help in the task. It was many years before citizenship
came to be regarded as a precious thing, to be guarded with
scrupulous vigilance. And as both of the great political parties were
guilty of crimes against the ballot box, it was taken for granted
that they were inevitable in politics.
The vexatious technicalities which now seem so unjust to many an
applicant for citizenship are, after all, only reaction at the other
extreme to the incredible laxity which characterized the process in
the early years. The population of what was then New York City was
only 515,547 in 1850; 813,669 in 1860; and 942,292 in 1870; but in
the eight years, 1860-67, inclusive, more than 67,000 aliens were
naturalized in that city alone. The naturalizations in New York City
in each year from 1856 to 1867, inclusive, in only two courts--the
Superior Court and the Court of Common Pleas--an average of more than
9,000 a year is shown in the following table:
TABLE II
NUMBER OF ALIENS NATURALIZED EACH YEAR FROM 1856 TO 1867 IN TWO
COURTS IN NEW YORK CITY{1}
======================================
YEAR NUMBER
--------------------------------------
1856 (Presidential election) 16,493
1857 8,991
1858 6,769
1859 7,636
1860 (Presidential election) 13,556
1861 3,903
1862 2,414
1863 2,633
1864 (Presidential election) 12,171
1865 7,428
1866 13,023
1867 15,476
======================================
[note 1: John I. Davenport, _The Wig and the Jimmy_, p. 12.]
These figures are taken from a curious pamphlet, published in 1869
by John I. Davenport, who was United States Commissioner and Chief
Supervisor of Elections for the Southern District of New York, under
the cryptic title, _The Wig and the Jimmy_, which tells in detail the
story of the debauching of naturalization by these two courts. The
year 1868, however, saw the scandal reach unprecedented heights. Says
Mr. Davenport:[10]
... Notwithstanding that the yearly average of naturalizations
had been but about 9,000; that the greatest number naturalized in
a single year never reached 16,500; that three years had elapsed
since the close of the war in which 35,927 aliens had been made
citizens, a yearly average of 11,975, or an excess of 3,000 per
year above the annual average for twelve years; that the addition
of such excess to the diminished numbers naturalized in 1862,
1863, and 1864 would preserve the ratio, and account for those
who from fear of being drafted had refrained from applying during
those years of the war; that the rebellion had reduced the alien
population of New York City, many of whom enlisted, were killed,
died from disease, or after the war found homes elsewhere; and,
finally, that the yearly average of emigration (_sic_) from and
including 1847 to 1860--a period of 13 years--had been 197,435,
while for the four years from 1860 to 1863 inclusive--and none who
arrived subsequently could be legally naturalized in 1868--the
yearly average of alien arrivals had been but 100,962, or an
annual loss of one-half, yet orders were early in September passed
along the Democratic line to prepare on a gigantic scale for the
naturalization of aliens during the coming month. The Supreme
Court also determined for the first time to engage in the work
of making citizens. In accordance with this known determination,
there were printed for the use of the courts ... a total of 30,000
applications and 30,000 certificates for the Superior Court, and
75,000 applications and 39,000 certificates for the amateur court
[Supreme].
The Court of Common Pleas, which save for a year or two previous
had done the larger share of the work of naturalization, did but
little in 1868, its total for the year being 3,145, of which 1,645
were in October. Justice requires the further statement that there
was no evidence whatever of any fraud in this court, although all
its judges were elected as Democrats, while proof was abundant that
the duty entrusted to it of making citizens of the United States was
discharged throughout with marked propriety and dignity.
In the Supreme and Superior Courts only were frauds proven. To what
extent we will now consider. The following table was sworn to as
being the daily number of applications for naturalization on file in
the Supreme Court Clerk’s office for 1868:
TABLE III
APPLICANTS FOR NATURALIZATION IN SUPREME COURT, NEW YORK CITY, IN
OCTOBER, 1868
======================
October 6 6
“ 7 8
“ 8 379
“ 9 668
“ 10 717
“ 12 723
“ 13 901
“ 14 523
“ 15 857
“ 16 721
“ 17 633
“ 19 955
“ 20 944
“ 21 773
“ 22 675
“ 23 587
----------------------
Total 10,070
======================
The significance of these great totals of applications for
naturalization within a few days before election appears in Mr.
Davenport’s summary of the behavior of the judges:[11]
But the essential aid rendered by these judges need not be further
detailed. It was mainly comprised of one or more of the following
derelictions of duty:
I. Hasty and incomplete examination of applicants and witnesses.
II. Total neglect at times to examine the one class or the other.
III. Through negligence, imposition, which might easily have been
guarded against, or direct complicity, the issue of certificates in
the names of persons who never appeared in Court, applied therefor,
produced a witness, or took an oath.
IV. Similar issue of certificates to applicants, persons of assumed
or fictitious names and others, upon the oath of residence and
moral character of persons of assumed and fictitious names, or of
known criminals and persons of immoral character.
V. Similar issue of certificates upon “minor applications” when
the persons to whom such certificates issued were known, or could
readily have been ascertained to be, unentitled thereto on such
applications.
VI. Total neglect or refusal to commit known disreputable
persons and others whose business it was for pecuniary or other
consideration to act as witnesses, and who in such capacity
repeatedly appeared before them.
VII. The conducting of naturalization proceedings in a secret
manner, by causing citizens and others to be denied admission to
the court-room, or ejected therefrom when observed.
The Judiciary Committee of the New York State Assembly, in a report
upon the first notorious election frauds made to that House of the
state legislature thirty years before, or on April 6, 1838, already
had registered the fact that this was no post-war state of affairs,
and depicted the situation of which the frauds of 1868 were only one
year’s fruit:
Men vote who do not reside in the ward, often not in the state;
aliens are frequently brought to the polls and their vote imposed
upon the inspectors, although many of them have not been a week in
the country; and voters are not infrequently taken from poll to
poll, voting in three or four different wards at the same election.
These are the frauds constantly practiced at our elections, to the
disgrace of the state, and to the manifest wrong of the country.
It was partly the sense of the great public danger lying in such
conditions, partly the growing anti-foreign feeling, and altogether
an improving public morality, that beginning about 1870 and
increasing as the years passed, brought about the cleansing of public
elections and the reform embodied in the naturalization law of 1906
which has totally abolished the situation into which the immigrants
of the mid-century and earlier stepped as into a swamp. Still
survives in some quarters the notion that the alien is hurried from
the ship to the ballot box, and that he pours therein some corrupting
influence brought with him from abroad. The latter never was true; he
has accepted and taken advantage of the situation which we ourselves
created and suffered for generations to exist. The former was true
during three-quarters of a century, but it is true no longer, and has
not been true for nearly two decades.
FIRST CHOICE IN POLITICS
Bear it in mind that the chief motive of the newcomer is the
same as that which usually leads men to go anywhere--the desire
to “better himself.” It is notable that a very large number of
immigrants arrive with the notion that the Republican party is the
“party of prosperity,” of the “full dinner pail,” high wages,
and the other advantages which have been the widely advertised
slogans of that party. Without passing upon the question of the
truth of these slogans, one may note that what actually happens is
that the immigrant’s real search is for that connection, political
or industrial, which involves employment and other advantages of
a material kind. As soon as the conditions permit, he joins the
penumbra of the political organization which has jobs to distribute,
which controls public contracts and the wages that go with them.
That means Tammany and the Democratic party in New York City; in
Philadelphia it means the Republican organization, which in its day
has followed and in some respects surpassed Tammany in all the ways
of political corruption and machinism. In other cities it has been to
this party or that, as the dominant color shifted, that the immigrant
has swung.
As long as the naturalization process was the sport of corrupt
politics, the political organizations gave early attention to
the alien. With the institution of the present stringent law
and practice, however, and also with the vast magnitude of the
flood--swamping all the machinery which had been devised to absorb
the immigrants--the politicians up to a recent time ceased to pay any
attention to them. One of the results of this has been a considerable
increase in the lapse of time between the arrival of the immigrant
and his first steps in the direction of citizenship. One of the most
enterprising of the younger leaders of Tammany Hall said to the
present writer some months ago:
We don’t pay any attention to the alien until he comes to us for
some favor--a job, a peddling license, some help when his boy is
arrested, or assistance in getting out his naturalization papers.
There’s too many of ’em. When they do come, we do what we can for
them, and naturally we say: “Well, how about it? Are you going to
see the Democratic organization only when you want something? Why
aren’t you a citizen? Get yourself naturalized and then come along
with us.”
All of which is very natural and human, and a good illustration of
the way in which the politician gets his hold upon the individual
voter--newcomer or native.
The war created a new interest in the alien, brought new pressure
upon him to become a citizen. Private concerns demanded at least
“first papers” as a condition for employment; labor organizations
intensified their insistence upon citizenship, or at least
declaration of intention, as a prerequisite to membership; laws were
passed in many states increasing the disabilities of aliens. And
the political organizations generally have returned, but in a far
better spirit, to the former search for voters among the foreign
born; creating committees and bureaus to assist the alien in getting
naturalization, and resuming the old “hand-picking” methods of
getting the foreign born into active participation.
Little attention has been paid to the extent to which the
politicians use private jobs as a part of their patronage. Not
only the petty employments in saloons and even brothels have been
at the disposal of the local leaders; but places for unskilled
labor with street-railroad corporations and other public utilities
needing the franchises and privileges in the public streets, have
been utilized as the coin-current of local political traffic. Not
infrequently a merchant finds that the stringency of the enforcement
of ordinances regarding his buildings, blocking sidewalks with his
merchandise, etc., is considerably mitigated after he has acted upon
the suggestion of a district leader as to the employment of some
person as truck hand or watchman. And the writer well remembers
one occasion, many years ago in Chicago, when the street-railroad
companies were keenly interested in an aldermanic election, wherein
the polling places in certain doubtful wards were blocked by long
lines of obviously foreign-born laborers, few if any of them voters,
who did not attempt to vote, but monopolized the line for blocks,
effectively slowing down the voting so as to prevent the real voters
from getting to the polls at all!
THE POLITICIAN CLOSE TO HUMANITY
The secret of the whole business lies in the fact that political
machines, and the political bosses of all sizes and grades who make
up their staffs, are powerful and long-lived in just the measure
to which they grow out of and identify their activities with the
rank and file of the community--clear down to the bottom. The
vote of a new-made citizen born in Galicia or Syria or Portugal
is just as good for his purpose as that of a Son of the American
Revolution--vastly more so if (as sometimes happens) the new voter
will follow his “advice” and the old one will not! Furthermore, their
vitality, especially in the poorer sections, is commensurate with the
_constancy_ of their activities; that is, their practical utility to
the people all the time, for all purposes. As William Bennet Munro
says:[12]
The work which the party organizations lay out to do, and in large
measure actually perform, is extensive and exacting. It does not,
as in Europe, all fall within the few weeks which precede an
election; it is spread over the whole year.
And he goes on to describe, aptly, why this work is “spread over
the whole year,” and how it comes about that the boss, little or
big, acquires so great an influence in his bailiwick. What he says
applies most aptly to the so-called “poorer districts,” where the
foreign-born voters live in the greatest numbers:
It seems usually to be forgotten that the evolution of the boss
follows the law of natural selection, which in this case secures
the survival of the man who is most resourceful in using to
full advantage the conditions that he finds about him. To gain
even a ward leadership and to hold this post requires industry,
perseverance, and, no end of shrewd tactfulness. He must not be
content with doing the work that comes to him; he must look for
things to do. As his work consists mainly in doing favors for
voters, he must inspire requests as well as grant them. Therefore
he encourages voters to come to him for help when they are out of
work, or in any other sort of trouble. When a voter is arrested,
the ward or district leader will lend his services to secure bail
or to provide counsel, or will arrange to have the offender’s fine
paid for him. Then there are the day-to-day favors which the local
boss stands ready to do for all who come to him, provided they are
voters or can influence voters.
Picturing the boss thus as the district philanthropist, the
description goes on to enlarge upon the more sinister uses to which
the power thus gained is devoted, in punishing disloyalty. And this
is even more effective upon those relatively unfamiliar with the
niceties, the ins-and-outs, of public administration:
If a word from the boss will get one man employment, a word will
also, very often, procure another employee’s dismissal. At a hint
from him, the small shopkeeper, the peddler, the pawnbroker, the
hackman, can be worried daily by the police or by the health
and sanitary officials of the city on baseless or imaginary
pretexts--tactics in which, as the history of almost every larger
city shows, the machinery is unrelenting and vindictive.
The affirmative side of the district leader’s activity is the one
that makes most impression upon the neighborhood. Almost every sort
of reformer, who would bring to the foreign-speaking district a
sense of the need for voting for a different sort of alderman, for
example, lives in another part of town, represents another stratum of
society, comes into no sort of natural touch with his foreign-born
fellow citizen. But the latter knows the district leader--last winter
he got a job, a little coal, a bed in a hospital for his wife; his
boy was let off by the police after a piece of reckless mischief;
or there was some other human favor; and all the return he is asked
to make--cheap enough, to be sure--is that on election day he shall
vote as the district leader who helped him in his need asks him to
vote. What difference does it make to him? Show him a difference,
convince him that something real, something that he can understand,
is involved, and he will respond. But nobody shows him. “Uptown,”
whence comes the reformer whom he does not know, and whose motives he
has no substantial reason to respect, does not understand his life
or its problems; does not even live in the ward. The district leader
does. He is his neighbor, and he sees him almost every day.
Then, too, the political organization meets him on the social side,
provides a club, which in the intervals between elections gives
entertainments, has pool tables, provides cigars; used to provide
liquor. A spirit of fellowship grows up; the new foreign-born voter
gains acquaintance at the natural point of contact between his daily
life and the politics into which he is being introduced. The result
is obvious.
POLITICAL ASPECTS OF SOCIAL CLUBS
The spontaneous groups of foreign-speaking people of nearly every
race, which have sprung up everywhere in response to the varied needs
of the strangers within our gates--social, insurance, musical,
athletic, etc.--necessarily and naturally take on political aspects.
As President Wilson said once, “politics is human nature”; there
is nothing sinister about this fact. It is wholesome that groups
of folk, coming together spontaneously about a nucleus of common
interest, should consider together and act together, in regard to
such public matters as they think concern them. The only thing that
is really dangerous in a republic is stolid indifference; it is on
_that_ that corruption and injustice feed.
In the matter of helping their fellow countrymen to secure
naturalization, these organizations perform a service of value and
importance both to the alien and to the country. Many of these
racial societies devote much attention to old-country politics,
and form nests of propaganda and even more concrete activity whose
effects are felt not so much in this country as “back home.” And
when, as in the case of Ireland, Poland, Italy, and so on, the
issues of foreign politics are made the bone of contention in
American political contests, these German-American, Italian-American,
Polish-American societies may become exceedingly active in our own
affairs, and project lines of division which may greatly complicate
the politician’s task, and sometimes stand him upon his head.[13]
It is not too much to say that the power of Tammany Hall in politics,
and that of every other important political organization in
Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, or elsewhere--including
those dominant in rural districts--grows out of intimate association
with the people _in their daily lives_, and could grow out of nothing
else. “Power and patronage,” says Professor Munro, “provide a cycle
hard to break.” True; but “power and patronage” is only a phrase.
Behind it lies the fact that the politician gains and holds his power
because he deserves it; through his organization of the machinery,
always “on the job,” through which human beings, with wives and
children to feed, clothe and shelter, get the means to do it. The
small, unskilled job in the employ of the city, or of business which
can be helped or harmed by political or official action, is the
coin-current through which the politician controls--so far as he does
control--the rank and file of the foreign-born voters. This, and the
small and larger personal human favors that he is in a position to
render.
Here, with the first economic “toe-hold” that the immigrant gets in
America, begins his introduction to our life and to our politics.
POLITICS A GREAT AMERICANIZING FORCE
Politics, local politics--the ordinary interest of the ordinary
citizen; the day’s work and the day’s life, are great Americanizing
forces, and they are working every minute. The immigrant generally,
especially he of the so-called “new immigration,” comes here without
much if any experience in public affairs. All the life of all
the generations from which he comes has been passed without real
participation; government in the old country went on over his head,
in a rarefied stratum which he never entered and of which he knew
little. That is one reason why, on the average, it takes more than
ten years for him to come to the point of asking for citizenship.
Of late some of the very people who declared that the immigrant
comes here with only “sordid motives” have favored pressure upon
him to become a citizen by means of refusing him employment unless
he does become one. The great increase in declarations of intention
during the past three or four years has been due almost entirely to
the restrictions adopted formally or informally all over the country
confining employment, even in privately owned industries, to those
who have at least taken out “first papers.” Even in the Bureau of
Naturalization there was for a time more than a tendency to pursue
this policy of forcing citizenship upon aliens. It was abandoned
because no government can kidnap the subjects or citizens of another
without getting into difficulty. There is still a good deal of
confusion of thought about this matter.
The importance of it lies in the fact--obvious to any right thought
about it--that we want for our new citizens _only those who come of
their own accord and free will_. We want, moreover, only those who
are right-minded. The effort to stamp out the use of every mother
tongue but one, to obliterate all affection for the old home in
Scandinavia, Bavaria, Dalmatia, Bohemia, not only is futile; we do
not want for our fellow citizens the kind of people who can turn
their back without a qualm upon the memories of childhood.
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?
What sort of an American could be made out of one able in any
circumstances--worst of all under repressive compulsion--to turn his
back upon the tongue, the traditions, and the associations of his
fathers? We are not such ourselves, and in our sane minds we do not
want those who join us to be such. The process of real assimilation
is a process slow in its nature, reaching not forms and words, but
sentiments of the highest and most subtle kind.
You cannot beat love of country into any worthwhile person with a
club--or with a law.
III
CITIZENSHIP: UNDER THIS FLAG, AND OTHERS
There is, indeed, such a thing as a “man without a country,” and it
is only a few years since the United States, even if inadvertently,
legislated so that there may easily be now a woman without one. But
the laws of nations make no provisions for the existence voluntarily
of anyone who may regard himself as “a citizen of the world.” With
the vanishment of _terra incognita_ in the final achievement of human
exploration at the two poles of the earth, virtually every foot of
the surface of the globe has come, at least constructively, under the
dominion of some government. And with it every man, woman, and child
on earth has acquired or had thrust upon him a legal nationality
of some sort, from which, generally speaking, he can escape only
by choosing or having thrust upon him another--however feeble or
tenuous its grasp, however slight or contemptuous his perception and
recognition of it.
The Great War emphatically registered this fact, with its ruthless
inclusion of friend, neutral, and foe within some category of
practicable citizenship. In the United States the Selective
Service Act, and other legislation as well--to say nothing of the
extra-legal practices indulged in under cover of the popular state
of mind--permitted no human being to regard himself as immune to
effective classification under some sovereignty. The “conscientious
objector,” the “philosophical anarchist,” and every sort of
philosopher, however much he previously may have imagined himself
free to abjure allegiance to government, found that his property, his
food, his sons, his own very personal flesh-and-blood, were, after
all, not his own, but were subject to conscription by the state.
However much his spirit might be of fellowship with the saints of his
cult or religion, in all material respects he must render unto Cæsar
the things that Cæsar said were Cæsar’s.
From the most primitive times this has been so, even if in the
America of the happy-go-lucky times of peace it has been lightly
regarded or scarcely realized at all. The “gang spirit,” under the
sway of which men always have held loyalty to the local clan to
be one of the chief of obligatory virtues, is of the essence and
fabric of group life, and is the tap-root of patriotism. It embodies
an allegiance both to blood and to locality. Through the warp of
all political history are woven two kindred threads representing
these two allegiances; sometimes one, sometimes the other--in later
development something of both. The lawyers speak of them as the _Jus
Sanguinis_, the Law of the Blood, and the _Jus Solis_, the Law of
the Soil, and distinguish between them; but both represent the claim
of the community upon the loyalty and, if need be, the sacrifice and
bodily service of the individual.
A classic illustration of the deeply embedded feeling that man cannot
separate himself from the virtues, the sins, and the limitations of
his clan, his country, is the tragedy in the valley of Achor, related
in the Old Testament Book of Joshua,[14] wherein it was held that the
sin of Achan the son of Zerah was _ipso facto_ the sin of all Israel.
And for the offense of one man,
... Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah,
and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his
sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his
sheep, and his tent, and all that he had; ... and all Israel stoned
him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned
them with stones.[15]
This, with a vengeance, was a dramatization of the _Jus Sanguinis_,
the Law of the Blood, by virtue of which an individual acquires
nationality and civic responsibility through the blood of his
ancestry, regardless of the place of his birth!
ROOTS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY
The principle was a natural consequence upon the nomadic life of
families and tribes, of primitive groups wandering often in strange
and even hostile territory, to whom in absence of fixed abode and
boundaries locality was of little importance, but tribal solidarity
and unity of purpose and allegiance were vital to defense, to group
survival. The family, and after it the clan or group of blood-related
families, were the beginnings of political society.
Throughout ancient times the Law of the Blood persisted; the law
of citizenship in early Greece and Rome was based upon the idea of
family inheritance. But with the dissolution of the Roman Empire
and the rise of feudalism, the _Jus Sanguinis_ gradually gave way
to a standard of citizenship based upon locality--to _Jus Solis_,
under which a child became _ipso facto_ a citizen or subject of the
jurisdiction within which he was born, more or less regardless of
the nationality or allegiance of his parents. This was a natural
concomitant of feudalism; as the conflicts between military
chieftains and groups divided the land into relatively definite
jurisdictions, and the tenure of territory and the stability of
boundaries and peace in the realm depended almost wholly upon
military strength, it was to the interest of both lord and vassal to
maintain the largest possible forces for defense, and conservation of
population depended chiefly upon birth. Even to the peasant subject,
maintenance of almost any _status quo_ was comparatively worth while
for the sake of the peaceful enjoyment of such home and happiness as
were his lot.
INFLUENCE OF EMIGRATION TO AMERICA
Beginning with the period immediately following the French
Revolution--which, it should be remembered, was only the most violent
and impressive of the upheavals of that general epoch in many parts
of Europe--a distinct reaction toward the _Jus Sanguinis_ appeared.
This is variously accounted for; but most historians attribute it
to a desire on the part of the older countries of Europe to offset
the serious loss of subjects threatened by emigration to America,
which had begun to tempt adventurous souls by the opportunity for
individual liberty and initiative and escape from the tyrannies of
feudalism and religious autocracy.
Whatever the reason, the nineteenth century witnessed on the one hand
the return of the nations of the Old World to the Law of the Blood,
and on the other the development in the New World of the Law of the
Soil.
This is a theoretical statement. In point of fact, in the designation
of the mode of acquisition or loss of citizenship, no two of the
nations of the world are exactly in accord; the most hopeless
confusion exists; but with a constant and increasing effort to
harmonize the procedure, and now with a good hope that in the coming
days some measure of uniformity may become practicable. In matters of
secondary importance, such as the international postal regulations,
telegraphic communication and sanitary co-operation, it has been
virtually impossible thus far to bring about a common policy. How
much more difficult must it be to harmonize the principles of
citizenship, involving, as that does, intricate historical and
political considerations--immensely complicated by the shifts of
boundary due to the war--and the very bases of national existence in
the control by the community of the allegiance and the industrial and
military service of subjects and citizens?
THE RIGHT TO EMIGRATE
Nevertheless, all countries have in some measure practically
recognized the right of the human individual to emigrate, though
there have persisted laws and decrees expressing the attempt to
retain legal jurisdiction and allegiance. The strength of these
efforts depends largely upon whether the basic theory of citizenship
has its roots in the _Jus Sanguinis_ or the _Jus Solis_. For it
may be said generally that the nations of the world are divided
roughly in this regard by their adherence to the one theory or the
other, though we look almost in vain for a pure example of either;
in some countries there are interwoven lines of both, and in many
it is almost impossible to determine which prevails. For practical
purposes, and subject to such modifications as may be made in the
era of readjustment upon which the World War has launched us, we may
depend upon the following general classification:
_The Jus Sanguinis_ dominates in Austria, China, Finland, France,
Germany, Hungary, Japan, Monaco, Norway, Persia, Rumania, Serbia.
_The Jus Solis_ prevails in the canton of Geneva, Switzerland, and in
Argentina.
_The Jus Sanguinis combined with the Jus Solis_ is found in Belgium,
Greece, Italy, Luxemburg, Russia, Spain, Turkey.
_The Jus Solis modified by the Jus Sanguinis_ prevails in most of
the states of the Americas, and in Bulgaria, Denmark, Egypt, Great
Britain, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland.
THE SUBJECT _VS._ THE ACTIVE MEMBER
In thought and writing on the subject of citizenship, two concepts
of the word “citizen” persist, and usually are treated as to such
an extent interchangeable as to produce a fatal confusion. For they
are not interchangeable. They differ in essence, and it is of the
utmost importance that they should be clearly distinguished. In the
distinction lies all the difference between Liberty and Autocracy.
Something, if not all, of this difference lies in the distinction
between the Law of the Blood and the Law of the Soil.
The first and commonest of these concepts is that which must have
colored the thought of the feudal lord as he looked upon “his”
people, belonging to him because they belonged to the soil which his
sword controlled. This concept contemplates the citizen or subject as
invested with the character of a national body politic, bound by an
obligatory allegiance to it and its political institutions because he
is there, born there, or led there by the circumstances of his life.
The other concept, which we like to think constitutes the basis
of what we call “America,” for it is of the essence of anything
worthy of the name of Democracy, contemplates the citizen as a
_participant_ in the fact of sovereignty, one who owns an undivided
and indivisible share in the community title, and whose right
and duty it is to take a definite part and acknowledge a definite
responsibility in the business of government. In this study of
naturalization and political life of the foreign-born citizen it is
with this second concept that we have most to do.
ESSENTIALS OF CITIZENSHIP: ANCIENT--AND AMERICAN
What, then, are the essentials of that citizenship to which an alien
aspires and addresses himself when he seeks to become an active
member in the American community whose members are something more
than mere chattels of the sovereign?
“There is nothing that more characterizes a complete citizen,” says
Aristotle, “than having a share in the judicial and executive part
of the government.... He, and he only, is a citizen who enjoys a due
share in the government of that community of which he is a member.”
But Aristotle was speaking from the point of view of a community in
which not all individuals there resident were the sort of citizens
he was talking about. According to that great Greek the best-ordered
states did not include in the term “citizen” mechanics or others who
worked for wages, and utterly unmentionable in any such connection
was the great mass of slaves who had virtually no human rights at
all. Aristotle’s “citizen” was one of the relatively few endowed
with political rights and responsibilities. In the Greek city-states
and in the early Roman Republic, citizenship was at first restricted
to certain of the older houses (_phylos, gentes_), but with the
development of economic intercourse the few dominant families
gradually lost their exclusive power, and other free inhabitants were
included in participation in the affairs of state.
In Rome the right of citizenship was conferred at first upon the
leading families in allied cities, and later upon whole communities.
By the year 100 B.C., nearly all Italians were citizens. But the
Empire brought about great restrictions in this matter; a gradual
narrowing of the limitations took place; along with a great
extension of the name “citizen” came a great decrease in the actual
participation of the “citizen” in the business of government; so that
by the time the Emperor Caracalla was extending something called
“citizenship” to all Roman subjects, he actually was doing little
more than to make certain intolerable taxes universal.
So the old Greek and Roman idea of “citizenship” will not answer our
purpose. We have, however imperfect our realization of the fact,
something quite different to offer, something vastly greater to
demand.
In the modern world citizenship has come to mean membership in a
political community. It involves the status of an individual with
reference to a particular state. And that status is determined by
the laws of the individual states, for everywhere it is stoutly
maintained that the right to determine how and when a person may
become and remain a citizen is one of the first prerogatives of
sovereignty. In a number of recent works on citizenship the question
has been raised whether the bond of citizenship is by nature
contractual. The affirmative is held by Prof. Andrew Weiss of the
University of Paris; he declares it to be “generally recognized that
the bond of nationality is a contractual one; and that the bond
uniting to the state each of its citizens is formed by an agreement
of their wills, express or implied.” This view is rejected as unsound
by various English and American publicists.[16] These writers assert
that whatever may be the theory of the origin of the state, the fact
is that the relation of the citizen to the state is a relation _sui
generis_, and that the admission of a person to membership in a state
is an act of sovereignty. The law of the state is supreme.
The reasonable fact is that there is an element of truth in both of
these contentions. The great increase in facilities for international
communication and travel has made emigration a common thing, and
the law in practice, whatever it may be in letter, has recognized
in varying ways the fact that the human individual can, does abjure
his “contract” with the state where he has lived, and seek admission
to one which for this reason and that he thinks likely to be more
salubrious for the pursuit of what he regards as his happiness. For,
after all is said, the fact remains that men stay here or go there in
that pursuit. A crowd goes home when it begins to rain not because
the crowd is getting wet, but because each individual of it, in his
separate personal eachness, so to speak, has water running down his
neck and desires to find a place where he can get dry. Waves of
emigration represent countless individuals each of whom believes that
elsewhere, or in some particular place, he can be more comfortable in
the practices and activities which constitute his life by day and by
night, and maybe find a broader and richer field in which to grow and
raise his family.
The offer of just this kind of opportunity has induced many hundreds
of thousands of human beings from all parts of the earth to dissolve
the bond, contractual or what you will, between themselves and the
land of their birth or previous habitation, and come to these shores.
We have invited them, and devised elaborate machinery by which to
welcome them into our fellowship. Not only has the invitation been
definitely expressed; we have opened wide gates in our bars, and
placed premiums upon entrance therein.
BASES OF AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP
The bases of citizenship in this country are two, established in the
Constitution of the United States and the legislation and decisions
explanatory thereof:
I. Every person, of whatever race descended, born in the United
States and subject to its jurisdiction, including children of
American fathers born abroad, is _ipso facto_ a citizen of the United
States.
II. All other persons eligible for citizenship in the United States
must acquire that citizenship through the legal process known as
Naturalization.
It was in the great case of Wong Kim Ark[17] that the Supreme Court,
in 1897, established the right of _citizenship by birth on this soil,
regardless of race or descent_. The question in this case involved
a child born in California, of Chinese parents who, because of
their race, could not themselves become citizens. In this decision,
a classic in the law of American citizenship, the court set forth
the following fundamental principles to be observed in determining
citizenship by birth in the United States:
1. The Constitution of the United States must be interpreted in the
light of the Common Law, under which every child born in England,
even though of alien parents, was a natural-born citizen.
2. The qualifying words in the Fourteenth Amendment, “and subject to
the jurisdiction thereof,” exclude two classes of persons--children
born of alien enemies in hostile occupation, and children of
diplomatic representatives of a foreign state. (The latter, from
the earliest times, both under the laws of England and in decisions
of American courts, had been recognized to be exceptions to the
fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the national
jurisdiction.)
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution,[18] adopted in 1868,
incorporated no new rule or principle into American law. Neither did
the Civil Rights Act, passed in 1866 as a Reconstruction measure,
although it was the first statutory definition in the United States
of citizenship by birth. That Act says:
All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any
foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are citizens of the
United States and of the States where they reside.
COMMON-LAW DEFINITION TAKEN FOR GRANTED
The English Common Law, then, is the original source of our
definition. That definition, taken over with the formation of the
American Republic out of the English colonies, was so familiar, so
much a part of the nature of things political, that nobody thought it
necessary to formulate it--or a new one.
By the Common Law of England, every person born within the
dominions of the Crown, no matter whether of English or of foreign
parents--and in the latter case whether the parents were settled
or merely temporarily sojourning in the country, was an English
subject; save only children of foreign ambassadors ... or a child
born in hostile occupation of any part of the territories of
England.[19]
When the Constitution of the United States was made, a “citizenship
of the United States” was recognized but nowhere defined, and it was
nearly a century before it found specific statutory expression in the
Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment. Meanwhile, not only
the courts, but the Executive, invariably recognized the validity of
the Common Law Rule, and the Wong Kim Ark decision of 1897 merely
restated it once for all.[20]
CONCERNING AMERICANS BORN ABROAD
There are certain elaborations and modifications of the two great
principles mentioned above, serving both to confirm and circumscribe
them. Children born abroad of American citizens in the foreign
service of the United States government are citizens of the United
States, and like citizenship comes by birth to children “born out of
the limits and jurisdiction, whose fathers were or may be at the time
of their birth citizens thereof.”[21] But the father must have been a
citizen at the time of the birth of the child, and must have resided
actually in the United States; that is, it will not do for him merely
to have acquired citizenship abroad by the fact of the citizenship of
his father without ever having resided in this country.
If the father loses his citizenship after the birth of the child, it
has been held that such child upon attaining his majority may revive
his right to citizenship by establishing residence here. And by
virtue of legislation enacted in 1907, these foreign-born children of
American parentage are required, upon reaching the age of eighteen,
to register their intention to become residents, and to remain
citizens, of the United States, and upon attaining majority to take
the Oath of Allegiance to the United States.
The Department of State has been very liberal in interpreting this
provision, allowing the declaration of intention to be made at any
time after the person concerned has reached the age of eighteen,
and before he has taken the oath, which may be at any reasonable
time after his majority. The main question raised is that of good
faith. Arises here the principle of “election of nationality”; many
countries accord to a person thus in danger of what might be called
“dual nationality” the right to choose. This is the case in France,
Spain, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Mexico, Chile, and Costa
Rica. In Portugal, Italy, and France, failure to exercise this choice
operates as a choice of citizenship there; in Spain, on the other
hand, silence is construed as a choice of the foreign nationality.
This is the purport of the American practice.[22]
CHILDREN BORN AT SEA
It is commonly believed that children of foreign parents born on the
high seas under the American flag are as a matter of law “born in the
United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” but this is
not clearly the case. As Borchard puts it, the child “is probably
an American citizen under our law and may also be a foreign subject
_jure sanguinis_.” Hence he would, upon attaining majority, have a
right of election.
QUESTION OF DUAL NATIONALITY
Can a person gain a new citizenship without losing the old? The
aspirant for American citizenship is required in both his declaration
of intention and his final petition for naturalization to abjure in
most specific fashion not merely all other allegiances, but most
particularly that from which he has come. But the sovereignty thus
repudiated is not always willing to be abjured, and international
diplomacy has been in the past much occupied with the tangles growing
out of the question of “dual nationality.” For one not uncommon
example, the child of alien parents born in the United States and
thereby under our law a citizen of this country, may be taken in
childhood back to his father’s native land, and upon reaching
military age may be summoned to military service. The United States
has not been prone to defend such persons when their actual residence
in the old country was clear, but it has been maintained that upon
the attainment of his majority such a person has the right to elect
and re-establish his American citizenship.
The most common difficulties arise practically, however, from the
fact that under the terms of his declaration to become a citizen
of the United States, the alien repudiates his allegiance to his
fatherland and its sovereignty, but does not gain, and cannot gain,
for at least two years in any circumstances, a new citizenship. He
has in most specific fashion flouted the government he had, but the
government he desires to have will not protect him. For his practical
uses, it is a question whether he has now _two_ nationalities or
_none_! Moreover, there have been countries and times in which the
right to change allegiance was altogether denied.
In their attitude on the subject of voluntary expatriation the
nations differ widely, and are divisible in this matter under three
heads: those which deny the right altogether, those which permit it
under certain conditions, and those which place no bar in the way.
COUNTRIES DENYING THE RIGHT OF EXPATRIATION
Under the old regime, the Russian imperial government laid a heavy
penalty upon the Russian subject who returned to Russia after having
been naturalized abroad without the imperial consent.[23]
Turkey, under a law proclaimed in 1869, prohibited the naturalization
of its subjects abroad without the permission of the Turkish
government. The penalty provided was imprisonment or expulsion.[24]
In practice, however, expulsion has been the only penalty inflicted,
and the United States has contented itself with an occasional protest.
The practice of Greece is not entirely clear-cut or consistent.
A law enacted in 1914 requires the permission of the government
before naturalization abroad; in practice this is not given to those
who have not discharged their legal obligations as to military
service.[25] The practical effect of this attitude on the part of
Greece has been shown chiefly in the failure of Greeks in this
country quite generally to seek naturalization.
CONDITIONAL RECOGNITION
The obligation which these countries commonly require as a
prerequisite to permission is that of military service for the
required period. Perhaps the best example of this group is France,
which has provided by law that its nationals may divest themselves
of their French citizenship provided they are thirty-one years of
age, and thus may be presumed to have complied with the conditions
of military service.[26] The other countries requiring similar
conditions are Italy, the Netherlands, Serbia, and Switzerland;
the usual penalty being liability to arrest upon return, and the
compulsory fulfillment of the military requirements. But Switzerland
provides for an annual tax in lieu of the military requirement.
The United States government has repeatedly sought through diplomatic
channels to secure mitigation of penalties inflicted by these
countries on its naturalized citizens; in many cases with a greater
or less measure of success; but it has been unable to secure by
treaty with any of these countries an unconditional recognition of
the right of expatriation.
NATURALIZATION TREATIES WITH THE UNITED STATES
The first naturalization treaties which this government negotiated
embodying recognition of the right of expatriation were the so-called
“Bancroft Treaties” of 1869, with the states of the North German
Confederation--Bavaria, Hesse, Baden, and Württemberg. In the four
years following similar treaties were concluded with Belgium, Great
Britain, Sweden, and Norway, Austria-Hungary, Denmark, and Ecuador.
Since then treaties of like import have been effected with Haiti,
Portugal, Peru, Honduras, Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Brazil,
and Costa Rica.[27] These treaties provide, in substance, for
expatriation at will, but stipulate that subjects liable for offenses
committed prior to emigration shall continue liable for the same, and
that two years’ continuous resumption of residence in the country of
origin shall be presumptive evidence of renewed citizenship in the
old country. Under our own law, this loss of acquired citizenship
by two years’ continuous residence in the country of origin is
specifically recognized. And it is also generally provided that upon
return to his former country a naturalized American shall be liable
to punishment for the “evasion of an existing or accrued liability to
military service”; but he is protected against the exaction of what
was at the time of emigration merely (by reason of youth) a _future_
liability to serve.[28]
GREAT BRITAIN
Until the year 1870, England held tenaciously to the doctrine of the
indelibility of national allegiance. Everyone was free to emigrate at
will and live where he pleased, but wherever he went, and whatsoever
he might do in the attempt to acquire another citizenship, he was
an Englishman still, in the eyes of the British law inalienably a
subject of the British crown. Although the author probably did not
realize it, there was a certain grimness underlying the lines in
“Pinafore”:
But, in spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He is an Englishman!
And although the War of 1812 between the United States and Great
Britain was chiefly provoked by the insistence of England upon her
slogan, “Once an Englishman always an Englishman,” and her refusal to
mitigate her policy with regard to British-born sailors naturalized
by the United States, the theory continued to be stoutly declared
as a matter of principle, though perhaps with diminishing emphasis.
Hall says, however,[29] that by 1876 it “had become an anachronism.”
And after the report of a British royal commission on the subject,
Parliament enacted a statute providing that a British subject might
lose his British nationality by naturalization in another country.
This long-maintained attitude of Great Britain undoubtedly goes far
to account for the failure of many persons of English birth, long
resident in this country, and for all practical purposes except
political participation Americans, to seek formal adoption into our
body politic.
GERMANY
Most of the discussion of our citizenship relations with Germany
has centered latterly about the German Citizenship and Nationality
Law, better known as the “Delbrück Law,” enacted in July, 1913--a
year before the outbreak of the Great War. Attention has focused
especially on Section 25 of the statute, which reads as follows:
A German who has neither his residence nor permanent abode in
Germany loses his citizenship upon acquiring foreign citizenship,
provided the foreign citizenship is acquired as a result of his
own application therefor or the application of the husband or
legal representative; but in the case of a wife of one having a
legal representative, only when the conditions exist under which
expatriation may be applied for according to Sections 18 and 19.
Citizenship is not lost by one who, before acquiring foreign
citizenship, has secured on application the written consent of the
competent authorities of his home state to retain his citizenship.
Before this consent is given the German consul is to be heard.
The Imperial Chancellor may order, with the consent of the Federal
Council, that persons who desire to acquire citizenship in a
specified foreign country may not be granted the consent applied
for in paragraph 2.
It was charged, and widely believed in this and other countries at
war with Germany, that this law was a device, deliberately conceived
by the German autocracy with the war in view, to enable Germans
living in other countries malevolently, or with ulterior motives and
mental reservations, to acquire naturalization there and go through
the forms of allegiance, without in fact ever losing, or being able
to lose, their German citizenship. The text of the statute certainly
gives more than plausible color to such an interpretation.
It may well be doubted whether in normal conditions, and apart from
the suspicion of Germany’s every motive, which is justified by her
conduct prior to and during the war, this statute would have received
any such interpretation in the eyes of the rest of the world; it is
difficult to divorce thought of things German from the world’s state
of mind for which Germany has only herself to thank. Nevertheless,
it is probable that the law was of normal origin, and apologists
for it assert that its design was to meet conditions existing with
reference to Russia, Italy, and France, all of which in some measure
denied the right of expatriation in absence of specific treaty.
Section 36 of the Delbrück Law definitely declares that “existing
treaties are not affected by this Act.” And when the law was under
consideration in the Reichstag, the representative of the German
government, upon being interrogated as to the effect of Sections
25 and 26 upon the Bancroft treaty between the United States and
Germany, replied, in so many words, that the German government was
obliged to look upon every German naturalized in the United States
as an American and nothing else.[30] Space is not available here for
further discussion of the real significance of the Delbrück Law;
suffice it to say that it is the subject of considerable difference
of opinion among the authorities.[31] But it may be said, in general,
that the best American authorities seem to be of the opinion that the
specific renunciation of each and every former allegiance required by
our naturalization process makes it substantially impossible for the
disputed section or any other enactment to operate as creating a dual
allegiance. Such allegiance could exist only in theory at most; in
no practical way could any foreign government enforce it as against
any person living in America. The United States, under the Bancroft
treaty and its own naturalization law, would not tolerate such an
interpretation, and as the “War Encyclopedia” of the American
Committee on Public Information said, “it would be impossible for
a German applicant for citizenship in the United States to avail
himself of this section [Section 25 of the Delbrück Law] without
committing perjury.”
So far as the “declarant” of any nationality is concerned, it
should be added that our Department of State has always sought to
maintain that a declarant is in a position different from that of
the ordinary alien, has extended a limited degree of protection, and
now issues passports under the authority of an Act passed March 2,
1907--provided he has resided in the United States for three years;
at the same time protecting itself from imposition by such persons
by limiting the validity of such passports to a term of six months,
and providing that an extended residence or domicile abroad shall
be construed as an abandonment of the declared intention. Moreover,
the naturalizing judges and the Bureau of Naturalization examine
with great strictness the reasons for any absence whatever from the
country after the declaration, and usually construe “intention” with
regard to continuous residence with emphasis against the applicant.
Many judges permit no absence, however brief, some going so far as to
rule against any absence from the very county in which the applicant
resides. And during the European War the issuance of such passports
to natives of the belligerent countries was altogether suspended.[32]
The United States was early committed not only by specific utterances
and practices, but by the whole psychology and tradition of its
being, to the principle of free expatriation; nevertheless, great
confusion existed in the interpretation of the right as it related
to efforts of American citizens to become citizens or subjects of
other countries. The policy was finally crystallized in the Act
of March 2, 1907, which provides definitely that “any American
citizen shall be deemed to have expatriated himself when he has been
naturalized in any foreign state in conformity with its laws, or
when he has taken an oath of allegiance to any foreign state.” This
is the Act which, in the same section, provides for the extension
of naturalization by presumption upon two years’ residence in “the
country from which he came,” or upon five years’ residence “in any
foreign state.” But it is provided that “such presumption may be
overcome on the presentation of satisfactory evidence to a diplomatic
or consular officer of the United States, under such regulations as
the Department of State may prescribe.” It is stipulated, however,
that “no American citizen shall be allowed to expatriate himself when
the country is at war.”
During the Great War many American citizens imperiled, and in fact
technically lost, their American citizenship by entering the military
service of the various belligerent nations. After the entry of the
United States into the conflict this was remedied by the enactment of
Section 12 of the Act of May 9, 1918, in which it is provided that
... any person who, while a citizen of the United States and during
the existing war in Europe, entered the military or naval service
of any country at war with a country with which the United States
is now at war, who shall be deemed to have lost his citizenship
by reason of any oath or obligation taken by him for the purpose
of entering such service, may resume his citizenship by taking
the oath of allegiance to the United States prescribed by the
naturalization law and regulations; ...
such oath to be taken here or abroad, before any state or Federal
court authorized to naturalize aliens, or before any United States
consul.
CITIZENSHIP TAKES NO ACCOUNT OF SEX
Basic citizenship in the United States takes no account of sex.
_Every_ child, male or female, white, black, brown, red, or yellow,
“born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,”
is _ipso facto_ a citizen. And every unmarried woman of that nativity
is, and continues to be such, as long as she remains unmarried. Upon
marriage she takes forthwith, whether she will or no, so far as our
law is concerned, the nationality of her husband--even if he be an
alien. It is the unbroken tradition of our law, and of the laws of
nearly all other nations--in so far as they recognize women as being
individual citizens at all--that the nationality of a wife follows
that of her husband. Of that tradition was born a section of the law
of 1907 which seeks to confer upon any American woman marrying a
foreigner the nationality of her husband. When an alien man becomes a
citizen of the United States by naturalization, his wife, in ordinary
circumstances, becomes a citizen with him; the law says specifically
that “a woman who is now, or may hereafter be married to a citizen
of the United States, and who might herself be lawfully naturalized,
may be deemed a citizen.” But, generally speaking, she must, unless
herself American born, be resident in this country. The practice in
this regard has not been wholly consistent; the State Department
has held repeatedly that the naturalization of a husband does not
reach the wife if she continue to reside in the old country; but a
very uniform line of decisions is to the effect that her husband’s
naturalization makes her a citizen wherever she may be, and that
she remains a citizen even after his death unless she takes action
to repatriate herself. The Act of 1907 makes it necessary for such a
foreign-born widow resident abroad to register with a United States
consul within a year after the termination of her marriage; otherwise
her citizenship lapses.
The phrase, “who might herself be lawfully naturalized,” has
given rise to much controversy, and its significance has not been
definitively declared. Some authorities hold it to apply only to the
Oriental races excluded as such from citizenship; others hold that it
should be interpreted to call for an examination of the wife as to
her views on the subject of anarchism, polygamy, etc. But the general
tendency seems still to hold that the family is one, _and the husband
that one_; that, therefore, _any_ sort of wife comes into citizenship
automatically with the naturalization of her husband.
“A WOMAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY”
The nonresident American-born wife of a foreigner may, upon his death
or the termination of the marriage in any other legal manner, resume
her American citizenship by registration with a United States consul.
But what of the woman, born an American citizen, married to an alien
who continues to live? The United States statute of 1907 undertakes
to expatriate her--“any American woman who marries a foreigner shall
take the nationality of her husband.” But, in absence of specific
treaty, or of legislation in the husband’s country to that effect,
that pronouncement is without force or validity outside of the United
States; Congress has no power to confer or inflict the citizenship of
any other nation upon anybody. “The operation of this statute might
easily deprive a woman of her American citizenship--even if she had
it by right of birth--and leave her with none.”[33] It seems rather
extraordinary that of all the judges of American naturalization
courts replying to the questionnaire of the Americanization Study,
whose results are discussed elsewhere in this volume,[34] not one
referred directly to this aspect of the citizenship of the American
woman.
The person without a country is an alien everywhere his foot may
fall--no matter under what roof or flag he may seek shelter. He is
subject to the local laws and limitations governing aliens; but
he has no homeland whose flag he may call his own; no government
anywhere to which he may appeal for protection; he is dependent
without recourse upon the hospitality, grace, and mercy of the public
authorities and the people of the land where he chances to make his
habitation.
THE AMERICAN UNDER THREE JURISDICTIONS
In notable contrast with this dismal prospect, the American citizen,
native or naturalized, is quite otherwise. He is subject to _three_
concurrent jurisdictions. This fact is a source of great puzzlement
to many an applicant for citizenship, and constitutes one of the
stumbling-blocks which beset him in his initial understanding of our
system of government.
First, the nature of his relation to the United States. In the case
of Minor _vs._ Happersett,[35] decided in 1875, the Supreme Court of
the United States said:
Before its adoption, the Constitution of the United States did not
in terms prescribe who should be citizens of the United States,
yet there were necessarily such citizens without such provision.
There cannot be a nation without a people. The very idea of a
political community, such as a nation is, implies an association
of persons for the promotion of their general welfare. Each one
of the persons associated becomes a member of the nation formed
by the association. He owes it allegiance and is entitled to its
protection. Allegiance and protection are, in this connection,
reciprocal obligations. The one is a compensation for the other;
allegiance for protection and protection for allegiance.
For convenience it has been found necessary to give a name to this
membership. The object is to designate by a title the person and
the relation he bears to the nation. For this purpose the words
“subject,” “inhabitant,” and “citizen” have been used, and the
choice between them is sometimes made to depend upon the form of
government. “Citizen” is now more commonly employed, however, and
as it has been considered better suited to the description of one
living under a republican government, it was adopted by nearly
all of the states upon their separation from Great Britain, and
was afterward adopted in the Articles of Confederation and in the
Constitution of the United States. When used in that sense it is
understood as conveying the idea of membership of a nation, and
nothing more.
To determine, then, who were the citizens of the United States
before the adoption of the [Fourteenth] amendment it is necessary
to ascertain what persons originally associated themselves together
to form the nation, and what were afterward admitted to membership.
The effect of this decision, and of the Fourteenth Amendment whose
meaning it declared, was to determine definitively that National
Citizenship is paramount to State Citizenship. But it did not
entirely absorb the latter into the former. In the famous “Slaughter
House Cases”[36] the Supreme Court three years before had held that
there might be citizens of the United States who were not citizens
of any state, and that the Fourteenth Amendment applied particularly,
if not solely, to the privileges and immunities of citizens of the
United States, _as such_, and did not necessarily limit the right of
a state to inflict disabilities upon its own citizens.
The distinction between the two citizenships was thus stated in the
Slaughter House cases:[37]
The distinction between citizenship of the United States and
citizenship of a State is clearly recognized and established. Not
only may a man be a citizen of the United States without being
a citizen of a State, but an important element is necessary to
convert the former into the latter. He must reside within the
State to make him a citizen of it, but it is only necessary that
he should be born or naturalized in the United States to be a
citizen of the Union. It is quite clear, then, that there is a
citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship of a State,
which are distinct from each other, and which depend upon different
characteristics or circumstances in the individual.
It is therefore decided that while a State may no longer decide the
question of who shall be or become its citizens, the citizen of the
United States must, before becoming a citizen of a State, take up
his residence within the State. The term of residence is nowhere
fixed, but a permanent residence or domicile is understood, “with
intent that it shall continue until subsequent removal with the
intent of abandoning such residence and acquiring another.”
These momentous adjudications did not, however, address themselves
to the matter of political participation. Although a state might
not determine who should constitute its citizen body, there was
no curtailment of its full authority to determine what political
privileges should exist, or who should enjoy them. Neither Federal
nor state citizenship, _per se_, entitles a man or woman to vote
or to hold office; these are matters of state legislation and a
number of states have accorded, and two still accord, to aliens
who have merely declared their intention to seek citizenship, the
right to vote. Moreover, respected authorities[38] hold the opinion
that, while no state can prevent a citizen of the United States
from becoming a citizen of the state, a state may grant its own
citizenship to one who is not--perhaps to one who cannot become--a
citizen of the United States.[39] But the Act of Congress, May 6,
1882, expressly prohibits the naturalization of any Chinese person.
The courts from the beginning have recognized the existence of two
concurrent, if not more or less separable, citizenships. In the
Cruikshank case in 1875,[40] the Supreme Court said:
The people of the United States resident within any State are
subject to two governments; one State and the other national; but
there need be no conflict between the two. The powers which one
possesses the other does not. They are established for different
purposes, and have different jurisdictions. Together they make
one whole, and furnish the people of the United States with one
government, ample for the protection of all their rights at home
and abroad. True, it may sometimes happen that a person is amenable
to both jurisdictions for one and the same act.... This does not,
however, necessarily imply that the two governments possess powers
in common, or bring them into conflict with each other. It is the
natural consequence of a citizenship which owes allegiance to two
sovereignties and claims protection from both. The citizen cannot
complain because he has voluntarily submitted himself to such a
form of government. He owes allegiance to the two departments, so
to speak, and within their respective spheres must pay the penalty
which each exacts for disobedience to its laws. In return he can
demand protection from each within its own jurisdiction.
There is still another jurisdiction to which citizens must give
attention, and to the foreigner it is an added perplexity in the
understanding of our system: the purely local laws, ordinances, and
rulings of city, health, police; of country, town, and village; and
sometimes these seem to run counter to one another, and leave him in
a maze of fear and uncertainty--to say nothing of those mysterious
exceptions, exemptions, and immunities which seem to be accorded
for the benefit of those who, by political loyalty or subserviency,
favoritism--and even cash payments upon occasion--have got themselves
“in right,” as the saying goes.
The problems of national solidarity and loyalty raised so acutely
all over the country by the exigencies and conflicts of the war
have made the mass of the people of the United States keen as never
before about the standards and technical tests of citizenship. The
tendency, very marked now, is to establish and uphold the uniformity
of conditions which beyond a doubt shall represent the spirit, if not
the letter, of the law. We are now to consider the machinery and the
process which the aspirant for citizenship confronts as he knocks at
our wicket.
IV
DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATURALIZATION LAW
Naturalization, the legal ceremony by which the native or adopted
citizen of one country acquires citizenship in another, is in its
significance and essentials very ancient--it goes back to the blood
transfusion and other primitive ceremonials by which those of other
kin were admitted as brothers to full standing in family, clan,
or tribal membership. It registers and effectuates two distinct
things--a divorce and a new marriage, so to say. There are two
parties to the twofold process: the petitioner, who on his own
account renounces the old allegiance and professes his desire and his
intention to assume the new; and the adopting government which, on
its part, accepts the applicant and upon him confers the standing and
privileges and imposes the responsibilities and obligations attaching
to citizenship under its protection and authority. This is precisely
the nature of the process through which must go every foreign-born
person who becomes an active member of the United States.
OUR “CHARTER MEMBERS”
As in the case of other new organizations, we had at the beginning
what might be called “Charter Members.” We were not fussy about it.
There was no prejudice then against the newcomer--we “needed him
in our business!” The Constitution of the United States in its
inception took in as a matter of course everybody then resident
here who by any color of law could be construed to be entitled
to membership. Even the provision requiring native birth for the
Presidency limited it only to one natural born, “or a citizen of the
United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution.”[41]
Martin van Buren was actually the first President born an American
citizen. The seven who preceded him all were born subjects of the
British crown.
Prior to 1700, few immigrants who were not British subjects had
sought homes in the American colonies; the few of other nationality
found no difficulty in being accepted as fellow citizens with those
who preceded them. For obvious reasons, the Colonial governments were
liberal in granting civil rights to newcomers of almost every sort.
It was absolutely vital to the preservation of the new civilization
here that there should be an increasing number of men to assist in
conquering the wilderness and in defending the fringe of settlements
against attack. How could the pioneer nation have maintained itself,
much less have advanced and spread westward until its feet were
stopped by the Pacific, without these adventurous souls of every race?
So the sieve was of coarse mesh.
FIRST NATURALIZATION LAWS
Generally speaking, except where a colony had legislated
independently in the matter, the British law was in effect. Under
this, an alien might be naturalized by the Act of Parliament, or
given partial rights by grant of the king, in “Letters of Denization.”
Prior to 1740, a number of naturalization laws were passed by
Colonial legislatures. General laws were passed by New York and
Pennsylvania in 1683, South Carolina in 1696, and Virginia somewhat
later. The use of the private Act of Naturalization was very
common, especially in Pennsylvania and New York. The general Act of
Pennsylvania was in fact revoked by Queen Anne, and from that time
until 1840 all naturalizations in that colony were by private or
special legislation.
Probably the first naturalization of aliens in the New World was
the collective acceptance of the Dutch inhabitants of New Amsterdam
(New York) by the articles of capitulation in 1664, by which they
with their territory passed under the British flag. Two years later
Augustine Herman of Prague, with his family, was naturalized by
Act of the Maryland Assembly. This appears to have been the first
naturalization law enacted in America.
The rights conferred by all of these Colonial Acts were limited
strictly to the colony in which each was passed. Political rights
varied in the different colonies, chiefly according to voting
qualifications in force in each. But since most of them provided
for a property qualification, the permission to foreigners to own
land usually carried with it the right of suffrage. However, in some
of the colonies the naturalized citizen was not eligible to public
office. For all practical purposes of social standing, the ownership
of land sufficed, and since that could be passed down by inheritance,
and it was always admitted that a child born on this soil was a
citizen regardless of his racial descent, the restrictions were
hardly irksome at that time.
In 1740 the English Parliament passed an Act for providing for
naturalization in the American colonies[42] of “foreign Protestants.”
Persons naturalized under this statute might enjoy all civil rights
except that of holding certain offices. A residence of seven years
was required, and certain oaths and rites were imposed, including
partaking of the sacrament of the Holy Communion in accordance with
the ritual of the Church of England. Quakers and Jews, however,
were the subject of exemption; Quakers were permitted to affirm,
rather than to swear, and Jews were permitted to omit the words, “on
the faith of a Christian.” This Act remained the basic law of the
American provinces until the Revolution, when all British statutes
were, at least constructively, superseded by Acts of the Congress of
the United States of America.[43]
Among the grievances recited against the government of George III was
the treatment of this subject of naturalization. It is thus set forth
in the Declaration of Independence:
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for
that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners;
refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and
raising the conditions of new Appropriation of Lands.
Under the Articles of Confederation, which served the new republic
until the adoption of the Constitution, no specific action was taken
by the Congress to provide for the naturalization, although certain
provision was made for an oath of allegiance for office-holders, and
to facilitate desertion from the British ranks by offers of land
and of citizenship. After the Revolution a number of individual
states enacted naturalization statutes: Massachusetts, 1783-89;
Delaware, 1788; Maryland, 1779; New York, 1789; South Carolina, 1784;
Virginia, 1779-85. These Acts generally provided very easy methods
for the acquisition of citizenship--usually requiring only an oath of
allegiance, without any specific length of residence; though Virginia
required a formal declaration of intention to remain here, and South
Carolina insisted upon a previous residence of at least one year.
EFFORTS TOWARD UNIFORMITY
The obvious and constant embarrassment arising from different
requirements under diverse jurisdictions was recognized and discussed
before the making of the Federal Constitution. James Madison, for
example, in 1782, urged the necessity of a uniform practice. So
general was the recognition of this need that the Constitutional
Convention took it for granted, and almost without discussion adopted
the provision which still stands, and under which all subsequent
legislation has gained its authority:[44]
Congress shall have power ... to establish an uniform rule of
naturalization....
And almost immediately (1790), President Washington having urged it
in his message in January of that year, Congress enacted a general
Naturalization Act.[45]
The considerable debate in Congress concerning this measure not
only throws an interesting light upon the policies prevailing at
that time, but shows that while the new government realized the
importance of desirable immigration, there was full realization of
the difficulty of so adjusting the process of naturalization as to
facilitate this while at the same time protecting the essentials of
the American spirit and institutions from the insidious influences
feared from certain types of newcomers. The conflicting attitudes of
the highly liberal Quakers in Pennsylvania and the austere Puritans
of New England--visible in many ways in all the legislation of the
early years in the contrasting jurisdictions of the northern Atlantic
colonies, appears clearly in the debates, from which emerged the Act
of 1790, whose essentials were as follows:
I. Naturalization to be conferred by any court of record.
II. A requirement of two years’ residence in the United States, and
one year within the State.
III. Proof required of good moral character, and oath to support
the Constitution of the United States.
This Act was repealed in 1795 by another[46] introducing the
declaration of intention to become a citizen, and extending the
period of required residence from two years to five. This Act has
been the basis of our naturalization system ever since. Its main
provisions were these:
I. A preliminary declaration of intention to become a citizen of
the United States, to be made at least three years [the present law
specifies two years] before final application for citizenship.
II. Naturalization jurisdiction was vested in any “supreme,
superior, district or circuit court” of the states or of the
territories northwest or south of the River Ohio, or a circuit or
district court of the United States.
III. Five years’ residence in the United States, and one year’s
residence in the state in which the application was made.
IV. An oath of allegiance.
Aliens then residing in the United States might be naturalized after
_two_ years’ residence.
This Act was fathered by James Madison, then a member of Congress.
President Jefferson, in his first message to Congress, advocated a
revision of the Naturalization Law, to the end that “the general
character and capabilities of a citizen be safely communicated to
everyone manifesting a bona fide purpose of embarking his life and
fortunes permanently with us.”
Accordingly the Jeffersonian Congress of 1802 repealed the Act of
1795, and enacted one[47] which remained substantially in force for
more than a century. Its provisions, in the main, were as follows:
I. Naturalization jurisdiction was vested in the supreme, superior,
district and circuit courts (a district court meaning any court
of record having common-law jurisdiction) in the states and
territorial districts and in the circuit and district courts of the
United States.
II. The Declaration of Intention was still required, with the three
years’ interval before final application.
III. Five years’ residence in the United States and one in the
State was still required.
IV. Oath of allegiance to the United States, with specific
renunciation of former allegiance.
V. Proof of good moral character and attachment to the principles
of the United States.
Under this Act the children of persons duly naturalized were, if
resident in the United States, to be considered citizens, and those
born elsewhere were to enjoy the same status, provided that the
citizenship should not descend to children whose fathers never
resided in the United States.
An Act passed in 1804 slightly modified the regulation in favor
of aliens residing in the United States between 1798 and 1802, and
provided also that in case a “declarant” should die before his
naturalization had been consummated, his widow and minor children
should be deemed citizens upon taking the prescribed oath.[48]
During the second war with England, in 1813, an Act was passed
requiring the five years’ residence to be absolutely unbroken by any
absence whatever from the United States, and prescribing penalties
for forgery or sale of naturalization certificates.[49] Later in the
same year another law was passed to permit the naturalization of
alien enemies (then Englishmen) who had declared intention prior to
June 18, 1812.[50] Another important amendment was made in 1816.[51]
In 1824, following a period of agitation for earlier naturalization,
Congress passed an Act, the most important provision of which[52]
reduced from three to two years the minimum interval between the
declaration of intention and final naturalization. It is interesting
to note that this agitation for more liberal conditions came, as
might be expected, at the time of the initial influx of aliens to the
Eastern cities, and the beginnings of the political exploitation of
the “foreign vote.”
Further slight changes were made in 1828,[53] and after twenty
years more, in 1848, Congress abolished the restriction of 1813
which forbade any absence whatever from the country during the five
years’ period of “continuous residence.”[54] But during all of
the period between 1820 and the Civil War there was an increasing
“Native American” agitation for narrower, rather than more liberal,
restrictions, even to the point of abolishing naturalization
altogether. Innumerable bills were introduced reflecting this
agitation; but, owing both to the increasing importance of the
foreign-born element in politics, and to the underlying realization
that the nation must have a constant accretion of population, no such
legislation reached the statute books. The three minor amendments
enacted during and immediately after the Civil War were designed to
meet conditions arising out of the state of war.[55]
In 1876 the Act of 1802 was amended so that the declaration of
intention could be made, as it is now, before the clerk of any of
the courts having naturalization jurisdiction.[56] And in 1872 and
1894 provision was made for the easier naturalization of the United
States soldiers, sailors, marines, and merchant seamen, about whose
permanency of residence there was embarrassment.[57]
BARS UP AGAINST ALIEN ANARCHISTS
The assassination of President McKinley, in 1901, by a professed
anarchist brought to a head the feeling against foreign
ultra-radicals, and resulted in the enactment in 1903[58] of the
restriction against the admission to this country of persons
believing in the abolition of organized government or the removal
of public officers by violence. This test is widely applied now
by judges and by the Naturalization Service in the examination of
applicants for citizenship.
VARIOUS PRESIDENTS DISCUSSED NATURALIZATION
The importance of the subject of the absorption of foreign-born
persons into our life is reflected all through the records of the
government; allusions to it may be found in a large proportion of the
messages of the Presidents to Congress. John Adams found occasion to
express abhorrence of “intrigues of foreign agents to alienate the
affections of the Indians and to arouse them to acts of hostility.”
The liberal sentiments of Thomas Jefferson appeared in his early
recommendation of a revision of the law requiring fourteen years’
residence: “Shall we refuse the refuge extended to our fathers,”
said he, in substance, “to the unhappy fugitives from distress
arriving in this land? Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on
this globe?” But at the same time he remarked that for admission to
certain offices of trust, a residence should be required sufficient
to develop character and an appreciation of the design of our
institutions.
James Madison’s interest in the subject was exhibited throughout his
administration, and especially in his activities on the floor of
Congress.
President Buchanan insisted upon the full status for naturalized
citizens.
Our Government is bound [said he] to protect the rights of our
naturalized citizens everywhere to the same extent as though they
had drawn their first breath in this country. We can recognize no
distinction between our native and naturalized citizens.
Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson touched upon the question of the
French and Russian claims upon immigrants who came here merely to
escape military service; Lincoln pointing out that there should be
a time limit beyond which the United States would not attempt to
protect persons who came here for that reason and then returned to
their native countries claiming to be American citizens; Johnson,
on the other hand, emphasizing the effect of naturalization in
absolving the individual from all former allegiance. President
Grant urged Congress to define the conditions of expatriation,
and to regulate by law the status of children of aliens becoming
naturalized, and that of American women marrying noncitizens. He also
drew attention to the growing evil of fraudulent naturalization,
and urged the establishment of a system of uniform certificates and
records.
President Arthur also called for a central bureau of registry, and
for a general revision of the naturalization law, pointing out that
much of it now had only historical interest, that the provisions
regarding children of naturalized parents were ambiguous, and that
the constitutional authority to establish “an uniform rule” called
for a clear definition of the status of “persons born within the
United States subject to a foreign power, and minor children of
fathers who have declared their intention but have failed to perfect
their naturalization.”
President Cleveland devoted a good deal of attention to the subject.
He, too, emphasized the need of centralized Federal control over the
records, and repeatedly called for a general revision of the law,
insisting that the “privilege and franchise of American citizenship”
should be granted with scrupulous care. He gave warning against “the
easy and unguarded manner in which certificates of naturalization can
now be obtained,” and the growth of a class of persons who availed
themselves of it for political purposes.
Benjamin Harrison emphasized the need of an investigation of the
moral character of the applicant for citizenship, to make more
certain the existence of a “good disposition toward our government”;
calling also for a more particular system of court hearings, with
proper opportunity for representatives of the government to appear.
He declared that “avowed enemies of social order” should be denied
not only citizenship, but even domicile here. He also adverted to the
evils of fraudulent naturalization.
DEFINITE REFORM AT LAST
It was the growing realization of this general condition, of the
notorious ease with which naturalization could be acquired; the
wholesale issue and sale of fraudulent certificates; the debauching
of elections through the manipulation of the “foreign vote,” and
the general cheapening of the franchise, that brought the subject
to a head. It was common knowledge that these frauds were prevalent
wherever there were large numbers of foreign-born people, and
that both of the great political parties vied with each other in
exhausting ingenuity to devise methods for the exploitation of the
alien population. Which party excelled in the business depended
almost entirely upon which was dominant in any particular community.
The situation was a scandal in any event, and the sober sentiment of
the nation realized increasingly that something must be done about it.
NATURALIZATION COMMISSION APPOINTED
It was not until the administration of President Roosevelt,
however, that definite steps were taken. During the years 1903-05
the Department of Justice became very active in unearthing and
prosecuting violations of the naturalization laws. Hundreds of
cases of fraudulent naturalization were discovered, and nearly
seven hundred convictions were obtained. A special examiner of the
Department of Justice, A. C. van Deusen, made an extensive report on
the subject in 1905.[59]
By Executive Order, March 1, 1905, President Roosevelt created
a special commission, consisting of Milton D. Purdy, Assistant
Attorney-General representing the Department of Justice, chairman;
Gaillard Hung, chief of the Bureau of Citizenship in the Department
of State, representing that department, and Richard K. Campbell,
attorney for the Immigration Bureau in the Department of Commerce
and Labor (now Commissioner of Naturalization in the Department of
Labor), “to investigate and report on the subject of naturalization
in the United States,” and to recommend changes in the naturalization
laws.[60] The commission’s report is invaluable in any study of the
subject of Naturalization Law and Procedure.
The average citizen scarcely realizes how completely the
Naturalization Law of 1906, which was the fruit of the labors of
this commission, has revolutionized the whole business. Whatever
may be the defects of the law, or of the practice which has grown
up under it, they are in the main due to “leaning over backward”
in the honest effort to clean and keep clean the flow of new blood
into our citizenship. Generally speaking, it is to be said that the
enforcement of this statute has abolished most of the evils of fraud
and exploitation which before that were a scandal and a menace in
American political life.
By this act the Naturalization Service was established and an
absolutely new era initiated. As Mr. Campbell, who forthwith
became chief of the Division of Naturalization in the Bureau of
Immigration,[61] said in his report for the fiscal year ending June
30, 1908, the process of becoming naturalized as an American citizen
... has acquired (even after so short an operation of the
new system) a formality and dignity which is in some measure
commensurate with the importance of the Act and the gravity of
its consequences; it is no longer possible to “railroad” aliens
in groups to the naturalization courts, in defiance of the law
and in disregard of even an appearance of propriety; the courts
which have jurisdiction are no longer such as are “devoted largely
to the trifling and indecent affairs of the community,” and the
conferring of citizenship is, in this respect, no longer “ranked
with disturbing the peace or keeping an unlicensed dog,” as it was
expressed by a judge of a court in describing the conditions under
the old law.
And in his seventh report, for 1913-14, to the Secretary of Labor,
Mr. Campbell remarked that:
To those who will take the trouble to compare the chaotic and
disorderly conditions which characterized the procedure for
more than a century of our national existence with the dignity,
uniformity, and regularity of the present system, it must appear to
be a matter of inexplicable carelessness that the reform should so
long have been delayed.
In the same report, the Commissioner of Naturalization points to one
reform embodied at least potentially in the present system, which
alone would have justified it:
There is, too, for the person naturalized, a security of title
to his political or national status never before enjoyed by him.
The title to citizenship is the recorded order of the court. The
certificate is simply the conclusive evidence of such order. If
there was no written record made, as was often the case, or if that
record was destroyed, as happened not infrequently, the title to
citizenship hung by the slender thread of a piece of paper carried
by the owner and subject to all the risks attendant upon such
possessions. If lost, to all practical intents his citizenship was
also lost. Now the duplicate written record, one in the court and
one in the Bureau [of Naturalization], is an ample defense against
all such accidents.
It _would_ be, indeed; but what if in course of time these records in
the Bureau should have come into such condition, owing to inadequate
clerical force and increasing absorption of the Bureau in other
activities, that the record there could not be traced!
However, any criticism or consideration of the present system, to be
intelligent or fair, must take into account, first, the incredibly
chaotic conditions which formerly prevailed, and second, the fact
that never--not even now--has the naturalization system, as a problem
in public administration, received even superficial attention of the
public.
WHAT THE LAW REQUIRES
Before we proceed to consider the naturalization process as in action
it has affected annually upward of one hundred thousand human beings
seeking admission to citizenship in the United States, let us see the
principal provisions of the law with which they come into contact.
Section 4 of the Naturalization Law[62] provides that an alien may
be admitted to become a citizen of the United States in the following
manner “and not otherwise.”
First. He shall declare on oath before the clerk of any court
authorized by this Act to naturalize aliens, or his authorized
deputy, in the district in which such alien resides, two years
at least prior to his admission, and after he has reached the
age of eighteen years, that it is his bona fide intention to
become a citizen of the United States and to renounce forever
all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate,
state, or sovereignty, and particularly, by name, to the prince,
potentate, state, or sovereignty of which the alien may be at the
time a citizen or subject. And such declaration shall set forth the
name, age, occupation, personal description, place of birth, last
foreign residence and allegiance, the date of arrival, the name
of the vessel, if any, in which he came to the United States, and
the present place of residence in the United States of said alien:
_Provided_, however, that no alien who, in conformity with the law
in force at the date of his declaration, has declared his intention
to become a citizen of the United States, shall be required to
renew such declaration.
Second. Not less than two years, nor more than seven years, after
he has made such declaration of intention he shall make and file,
in duplicate, a petition in writing, signed by the applicant in his
own handwriting and duly verified, in which petition such applicant
shall state his full name, his place of residence (by street and
number, if possible), his occupation, and, if possible, the date
and place of his birth; the place from which he emigrated, and the
date and place of his arrival in the United States, and, if he
entered through a port, the name of the vessel on which he arrived;
the time when, and the place and name of the court where he
declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States; if
he is married he shall state the name of his wife and, if possible,
the country of her nativity and her place of residence at the time
of filing his petition; and if he has children, the name, date,
and place of birth and place of residence of each child living at
the time of the filing of his petition: _Provided_, That if he has
filed his declaration before the passage of this Act he shall not
be required to sign the petition in his own handwriting.
The petition shall set forth that he is not a disbeliever in, or
opposed to, organized government, or a member of or affiliated
with any organization or body of persons teaching disbelief in,
or opposed to, organized government; a polygamist or believer
in the practice of polygamy; and that it is his intention to
become a citizen of the United States and to renounce absolutely
and forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince,
potentate, state, or sovereignty, and particularly by name to the
prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of which he at the time
of filing of his petition may be a citizen or subject; and that it
is his intention to reside permanently within the United States;
and whether or not he has been denied admission as a citizen of
the United States, and, if denied, the ground or grounds of such
denial, the court or courts in which such decision was rendered,
and that the cause for such denial has since been cured or removed;
and every fact material to his naturalization and required to be
proved upon the final hearing of his application.
The petition shall also be verified by the affidavits of at least
two credible witnesses, who are citizens of the United States, and
who shall state in their affidavits that they have personally known
the applicant to be a resident of the United States for a period of
at least five years continuously, and of the State, Territory, or
the District of Columbia, in which the application is made, for a
period of at least one year immediately preceding the date of the
filing of his petition, and that they each have personal knowledge
that the petitioner is a person of good moral character, and that
he is in every way qualified, in their opinion, to be admitted as
a citizen of the United States.
At the time of filing his petition there shall be filed with the
clerk of the court a certificate from the Department of Labor,
if the petitioner arrives in the United States after the passage
of this Act, stating the date, place, and manner of his arrival
in the United States, and the declaration of intention of such
petitioner, which certificate and declaration shall be attached to
and be made a part of said petition.
Third. He shall, before he is admitted to citizenship, declare
on oath in open court that he will support the Constitution of
the United States, and that he absolutely and entirely renounces
and abjures all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince,
potentate, state, or sovereignty, and particularly by name to
the prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of which he was
before a citizen or subject; that he will support and defend the
Constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies,
foreign and domestic, and bear true faith and allegiance to the
same.[63]
Fourth. It shall be made to appear to the satisfaction of the court
admitting any alien to citizenship that immediately preceding
the date of his application he has resided continuously within
the United States five years at least, and within the State or
Territory where such court is at the time held one year at least,
and that during that time he has behaved as a man of good moral
character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the
United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of
the same. In addition to the oath of the applicant, the testimony
of at least two witnesses, citizens of the United States, as to
the facts of residence, moral character, and attachment to the
principles of the Constitution shall be required, and the name,
place of residence, and occupation of each witness shall be set
forth in the record.
Fifth. In case the alien applying to be admitted to citizenship
has borne any hereditary title, or has been of any of the orders
of nobility in the kingdom or state from which he came, he shall,
in addition to the above requisite, make an express renunciation
of his title or order of nobility in the court to which his
application is made, and his renunciation shall be recorded in the
court.
Sixth. When any alien who has declared his intention to become a
citizen of the United States dies before he is actually naturalized
the widow and minor children of such alien may, by complying with
the other provisions of this Act, be naturalized without making any
declaration of intention.