AMERICA-MADE CITIZENS
When is a citizen not a citizen? The great game of hide and seek in
America might well be called citizenship. Every naturalized male alien
is a citizen as long as he stays here; but if his home country was
Turkey, it is not safe for him to get back into its jurisdiction.
In New York state the alien waits five years to become a citizen
and vote; in Nebraska and half a dozen other states he has only to
declare his intention to become a citizen and then qualify under the
election law. We deny men the right to work in certain occupations
unless they are citizens, yet we make them wait five years to become
citizens, meanwhile failing to provide them with facilities for
meeting the educational requirements for citizenship. We tolerate a
system of seasonal labor and shifting of the working population which
makes it physically impossible for the migratory workman to meet the
legal requirements. We permit women to vote and still retain the law
that naturalization follows the husband or father--thereby making it
possible for the alien woman who marries a citizen or is the child
of a naturalized citizen to vote as soon as she complies with the
residence law, however ignorant she may be. At the same time we deny
the privilege of citizenship to native-born American women who marry
aliens. One of the great questions facing us to-day is the adaptation
of our citizenship requirements to the needs of the country. We cannot
have real Americanization until this is done. A man or woman unfit for
citizenship is not wanted in America. The fit man or woman should be in
every way encouraged to become the best kind of citizen and to remain
so.
We have no standard definitions of the citizenship requirement as to
what constitutes knowledge of English, of the constitution, of loyalty,
or the meaning of the oath of allegiance. Some judges with a high sense
of patriotic duty enforce one standard; others “pass them up”--and
again America pays the price in its quality of citizenship and in
the kind of service such men and women railroaded into citizenship
will render when called upon. We have never considered a knowledge of
the country, of its institutions and of Americanism as necessary for
citizenship, either of native or foreign born. We rest our case upon a
rather splendid series of assumptions. We assume that the school and
home and job and town will do this work with never an inquiry by the
Federal government as to how the task is being done. Were it not for
the campaign for preparedness and the dangers we face we would still
accept the public school Fourth of July oration as sufficient evidence
of the interest and proficiency of the native-born son; we would still
believe that the granting of papers to foreign-born men sealed their
loyalty to America. We hardly yet realize the significance of the fact
that no specific way of pledging allegiance is required from the men
or women who come of age; even the child born here of foreign parents
is not asked to make a choice between the two possible allegiances
that may be dear to him. Little citizenship training is given in our
schools, except in the form of diluted history or civil government,
and the thousands of girls and boys that leave school at 14 years of
age and go to work do not obtain even that. We assume that the child
has absorbed American ideas and traditions. The feeble response to
a preparedness call and our attempts at neutrality in thought have
shown us how little of the national and how much of the local and
selfishly “safe” attitude we as a nation have. What is our conception
of citizenship? Does it mean that we, the people, are the possessors
of life, liberty, happiness, and prosperity in America with no
corresponding obligations? Does it mean that our obligations consist in
paying taxes, being law abiding to the point of keeping out of court,
and voting at some elections? We owe these obligations to any country
in which we are guests. We still find ourselves, after generations of
American citizens, debating whether we shall train our young men to
defend America. We find the best life in the country not in government
service, building a strong nation, but in business, building an
individual fortune.
Are we as careless, go as you please, and perfunctory about making
aliens into citizens as we are about native sons and daughters growing
into citizens? It is not very flattering to America to find that up
to the beginning of the war in Europe the greatest incentives to the
acquirement of citizenship by aliens were political and commercial.
There are many thousands of aliens moved by a general aspiration toward
the idealistic privileges and traditions of American citizenship and
these make our true patriots. But by far too many of our citizens
have entered by way of the political club and at the behest of a
self-interested politician; and by way of the job, to earn a living.
How and when did citizenship become so cheap and begin to serve the
commercial and not the patriotic needs of America?
The chief difficulty arose with the willingness of government to
place the whole burden upon the alien. We wrote a law on the statute
books, setting forth certain technical requirements; then we taxed
the prospective citizen enough to pay for the enforcement of the law,
providing a number of fat offices and a neat balance in the treasury.
Then we sat back in our comfortable office chairs and said to the
alien: Now you comply with the law and we will grant you citizenship
papers.
But in drafting the law, we did another thing. We called it raising
the standard. What we really did was to increase the technicalities
which cost influence and money to satisfy, but which gave America no
better citizens. The naturalization law provides that an alien before
becoming a citizen shall have a continuous residence of five years in
America, shall comply with certain rules, shall have a knowledge of
the English language and of the constitution, and shall renounce all
allegiance to foreign governments. He may not do this all at once.
It is a long, complicated process, intended to safeguard American
citizenship, but failing in its purpose because we failed to establish
standards or facilities for compliance. For instance, the prospective
citizen must file a declaration of intention at least two years prior
to the granting of his final papers--an obsolete requirement, as his
five years of continuous residence is now established by the filing
of a certificate of arrival with his petition. A second document,
the petition for citizenship, must be filed not less than two nor
more than seven years after the declaration of intention, verified by
the affidavits of two credible citizen witnesses, certifying to the
petitioner’s five years’ residence in the United States _and one year’s
residence in the state or district in which the application is made_.
This latter requirement creates almost insuperable difficulties for
migratory laborers who go from state to state, following the call of
casual or seasonal labor. After the petition is filed, the applicant
must wait at least ninety days before his appearance in court.
_But should he move during this period from one judicial district
to another within the same state, he must file a new petition_ and
pay an additional _fee, as the court will not transfer its original
records_. As a result, an applicant who removes to New York City after
filing a petition and paying the fee in Buffalo must go through the
same process in New York City. And unless he can afford to bring his
witnesses twice from Buffalo to New York City he must wait another
year until two other citizens can verify his year’s residence in New
York City. The two witnesses must accompany the petitioner at least
twice--when the petition is filed and at the hearing in open court.
If his case is not reached and adjournments are made, the applicant
frequently appears not only the minimum four times, but may appear
as many as six or eight times, and his witnesses as many as four or
five times. Every day in court means the loss of wages and the cost of
transportation to and from the county seat for himself and witnesses
whom he must reimburse for their losses. The applicant and his
witnesses are in constant fear that their enforced presence in court
during ordinary working hours may result in the loss of their jobs.
Of what possible value can state and district lines be in a national
citizenship matter? Are we a nation or are we a conglomeration of
states and districts? If we need so cumbersome a machine to prevent
frauds, by which the alien pays the entire cost, then the reduction
in fraud is at the high cost of citizens. It is estimated that 10 per
cent of all aliens who try to become citizens fail in their final
examination because of technicalities, and most of them never come
back, though no fraud was alleged.
When we set this highly specialized Federal machinery in motion in
1906, it was on the theory that citizenship was a national, not a
state matter. In 1889 when the enforcement of the immigration laws
was transferred to the Federal government, it acquired all powers of
admission and exclusion, but all the protective features of the Board
of Emigration Commissioners of New York state were dropped and a series
of exploitations immediately arose. This is precisely what happened
when our naturalization laws were transferred. We took the authority,
but we neglected to establish standards, facilities, and protection for
the alien. We did not settle the states’-rights question and we did not
consider sufficiently our international relations.
In the matter of standards, the burden of determining the
qualifications of the prospective citizens rests upon the Bureau of
Naturalization, while the actual granting of final papers rests with
some 2380 judges, each applying his own idea of qualifications. The
Bureau of Naturalization up to 1915 has been primarily concerned with
technicalities of law and proof of residence, time elapsing between the
granting of papers, etc. It has been largely legal evidence which has
been placed before the judge, showing that the law had been complied
with.
For nine long years the Federal government enforced the letter of
this law--it had no American spirit in it. It did nothing to assist
the alien to qualify in the English language or in civics. It made no
attempt to stimulate the opening of night schools where these could be
taught; it favored no educational extension work; it saw no connection
between the courts, schools, and naturalization bureaus. Then
things began to happen. States like New York and California started
immigration bureaus which emphasized education. Other states like New
Jersey and Massachusetts had immigration commissions that studied
naturalization among other things. Two cities, at least, took up the
matter--Cleveland and Los Angeles--of connecting the public schools
with the courts and having the certificate of the school, giving credit
for work in the English language and civics, recognized by the judge
in granting final papers. In a few cities night sessions were also
urged, so the cost to workers in time and wages might be lessened.
In 1914 the Bureau of Education established a division of immigrant
education, which began a nation-wide campaign of education through the
public schools. In 1915, the preparedness movement, and the discussion
of hyphenated Americans and their activities, awakened the Bureau of
Naturalization to the fact that a new situation confronted America.
In the meantime politics and business had been as busy as ever “making
citizens” for their own purposes, putting them through the courts
without qualification in English or civics. Something had to be done
about this, so the Bureau of Naturalization reversed its policy and
is now conducting a campaign by which the name of every applicant for
first papers is now sent to the nearest school authority and the alien
is followed up and urged to become qualified for citizenship.
This is still largely an ideal and a dream--something to be worked
out with infinite care and patience to bring good results. We shall
never have prepared citizens until we have Federal aid to local
communities. Outside of the large cities the local school can barely
meet its local obligations to children, and it will be a long time
before there are adequate facilities for night schools. This is by no
means all of the problem of standards. I am convinced that we shall
have to have a Federal admission law compelling the acquirement of the
English language or similar compulsory state laws to get immigrants
into the school. Let us tell the truth. We have empty night schools
in America as well as aliens without school facilities. Why? The
foreign governments and the bulk of the foreign-language newspapers
are against the immigrant learning the English language. It opens
the door too rapidly to Americanization. The short-sighted business
man is against his workmen becoming literate, learning English and
too much about America. He thinks they will move up and want higher
wages. The trade union is against it, as it also thinks they will move
up and displace union men. No school can succeed where the employer
discourages attendance, works his men nights or overtime, interfering
with attendance, or in alternate weekly shifts, destroying continuity
of attendance. The coöperation of business and the adjustment of
the school system for adults to the industrial system are vital to
success. No school can fully succeed that does not have the support
and understanding of the local political and religious leaders, as
they may make for or against attendance. A national governmental plan
of preparation for citizenship depends in its last analysis upon local
activity, sympathy, and understanding, and upon adequate funds. Why did
Detroit double its appropriation for night schools in 1915 and increase
its attendance 156 per cent? Because organized business, wide awake
and far seeing, saw that the stable working population in the future
in America will be men with a citizenship and a home stake in America.
They set out to provide it, and the latest step taken is that of the
Packard Motor Car Company, basing advancement upon citizenship.
Citizenship preparation cannot be a paper propaganda--it must bear a
vital relation to the work, play, and living conditions of each citizen
and take him not only to the school but to the military training camp;
not only to the job but to the polls; not only to better conditions in
America but to unswerving loyalty to America.
So much for standards. What have we done about states’ rights? In the
chapter on the American Vote, I have dealt with the confusion between
our state and Federal voting laws. We have a more serious problem in
the economic imprint we have permitted states and cities to put upon
citizenship. As a result of these laws citizenship has become in many
states a kind of economic patchwork. In order to preserve certain
rights, advantages, and fields of effort to native-born and naturalized
citizens, we have made certain discriminations against aliens which
have resulted in a purely commercial incentive to citizenship or
evasions of law.
As illustrative of America’s attitude in these matters, let us take
public service. Aliens are shut out from public service by several
laws and many municipal ordinances. The state laws are sometimes very
sweeping, excluding the alien from employment in any capacity in any
department of the state. In California, for instance, only citizens
may be employed in any department of the state, county, city, or town.
This law was invoked last winter to prevent the payment of salaries
of several Canadians who had been employed as teachers in the public
schools. This law was later amended, allowing aliens who had made their
declaration of intention to be employed as teachers and exempting the
University of California from the operation of the act.
State civil service laws prescribe citizenship as a qualification
in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New
Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The Federal civil service law
has a similar requirement. In most states these laws apply to unskilled
labor on public improvements, road building and ditch digging, even
where sublet by the city to a contractor. The result is a wholesale
evasion of the law, made necessary in order for the city to get its
work done. The alien knows he is a law breaker and gets his first
lesson in American law enforcement. He works in peace and security
while some one else pays the necessary fines. If the worst happens, he
applies for his first papers and then works under an injunction until
the law can be interpreted or amended--which is done if labor is very
scarce.
It is a sound policy necessary for the protection of the country to
require that only citizens shall administer its government and hold
positions of trust and responsibility. As a measure of defense, which
is its main justification, it should be _national_. It is no defense
against a foreign foe to have it obtain in one state and not in
another; in one city and not in another. A state or city that needs
protection from a neighboring state or city has not yet attained
a national point of view and stands in the way of Americanism and
nationalism. It is sound to keep alien workmen off our waterways and
water-supply systems and other public works of importance in defense,
but we defeat our entire purpose of safety when any alien resident here
for a few months can go on those arteries of our defense system with a
declaration of intention in his pocket.
It is a sound policy that the instruction in our public schools should
be by American citizens with an American point of view and loyalty, but
compliance with that law, as in California, by granting first papers,
will not carry out that policy or give assurance of teaching from the
American point of view. Americans regard the possession of a paper
as evidence of intent and of qualifications, whereas it is generally
regarded by the alien as a technical requirement necessary to earn
money in America.
In some states there is a modified form of this law, requiring that
preference be given to citizens. At this stage it becomes clear that
these laws are not national defense laws, but labor preference laws.
If Americanism means anything in justice, law, order, or opportunity,
such laws should have their purpose expressed and their terms defined
in the Federal statutes and due notice should be given the alien before
he emigrates to America. Are we a nation dealing squarely with all
peoples and honorably with those we admit, or are we a federation of
states each dealing with the alien as it sees fit, after the nation
has admitted him? All right-thinking Americans must see that we must
deal as a nation and not locally with the subjects of alienism and
citizenship.
Local temporizing with national honor and fair play has led us into
even more unjust discriminations, indefensible in the light of our
treaty obligations. Aliens are in some states excluded from pursuing
certain private callings. In many states an alien may not be an
attorney; in other states that profession is open to declarants,
showing again our utter lack of comprehension of such laws as defense
measures. For example, in Louisiana, an alien cannot get a contract
for public printing; in Michigan he cannot get a barber’s license; in
many states, such as New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, etc.,
only a citizen can get a liquor license. In six states the alien is
excluded from gaining a livelihood by hunting and fishing; in Tennessee
he may not be a market hunter, and in Wyoming he may not be a guide.
In Virginia only a citizen may get a junk-dealer’s license, and in
Georgia only a citizen or a declarant can get a peddler’s license. In
New Jersey an alien cannot get a license to transmit money to foreign
countries, or receive money on deposit for transmission to foreign
countries, or buy and sell foreign money.
What is the situation in relation to property? The United States
consists of a federation of states, each sovereign in its own domain
except for the powers delegated to the Federal government. The tenure
of real property is not one of the powers so delegated. Each state
consequently has sovereign power over its own soil, and can determine
by whom it will permit its soil to be held and what conditions it will
attach to the tenure. For this reason the state enactments regarding
real property are of the utmost importance. In twenty-nine states
resident aliens are given the same property rights as citizens; in two
other states the same rights are given to white aliens.
In other states, however, aliens are practically prohibited from
holding land at all or may hold it only for a limited period. In still
others, no alien can acquire land, except by inheritance or in payment
of debt. The laws vary greatly in the various states. Non-resident
alien heirs are placed in a difficult position. In several states
they are allowed to take only with the limitation that they sell
within a certain time. If land in California falls to an alien not
capable of taking title to it, it is sold for his benefit; in Illinois
non-resident heirs are excluded altogether.
The restriction of landholding to citizens is a fundamentally sound
measure of national defense. It is not sound unless it is uniform in
all states, and in view of our growing international importance and
impossibility of isolation from the world, there should be a national
policy in this regard wholly governed by international agreement and
national law. The holding of land also bears a vital relation to our
various schemes for colonizing aliens, opening of reservations, and
issuing of rural credits, and should be considered in these connections.
Some of the recent so-called insurance laws show the same tendencies to
discriminations. The workmen’s compensation laws now in force in the
United States affect the alien in several ways. The most evident is
the discrimination against alien beneficiaries that limit the amount
that may be paid to non-resident dependents. Connecticut gives such
a dependent only half of what a resident would receive, and Kansas
names $750 as the maximum a non-resident may receive, although a
resident may receive a sum varying from $1200 to $3600. In some states
installments are commuted to a lump sum if paid to a non-resident, and
in Nebraska this may amount to only two thirds of the sum total of
the installments; in New York it may amount to only one half, while
lump-sum payments by the railroads engaged in interstate commerce may
amount only to one year’s wages.
Another form of discrimination is found in the determination of who are
“dependents.” Three states in the case of non-resident aliens limit
to the closest relationships those who may be considered dependents.
Three others present the extreme situation of refusing to recognize
non-resident alien dependents at all. If an immigrant workman is killed
in any one of these states, even his closest relatives in Austria or
Italy have no standing under this law.
Aliens are excluded in Illinois and New York from the benefits of the
mothers’ pension laws; and there is a tendency to make citizenship a
requirement in plans proposed or put into operation for the welfare
of the unemployed. In the law passed in Idaho last year, requiring
the county commissioners to provide work on the public highways or
elsewhere for unemployed men, only citizens of the United States
were entitled to apply for work. In other words if two men contribute
equally to producing wealth for the state, the citizen may work and
receive state funds to keep him from starving, while the alien must get
out or starve. The state is done with him, when it has no work for him
to do.
In other states an alien cannot be an executor, administrator, or
guardian, a provision which often hampers the settlement of the estate
of an alien whose close friends and relatives are often aliens. There
are other examples of discrimination in the enjoyment of personal
rights and privileges. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey an alien is
not allowed to have a rifle or shotgun in his possession--nominally
in order that game may be protected. A law that went into effect
this summer in Pennsylvania goes even further; it prohibits an
alien from owning or having in his possession any kind of dog. The
constitutionality of this law is soon to be tested.
One cannot read the hundreds of discriminating laws without a sense
of the utter prostitution of American citizenship to prejudice,
race hatred, greed, cupidity, and to the selfishness of groups and
individuals. Men in power set themselves above the nation and seek to
make that power secure by controlling at will the means of subsistence
of other men. By all means let us have a complete national defense
in which the lives, land, and jobs of citizens shall be secured, but
let us have it by statesmanship and national law and international
agreement, so we may fight in the open for what we believe in and
not support indefensible citizenship legislation lobbied through the
legislatures by class interests.
And now we face a new situation which bids fair to upset all our
citizenship plans. Some industries are taking the stand that they
will only promote men who are citizens or who have applied for
their first papers. In this attitude employers are moved by two
considerations--patriotism and the need for national preparedness and
a realization of their responsibility; and second, the need for an
improved and more stable labor supply and a reduction in accidents
among English-speaking men. The Packard Motor Car Company in making
its announcement said:
“We have in our organization almost 100 different peoples. We have
Germans, Italians, Austrians, French, Polish--whose sympathies are
divided as regards the war at present raging in Europe. We have a
babel of tongues and an endless variety of races and nationalities.
“Our workmen are divided into cliques thereby. Their sympathies are
with the lands that gave them birth. They forget our national ideals.
To my mind this is a source of danger not only to the company, but
to the whole country. The conditions of the average American factory
are the conditions of this country. We have no unified people, as in
France, in Germany, or in other countries.
“In the American factory this sympathy and patriotism of each set of
foreign-born workmen for their native land causes friction among the
men. We find that in many instances men of one nationality object to
working under a foreman or higher official of another nationality. We
have had letters from the men along that line objecting to employment
under a boss who is undesirable because of a different nationality.
“So we are going to make the ‘bosses’ in this factory Americans. Be
they of whatever nationality when they come in as laborers, they must
be American citizens, loyal to America and American ideals and all
they stand for, before they can hope for positions of responsibility
and trust. We determined to make the prerequisite of success in this
institution American patriotism and American nationalism.
“We will employ foreign-born men, but it shall be understood that
their only hope for advancement and preferment lies in their speedy
adoption of American citizenship and the forswearing of allegiance to
other lands. And we feel that if throughout this nation commercial
and industrial success depended on a prerequisite of American loyalty
and patriotism, the country would be better off, its factories would
have far more efficiency and the workmen would be better satisfied
and happier, with old-country feuds and bickerings forgotten and
superseded by a thorough Americanism.”
As an educational measure supplying the stimulus to citizenship work
this is valuable. Should it be adopted, however, as a widespread
industrial policy it will lead to two complications--international,
as being unduly discriminating, and hardships to the alien, due to
lack of advance knowledge and opportunity to adjust himself. It may
further cheapen citizenship by putting it on a commercial basis. The
way out is to notify each alien before admission that every alien over
school age and under 45 will be required to learn English within five
years, subject to deportation for non-compliance, if facilities are
furnished him. We shall then see every industry interested in keeping a
good labor supply, making every effort to comply with the law, and we
will have a national policy based on law instead of isolated action by
miscellaneous industries, never uniform and varying widely in purpose
and methods.
We have heard much about “dual citizenship” since the European war
began. This is not a new question. Over and over again it has come
up for adjudication before the Department of State. There are two
important aspects of the subject. The first concerns the question of
the citizenship of children born in the United States of foreign-born
parents; the second concerns the status of naturalized American
citizens.
In the first case the difficulty arises from what appears to be an
inevitable conflict of laws. There are two theories for determining the
nationality, or rather the citizenship, of any given individual. The
first of these laws is what is called the _jus soli_, or the law of the
land. According to this a person takes the nationality of the land in
which he is born. This is the American conception running through our
general theory of citizenship.
The other is called _jus sanguinis_, or the law of blood. This is the
law that is followed in ordinary European civil law codes. According
to this law, a person’s nationality or citizenship depends on the
citizenship of his parents. The United States has adopted this rule in
the case of children born abroad of parents that are American citizens.
Each law has its advantages. It is certainly better to consider that
the child of an American business man residing in China at the time
the child is born is an American citizen than it would be to consider
that the child was a subject of the Chinese Empire. This law of
blood, like many other rules of the civil law, goes back to such a
fundamental human instinct that any other way of dealing with this
situation than the one it suggests would seem wrong to us. The law of
the land, on the other hand, has very distinct advantages as well,
which can also be illustrated from our American situation. A Russian
man and woman, let us say, succeed in escaping persecution at home and
come to this country to live. We prefer to think that their children,
born on American soil and brought up under American institutions, are
Americans, and we have made this the cardinal principle of American
citizenship. It would be too late now to attempt to alter this law,
even if we wished to do so, because it is firmly rooted both in statute
law and in our fundamental conception of the meaning of America.
And yet we find it convenient and right to use the opposed law of
nationality, the law of blood, in such a case as a child born in China
of American parents. If we find it necessary to adopt into our own
statutes a provision so contrary to our general citizenship law as
this law of blood, we cannot consistently object when another country
adopts it as its principle of citizenship. The difficulty has been met
hitherto by allowing the child to choose which nationality it wishes
to keep when it becomes twenty-one, or attains its majority, and by
holding it subject until that time to the law of whichever country it
happens to be in. This at least is the way the situation works out,
although there has never been any international ruling on the subject.
If the child were in France, the French authorities applied the French
law; if it were in America, the American authorities applied the
American law, and when the child became of age, it made its election,
and thereafter was held to be a citizen of whichever country it
elected. It was considered to be so clear a fact that this election was
something that the child alone could do, that the fact that the father
took the child from one country to another was held over and over again
not to affect the child’s right to chose for itself when it became of
age. Theoretically we hold that there can be no dual citizenship of
the naturalized citizen or of the child born in America if he elects
American citizenship. The records are not altogether clear if we stand
ready to enforce this. There are two recent cases on this point. In
June, 1915, a young man named Ugo da Prato, who was born in Boston in
1895 and had gone to Italy in 1912 to study architecture, was held by
the Italian government as liable to military duty because his father,
Antonio da Prato, had been a native of Italy. He had emigrated to
America and had been naturalized in Boston in 1892. Under our American
law, the son Ugo, born on American soil, was an American. The Italian
law, however, holds that Italian subjects who have acquired citizenship
in other countries are not exempted from the obligations of military
service, nor from the penalties imposed on those who bear arms against
their country. Italy subsequently released Ugo da Prato.
A similar situation arose in the case of one de Long, of Louisiana, who
was born in America of a French father who had never been naturalized.
Upon his inquiry to the State Department as to what his status would
be in France if he were to return there during the war, the State
Department advised him that while he was by the law of America an
American citizen, by the law of France he was a French citizen, and
they declined to encourage him to test the matter by returning to
France while the war was in progress.
The real question at issue, of course, is whether or not a nation has
the right to regard its control over its subject as a thing of which
it can refuse to divest itself. The Ottoman law is that no transfer of
allegiance to which the consent of the Ottoman government has not been
previously obtained is binding. The French law is similar; the French
government rarely consents to permit a Frenchman of military age to
throw off his allegiance. Under certain conditions, however, permission
may be obtained. The Greek government generally refuses to recognize a
change of nationality made without consent. Neither does the Persian
government, nor the Russian government. Under Russian law, a Russian
subject who becomes a citizen of another country without the consent
of the Russian government is deemed to have committed an offense for
which he is liable to arrest and punishment if he returns without
having previously obtained permission of the Russian government.
This second form of dual allegiance, which would more properly be
stated as the attempt to hold that the change of allegiance either did
not take place at all or else was not thoroughgoing, bears in itself
the possibility of very serious complications. Our naturalized citizens
and the native-born children of foreign-born parents have a right to
determine that the allegiance they have chosen to swear to the United
States be protected.
The situation at present amounts to this: The United States has
treaties of naturalization with Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark,
the German States, Great Britain, Haiti, Norway and Sweden, and
Portugal. These treaties provide under what conditions naturalization
does not free a former subject from obligation to the country of his
birth. Theoretically, whenever a question involving some aspect of
naturalization comes up with reference to a former subject of one
of these countries, his rights and obligations are determined by the
treaty. As a matter of fact, however, this is not always the case,
for while there is a treaty of naturalization with Germany, that did
not prevent the Germans from passing the law of nationality of June
1, 1914, which practically nullifies the treaty. Where there is no
treaty of naturalization all that the state authorities can do is to
call the attention of the foreign government to the American point of
view. It has never, apparently, been considered possible to enforce the
American conception of naturalization, or to make American citizenship
really respected in countries that are slow to do so. When the point
was brought to an issue with Russia, the only effect was to leave us
without any treaty with Russia at all.
As long as we are content to treat naturalization as an isolated matter
we will get no satisfaction. We shall never be in a better position
than at the close of the war to insist upon a thorough understanding
of matters and adoption of a uniform practice in international
citizenship. We now have citizenship matters to settle nationally and
internationally for which we are ill prepared.
Congress is charged by the Constitution with “establishing a uniform
rule of naturalization.” It has never been established. It is the
immediate duty of Congress to do so. We need a thorough overhauling
of our Federal naturalization laws, and of local laws in regard to
voting, holding land and property, earning a living, etc., from the
standpoint of national development and defense, and from the standpoint
of the future of our Americanism. We cannot do this without a thorough,
impartial scientific study of the effect of the enforcement of
these laws--not only as shown in official statistics and records in
Washington, but in the local districts and among those naturalized. We
need to know more of the cost and effectiveness of our naturalization
process and the kind of citizens it gives us. We need to know about the
granting of papers through the various courts and the influences at
work for making good or bad citizens throughout the country. We need to
know what our facilities are for educating aliens to become citizens,
and more of the attitude of our newly naturalized citizens toward
America. Having these matters in hand, we may then proceed to work out
a citizenship policy and practice which will accord with the times in
which we live and will be a national and international code which will
make all native-born citizens doubly proud of their heritage and all
foreign-born citizens proud to live or die for America, as the call may
come.