Part 8

... 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.

Section 8 of the Naturalization Law gives still further requirements:

That no alien shall hereafter be naturalized or admitted as a citizen of the United States who cannot speak the English language: _Provided_, That this requirement shall not apply to aliens who are physically unable to comply therewith, if they are otherwise qualified to become citizens of the United States: _And provided further_, That the requirements of this section shall not apply to any alien who has, prior to the passage of this Act, declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States in conformity with the law in force at the date of making such declaration: _Provided further_, That the requirements of section eight shall not apply to aliens who shall hereafter declare their intention to become citizens and who shall make homestead entries upon the public lands of the United States and comply in all respects with the laws providing for homestead entries on such lands.

The final hearing must be public, in open court, and the judge must pass upon the petition personally:

Section 9. That every final hearing upon such petition shall be had in open court before a judge or judges thereof, and every final order which may be made upon such petition shall be under the hand of the court and entered in full upon a record kept for that purpose, and upon such final hearing of such petition the applicant and witnesses shall be examined under oath before the court and in the presence of the court.

Attention needs to be drawn especially to the following section, which, however innocuous in appearance, has given rise to a vast deal of vexation and injustice, and has caused the exclusion from citizenship of a large number of persons otherwise perfectly qualified and desirable:

Section 10. That in case the petitioner has not resided in the State, Territory, or the District of Columbia for a period of five years immediately preceding the filing of his petition he may establish by two witnesses, both in his petition and at the hearing, the time of his residence within the State, provided that it has been for more than one year, and the remaining portion of his five years’ residence within the United States required by law to be established may be proved by the depositions of two or more witnesses who are citizens of the United States, upon notice to the Bureau of Naturalization.

It will become evident as we proceed that the interpretation which has been placed by the courts and the Naturalization Service upon the distinction between the phrases, “two witnesses,” “at least two witnesses,” and “two or more witnesses,” has in practice caused a palpable absurdity from the point of view of common sense, and inflicted crying hardships and wrongs from the point of view of bare justice. Upon the humanity and good sense of the court, interacting with the same on the part of the representatives of the government, has depended to a very great degree the sensible interpretation of these and other provisions of the law; but in general both are bound by its letter, and in many instances they have been forced to reject petitions which, on the sane merits of the case, should have been accepted.

V

THE LAW IN OPERATION

Commissioner Campbell, in his annual report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1914, described in some detail the operations of the field service of his Bureau in the handling of the applicant for citizenship:

The headquarters of the various districts are located in the large cities, where the greatest number of aliens apply for naturalization, and in the public buildings or in close proximity to the courts.[64] In many of the cities where the examiners are in the same building with the court, it is the practice of the alien to appear with his witnesses first in the office of the chief examiner. Here an examination is made in advance of any work in the office of the clerk of court. The examiners, specially trained in the work, first ascertain whether the alien arrived in the United States prior to the passage of the Act of 1906. If he arrived prior to the passage of the Act, the examiner then ascertains, before assisting him in taking the second step in the process of naturalization, whether the alien has a declaration of intention that has matured.[65] If he has arrived subsequent to the passage of the Act, he ascertains whether the alien has been notified by the Bureau that the certificate of arrival required by law to be filed with the clerk of the court at the time of filing the petition for naturalization has been placed there by the Bureau. It may be stated here that when an alien applies for a certificate of arrival, the Bureau notifies him when it has been obtained and forwarded to the clerk of the court selected by the alien in which to file his petition for naturalization, and he is directed to proceed with the filing of his petition at the earliest practicable moment.

Upon learning that the certificate of arrival has been obtained, the examiner interrogates the candidate to learn his qualifications for citizenship and records the results of his examination. He then examines the witnesses to be reasonably certain that they are American citizens, that they are credible and of good character, that they have personally known the applicant for the statutory period, and can intelligently testify both as to his residence and good behavior during the period required by the statute to be ascertained and shown to the satisfaction of the court.

The examiner also sees that the blank form furnished by the Bureau for setting forth the statements required to be embodied in the petition for naturalization is correctly prepared. When the examiner finds affirmatively in all of these respects, he marks the filled-out blank with his initials and sends it with the petitioner and his witnesses to the office of the clerk of the court, where nothing further is to be done than the simple clerical work of filling in the petition, original and duplicate, from the blank, securing the signatures and affidavits of the petitioner and his witnesses, filing the triplicate copy of the declaration of intention and the certificate of arrival with the petition, and notifying them as nearly as may be of the date of the hearing.

This method prevails in large cities where the examiners are located in the buildings with the courts. The advantage to the residents of these large cities, in the saving of time and money to the petitioners and their witnesses, is readily discerned when it is considered that probably fifty thousand applicants for citizenship annually might follow this course if the conditions in each large center admitted of its being done. The advantage to be derived from having the candidate and his witnesses appear before the naturalization examiner in advance of his appearance before the clerk of the court were early recognized by one of the United States district courts, where a large number of petitions for naturalization are filed annually, and an order of court was entered accordingly. In other courts, while the practice has not received this formal recognition, the consistency with which it is observed is none the less definite. This practice prevails in at least one city where the office of the chief examiner is not located in the building with the court.

Further emphasizing the advantages of this practice, the Commissioner remarks that it enables the examiner to dispose of a large number of cases, and tends to obviate denials on such grounds as “that the petitioner is already a citizen”; “incompetent witnesses,” “insufficient residence,” “no certificate of arrival,” “declaration invalid,” “premature petition,” etc.--“unless, as is sometimes the case, a petitioner is obstinate and insists on taking his chance of admission by the court against the advice of the examiner.” The Commissioner goes on to say:

In some cities, by reason of the lack of proximity of the office of the examiner to that of the clerk of the court, the system does not prevail of having the candidate appear first before the examiner, ... but efforts have constantly been made to augment the prevalence of the practice, and since the great bulk of the naturalization work is in the large centers ... the plan described, with the restricted means provided therefor, admirably accomplishes the effective disposal of the mass of work arising under the operation of the law wherever it has been adopted.

Referring to the work in regions apart from the great cities, the Commissioner said, in his report for 1912-13:

In a few of the districts there are what may be called sub-stations, where an examiner is located by his chief to attend to work in the vicinity of such sub-station, ... to reduce the travel expense and to bring the service in actual personal contact with the public and the courts as intimately as possible.

For the rest, and the far-outlying, sparsely-settled regions, where a person desiring citizenship must travel with his witnesses perhaps even hundreds of miles not once, but twice in any event, and in some cases several times, to and from the court having jurisdiction over the territory in which he lives, the situation is not so simple. To persons completing by the essential of American Citizenship their title to a homestead on the public lands--necessarily and characteristically in such sparsely settled regions--this item of travel, expense in both money and time for three persons, to say nothing of other hardships and exasperations involved in the meticulous technicalities of the law and practice, not infrequently is a raw tragedy. Neither provision by Congress nor administrative arrangement or concession in enforcement by the Naturalization Bureau or the courts has materially mitigated the hardships involved in such cases.

RESTRICTIONS OF RACE

Not every alien, whatever his character or good disposition toward the “good order and happiness” of the United States, or his willingness to “support and defend the Constitution and bear true faith and allegiance to the same,” can become a citizen of the United States. He, or she, must be either white, or black--or, in the case of the American Indian, red. And if black, he, or she, must be of _African_ descent. A long series of decisions has been necessary to define exactly what races are excluded; with the result that it is now, for practical purposes, well established that naturalization cannot, under existing laws, be granted to Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiians, Burmese, or the black or brown natives of India.

It is not our province here to discuss the merits either of the racial limitation or of the somewhat vague definition that has been arrived at; it must suffice to outline the situation. The Naturalization Law of 1870 limited naturalization to “aliens being free white persons; and to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent.” This was enacted in the tense days of Reconstruction after the Civil War, and was a natural but wholly unnecessary fling at the South. All American negroes are citizens of the United States by virtue of their birth in this country, and those who come here from Africa are likely to be incapable of passing the naturalization tests. Congress never has enacted a clear definition of the term, “white person,” and endless confusion has existed. Hawaiians, Afghans, Chinese, Syrians, Turks, and Fiji Islanders, all have been admitted by some courts and excluded by others. The Commissioner of Naturalization at one time directed the field force to oppose vigorously the admission of any Asiatic. A non-Mongolian Turk, married to a white woman literally Caucasian, would be surprised to have his son excluded as not a white person; but such folk, and many others white by any common-sense definition, were excluded, the courts usually accepting as the judgment of experts the contention of the naturalization examiners; until finally the ruling was rescinded, and the matter has since then been left largely to the discretion of the courts, which have substantially settled the question so far as it may be settled in absence of a clear constitutional or legislative definition, such as exists specifically in the Act of 1882 excluding the Chinese by name. As the law and decisions stand now, the same definition which will admit an African deckhand or cook excludes a Japanese prince or a Hindu university graduate.[66]

As for the Filipinos, it was held, in 1915, by the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, that a Filipino is neither an alien nor an African, and that, therefore, he did not come within the provisions of the law limiting naturalization to white aliens, or black ones of African descent; that the Filipino then before the court could and would be naturalized under the section providing:

That all the applicable provisions of the naturalization laws of the United States shall apply to and be held to authorize the admission to citizenship of all persons not citizens who owe permanent allegiance to the United States, and who may become residents of any State or organized Territory of the United States.

In another case (not, however, involving clearly the question of racial color) a native of the Philippine Islands, of full Spanish paternity, but of half-breed blood on his mother’s side, was admitted by the same court.[67]