CHAPTER IVAmerica-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 makesit 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”—andagain 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 allegiancesthat 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 governmentservice, 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 wetaxed 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 intentionat 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 Statesand 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 petitionand pay an additionalfee, 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 feein 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 Jerseyand 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 policyand 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 Englishlanguage. 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? Becauseorganized 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 certainrights, 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 benational. It is no defense against a foreign foe to have it obtain in one stateand 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 formof 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 lackof 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 ownsoil, 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, andin 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 onlytwo 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 theUnited 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 citizenshipto 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 PackardMotor 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.”
“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-bornparents; 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 thejus 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 calledjus 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 ChineseEmpire. 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 toour 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 dualcitizenship 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 whathis 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 countrywithout 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 upwith 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 ourfacilities 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.