A FUNCTION ADMINISTRATIVE OR JUDICIAL?
It may be debatable whether the whole function of naturalization should be taken out of the hands of the courts and made a purely administrative activity of the executive department of government. A good many students of the subject favor such a course. The present study has not led to this conclusion. The judges generally, while they would be glad to be relieved of a peculiarly exacting and vexatious duty, do not favor it. From the beginning of our history the function has been judicial, and very sound reasons should be advanced for making so radical a change. It would require the establishment of an enormous machinery at a time when every consideration cries out for the simplification of the government. The present Naturalization Bureau, if adequately manned and properly directed, and required to attend to its own business rather than to expand itself into an educational institution, could save the time of the courts to a great extent, and at the same time save to the situation the dignity and solemnity purporting at least to abide in the judicial atmosphere.
There has been a proposal to create a system of traveling naturalization commissions, sitting from time to time at the various county seats and passing upon petitions. But it is vitally important to the petitioners, who are almost always folk of limited means and time, that the place to which they must go shall be as near at hand as possible, and the necessary traveling for themselves and their witnesses as little as is absolutely necessary.
Another consideration, too often overlooked, especially by those to whom the naturalization problem is seen chiefly from the point of view of the great cities, lies in the fact that in the rural districts the judges have a wide acquaintance, and are likely to know, or to have direct means of knowing, all about the petitioner. Once we rid our minds of the current impression that ignorant immigrants rush from the landing port to the ballot box, and remember that in the average case the petitioner has been in this country more than ten years, and in a vast majority of cases has lived for five years in the same state, if not in the same community, the matter takes on a wholly different aspect. It is quite conceivable that in the great cities a special court, or a special term of court, might be set aside for the consideration of naturalization cases.