AS FOR “STABILITY OF RESIDENCE”
The question of what might be called the “residential stability” of the immigrant in this country has been the subject of much assertion and little substantial information. The general tenor of the assertion and the vague impression of the average person are to the effect that the immigrant is more or less of a wanderer, shifting from place to place, and for that reason failing to establish anything resembling permanent residence or to relate himself to the community as a neighbor. Very little statistical data on this point is available, and it is unsafe to generalize. There is, however, a somewhat startling disclosure in the 1915 census of the state of Massachusetts, showing that in the class of otherwise “justified” voters disqualified solely by reason of not having resided one year in the state or six months in the city or town, there were 21,226 native and 3,845 foreign born; in other words, that 3.6 per cent of the native-born voters were disqualified because they were moving about; while only 1.9 per cent, or just about half the proportion, of the foreign-born were disqualified for that reason.
The analysis of petitions by the Americanization Study sheds a little further light on this subject, by segregating the figures in each court showing petitions which were filed by aliens who had filed their declaration in another state. Of the total of 26,284, there were 1,859 of these, or 7.1 per cent. Undoubtedly this moving about, in search of employment or for other reasons, is a considerable factor in the delay between arrival and declaration and between declaration and petition. Naturally, the figures would tend to be high on the Pacific coast, to which immigrants travel by rather long stages of time. The court in Portland, Oregon, showed 234 out of 714 petitioners—almost a third—who had filed their declaration in other states. This court shows also the longest average interval between declaration and petition. The courts in Seattle also show high figures in this regard. The same tends to be true of rapidly growing industrial centers, such as Cleveland, Bridgeport, Paterson, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
TABLE XXVII
Petitioners Whose Declarations Were Made in a State Other Than the One in Which the Court is Located
| Court | Petitioners Who Declared In Other States | |
| Number | Per Cent | |
| Norwich, Conn. | 52 | 43.7 |
| Portland, Ore. | 234 | 32.8 |
| Seattle, Wash. (state court) | 42 | 29.4 |
| Bridgeport, Conn. | 96 | 23.4 |
| New Brunswick, N. J. | 84 | 21.6 |
| Cleveland, Ohio (U. S. court) | 158 | 13.4 |
| Paterson, N. J. | 76 | 10.2 |
| Seattle, Wash. (U. S. court) | 69 | 9.8 |
| Middletown, Conn. | 7 | 9.5 |
| Cincinnati, Ohio | 34 | 9.4 |
| Cleveland, Ohio (state court) | 152 | 8.9 |
| Easton, Pa. | 10 | 8.7 |
| Ithaca, N. Y. | 2 | 8.7 |
| Akron, Ohio | 16 | 8.0 |
| Iowa City, Iowa | 1 | 7.7 |
| Rochester, N. Y. | 57 | 7.0 |
| Jamaica, L. I. | 39 | 6.5 |
| Elmira, N. Y. | 1 | 5.3 |
| Mineola, L. I. | 7 | 5.2 |
| New York City (U. S. court) | 121 | 5.0 |
| White Plains, N. Y. | 28 | 4.3 |
| Worcester, Mass. | 27 | 4.3 |
| New York City (state court) | 452 | 4.1 |
| Bronx, N. Y. C. (state court) | 47 | 3.5 |
| Brooklyn, N. Y. C. (U. S. court) | 47 | 3.0 |
| Total | 1,859 | 7.1 |
That upward of 13 out of 14—nearly 93 per cent—of alien petitioners for American citizenship, in a total of more than 26,000, should have been able to file their final petitions in the same states in which, on an average of more than five years before, they had declared their intention to do so, certainly attests a degree of “stability of residence” comparing favorably with that of other, native-born residents of the country. And it would seem also to justify the inference that those who become naturalized have generally become well assimilated into the life of the communities where they live.