CITIZENSHIP TAKES NO ACCOUNT OF SEX
Basic citizenship in the United States takes no account of sex. Every child, male or female, white, black, brown, red, or yellow, “born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” is ipso facto a citizen. And every unmarried woman of that nativity is, and continues to be such, as long as she remains unmarried. Upon marriage she takes forthwith, whether she will or no, so far as our law is concerned, the nationality of her husband—even if he be an alien. It is the unbroken tradition of our law, and of the laws of nearly all other nations—in so far as they recognize women as being individual citizens at all—that the nationality of a wife follows that of her husband. Of that tradition was born a section of the law of 1907 which seeks to confer upon any American woman marrying a foreigner the nationality of her husband. When an alien man becomes a citizen of the United States by naturalization, his wife, in ordinary circumstances, becomes a citizen with him; the law says specifically that “a woman who is now, or may hereafter be married to a citizen of the United States, and who might herself be lawfully naturalized, may be deemed a citizen.” But, generally speaking, she must, unless herself American born, be resident in this country. The practice in this regard has not been wholly consistent; the State Department has held repeatedly that the naturalization of a husband does not reach the wife if she continue to reside in the old country; but a very uniform line of decisions is to the effect that her husband’s naturalization makes her a citizen wherever she may be, and that she remains a citizen even after his death unless she takes action to repatriate herself. The Act of 1907 makes it necessary for such a foreign-born widow resident abroad to register with a United States consul within a year after the termination of her marriage; otherwise her citizenship lapses.
The phrase, “who might herself be lawfully naturalized,” has given rise to much controversy, and its significance has not been definitively declared. Some authorities hold it to apply only to the Oriental races excluded as such from citizenship; others hold that it should be interpreted to call for an examination of the wife as to her views on the subject of anarchism, polygamy, etc. But the general tendency seems still to hold that the family is one, and the husband that one; that, therefore, any sort of wife comes into citizenship automatically with the naturalization of her husband.