Americans by Choice

by John Palmer Gavit

CONFUSED STATE OF THE EDUCATIONAL TEST

It shall be made to appear to the satisfaction of the court that, during five years at least immediately preceding the date of his application, 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.

Such is the substance of the law. It requires also that he must be able to speak the English language, and that each of his precious two witnesses shall, of their own knowledge, certify that he is “in every way qualified, in their opinion, to be a citizen of the United States.” The barbed entanglement of technicalities through which the petitioner must grope before the questions of substantial qualification can be reached, we already have seen.

Now, what does it mean to be “attached to the principles of the Constitution”? What manner of intellectual display is required to prove one “well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States”? Around these two rather indefinite phrases rages the whole storm of “Americanization” as it affects the alien seeking to become one of us. Whether common sense, the notion of the man-in-the-street, the average, plain-spoken layman, shall prevail, or the ideas of a hypercritical “nativism,” depends upon the “personal equation” of the judge, the clerk, the naturalization examiner—or, rather, the diagonal of forces produced by the concurrence or conflict of all three, aggravated or modified by that of the petitioner and his witnesses.

A considerable—one might almost say an overwhelming—literature has grown up about this part of the subject of immigration; of scores, even hundreds, of books, pamphlets, leaflets, posters, diagrams, moving-picture reels, lectures, and what not else, designed to afford to aliens aspiring to citizenship that knowledge of “the principles of the Constitution” which the applicant must display to “the satisfaction of the court.” The number and variety of these is impressive, even startling; they vary from the appallingly elaborate and diffuse “Citizenship Textbook,” issued by the Bureau of Naturalization itself, to the simple and lucid folder issued by a judge at Duluth, Minnesota. One judge in Montana, who thinks “a residence of ten years should be required” before final application, has “a list of questions which every applicant who appears before me must answer. He is also asked many questions not contained in this list which go to his qualifications to become a citizen.” The printed list occupies nearly four newspaper columns of solid type, and covers everything relating to the governments of the United States, the state of Montana, the local county, city, and ward—a body of civic information beyond the ken, or the hope, of 999 out of 1,000 native-born Americans between the two oceans; yet, on the whole, only what every citizen ought to know about the government which taxes and rules him.

A judge in Missouri, who has “possibly two, not over,” of naturalization cases in a year, holds that an applicant should have “not merely an educational or intellectual test—for the more of either a man has the worse he may be for the country—but I would establish one of sentiment or principle, about as follows”:

Every applicant shall satisfy the court that he is familiar with, and attached to, such sentiments as are expressed in such writings as “A Man Without a Country,” “America,” “Declaration of Independence,” etc., and that he is possessed of reasonable opinions on necessity of government and duty of citizens to support the government and its laws, the freedom of the press, liberty of speech, obtaining redress for grievances, and a firm opposition to rioting, violence, force, and secret societies or orders countenancing or teaching overthrow of the government.

An Iowa judge says:

“Search the heart for the truth.” The chief thing is to have the heart right—to have love and attachment for liberty, justice, and humanity, and to be ready to die, if need be, for the maintenance thereof. It might be well to have a uniform course of instruction for applicants for citizenship, but I would not adhere to it too strictly, if the heart proved to be right.... No good man, a true lover of liberty, justice, and humanity, should be rejected, unless he utterly fails to meet the other requirements of the law.

A Pennsylvania judge thinks little of educational requirements; that they would exclude many desirable applicants.

The principle test that I apply is as to the honesty of the party. Under an intellectual test many honest, hard-working men would fail, while men who had the advantage of education would secure naturalization.... Where men are required to support a family and labor hard they have not much time to study.

A judge in Nebraska, who handles some 200 cases a year, declares:

The intellect is not a test of good citizenship. I know many people with insufficient intellect to procure much education, who cannot read nor write, who are excellent citizens; and many others who are highly educated and too crooked to make good citizens.

A California judge avers:

My observation has been that many of our best citizens are those who possess no extended education, and some of the most dangerous are of those who possess high educational qualifications.

A judge in central New York, who has large experience with naturalization, says:

Too much stress is laid upon information concerning the details of our governmental system, and not enough upon the candidate’s personal record, endeavors, and results. An Italian laborer who has been unable to learn the number of Houses into which Congress is divided, but is hard-working, steady, possessed of a desire to own his home and bring his family up in our ways, is more useful to us than some of more intelligence.

He holds that the principal difficulty with which desirable immigrants have to contend, in seeking naturalization, is the fact that “too much technical information is demanded by the young men who represent the Bureau of Naturalization.”

Over against such expressions as these place the opinions of one of the Ohio judges, who, after the fashion of the Know-Nothings of the ’40’s, would require twenty-one years’ residence before naturalization and “add to, rather than diminish, the present requirements,” admitting “only heads of families, with children”; or those of the Arkansas judge who avowedly “construes everything against the applicant,” and would admit a German under no conditions until after fifty years of residence. Such a diversity indicates the sort of difficulty confronting the alien in court, and the need of some unity of standards to be created by law, and a great simplification of the tests and examinations.

A letter was addressed to a number of experienced judges, known for their wisdom and humanity, asking for a tentative set of questions designed to disclose the knowledge thought to be essential to embody “attachment to the principles of the Constitution.” Replies were few, but they evidenced the difficulty of expressing in words such an “attachment.” Many of the judges frankly confessed both their inability to produce any such exhibit, and their conviction that the intellectual display was of least importance in the test of the applicant.