Americans by Choice

by John Palmer Gavit

“DECLARATION INVALID”

This, in fact, has been a very common occurrence. During the period 1908–18, 8.5 per cent of all denials of naturalization petitions in the United States were on the ground of “declaration invalid”; that this percentage is made up of figures[70] tragically high in some districts may be recognized in the fact that in Nebraska it was 23.8, in Indiana 21.3, in Oregon 18.7, in Kansas 18.6, in Massachusetts 14.4, in Montana 13.2, in Iowa 12.5, in Arkansas and Idaho 11.3, in Washington 10.9, in Oklahoma 10.4. The petition of an Englishman applying for citizenship in Colorado was denied upon motion of the government’s representative, because in his declaration seven years before he had renounced “King Albert,” when, in fact, the name of the then potentate of Great Britain was “Albert Edward”![71] As the court in that case truly said:

The act of renouncing the allegiance which one owes to a government or sovereign, and taking upon himself a new allegiance, is too solemn and important an act to be loosely performed, or to be surrounded by any uncertainty or doubt. No presumptions are indulged with respect to it.... The declaration of intention must in all material matters comply with the strict letter of the Act.

The court may not rectify nunc pro tunc, as in most other kinds of litigation, technical blunders made in good faith or inadvertently by the declarant, or even by the clerk of the court in which the declaration was filed. All the responsibility lies upon the alien.

In the unreported case of John Pollock, in the Philadelphia Court of Quarter Sessions, in 1915, the petitioner had honestly believed himself to have acquired German nationality from the flag of the German ship on which he was born, en route to the United States, of Russian parents coming here with intent to abandon their Russian nationality, and in his declaration had forsworn the German sovereignty; but the court held that the honesty of his mistake could not avail him—“Unfortunately it is impossible to amend his declaration; ... the application must be denied.” Through a misunderstanding of the intricacies of political geography in the then Austria-Hungary, a petitioner who actually was born under that sovereignty erroneously renounced the German Emperor. In that case, when, three years later, upon his final petition for naturalization, the court undertook to amend the declaration, its power to do this was denied upon the government’s appeal.[72]

Five Austrians went in a body to the office of the clerk of the Court of Common Pleas in Hudson County, New Jersey, to file declarations of intention. Doubtless they were very glad, and very grateful, to have the clerk on duty fill out the required blanks for them! Two years or more later, when they marched proudly and anxiously into court to complete their citizenship, their petitions were denied—“declaration invalid,” because, forsooth, as the court in its decision explained:

... The clerk who filled out their papers assumed them all to be German, and noted this in the declaration accordingly. The applicants contend that the error was a clerical error on the part of the clerk, and that their renunciation also included other sovereigns, rulers, or potentates. This, however, is not sufficient under the statute.

There are many other cases, in widely separated jurisdictions, to similar effect, showing, in general, that the courts sustain the contention of the Naturalization Service that the law does not permit the rectification of even innocent blunders in the declaration, no matter by whom or in what circumstances they are made.

Who, then, is to see that the technicalities thus insisted upon in the enforcement of the law as it reads are duly and truly observed? Surely not the alien! His care of his own interests is, in the nature of the case, ill-informed, and under the existing conditions, improved as they are in comparison with those prevailing in former times, he is at the mercy not only of the sometimes careless, begrudging, or perhaps well-intending, but better-informed clerk of the court, but of many kinds of extra-legal assistants who, whether with good or with sordid motives, undertake to give, or maybe to sell, advice or instruction—to say nothing of pretended “influence” which, anywhere up to seven years later, when the mischief cannot be remedied, may turn out to have been worse than worthless.

Of vital importance and significance, far beyond what would be gleaned from a superficial reading of the words, becomes in this connection what the Commissioner of Naturalization said in his annual report of July 1, 1912:

The great bulk of the work of the Division [now the Bureau of Naturalization] consists of the examination of the naturalization papers filed in or issued out of the courts. It has never been possible, with the clerical aid supplied, to keep abreast of this work. Concluding the first year with a large number of papers not examined, that condition has grown more and more serious.... At the present time it must be stated that no examination of declarations of intention has been made since October, 1910, and not more than 30,000 certificates have even been examined. Correction of errors in the latter papers, [final] certificates of naturalization, are perhaps less necessary, but the declarations are used as the basis of petitions for naturalization, and defects in them may result in the denial of such petitions and a further delay of two years to the applicants for citizenship. Beginning with October, 1912, declarations which have not been examined will mature, and these aggregate 298,000 in number.[73]

That the Bureau of Naturalization is aware of the desperate importance of this matter to the aliens appears not only in so many words in the Commissioner’s own utterances, but in legislation proposed by the Bureau which would tend to remedy it. In the same report (1912), after describing the strenuous efforts of the clerical force to catch up in particular cases with the dates of final hearings, Commissioner Campbell said:

To any easy assumption that errors in a declaration may be corrected at the hearing of the petition, the answer is plain—that no change can be made if the declaration was filed, as it frequently is, in a court other than that in which such hearing is held. It has also been decided judicially that a declaration, complete in every respect, cannot be changed because of even conceded error in its averments. It is therefore important that the discovery by prompt administrative examination, of a defect, either in the way of omission or error, be brought to the attention of a declarant and the clerk of the court in which his declaration is filed, so that either the paper may be corrected or the declarant may file a new declaration, and thus save time, expense, and ultimate disappointment.

All of which has the color of mockery in the light of the fact that at the date of that report there lay in the files of the Bureau nearly three hundred thousand unexamined declarations, all of which would mature within the ensuing three months!

The legislative proposals to remedy conditions so far as inadvertent errors in the declaration are concerned, include, for instance, a proposed amendment[74] to Section 4 of the Naturalization Law, providing that

... any averment required to be made in the declaration of intention that may be shown to have been made erroneously, but with no intention to violate or evade the requirements of the naturalization law, may be corrected by order of the court in which the declaration was filed, or by the court in which it is presented as a basis for a petition for naturalization.