“DERIVATIVE CITIZENSHIP” ALMOST EQUALS THE DIRECT
The thing that appears plain and highly significant in these figures is the fact that every 100 certificates of naturalization granted carried into citizenship on the average of 93 other persons, of whom 62 were women, virtually regardless of their own qualifications, and 31 boys and girls under twenty-one years of age. The number of unmarried women and widows was altogether negligible. And these 62 women were virtually all foreign born, the proportion of those men having native-born wives, who were thus restored to their birthright citizenship, being only 9.1 per cent. (It should be remarked, however, that the proportion of petitioners having native-born wives varies greatly—from less than 4 per cent in one court to more than 30 per cent in three of the smaller courts.)
Hitherto, no information whatever has been available as to the number of persons carried into citizenship by the naturalization of the father. Assuming, as probably it is safe to do so, that the ratio has generally been maintained in the past, the totals of “derivative citizenship” become portentous. In 1910, the census reported 6,646,817 foreign-born white males over twenty-one years of age. Of these, not quite one-half (3,034,117, or 45.6 per cent) were naturalized. It is not safe to assume that all of the remainder were unnaturalized, because it is not clear that the enumerators were careful to report as naturalized those who, though foreign born, had been automatically carried into citizenship by their father’s naturalization before they were twenty-one. Possibly a part of the relatively large number of cases (11.7 per cent) in which citizenship was not reported may be accounted for by ignorance or doubt as to the status of the father.