FITNESS OF CANDIDATES
There is great need of a better method for ascertaining the fitness of candidates for citizenship than obtains at present. Various suggestions have been made to improve the practice. One is the creation of a system of “traveling commissioners,” appointed perhaps by the courts, who would hold sessions at convenient times and places. Another is that the function of naturalization should be removed from the judicial to the administrative sphere, so that examinations and admissions should both be under the control of the Naturalization Bureau or some other administrative branch of the Executive.
There is much to be said in support, especially, of the latter suggestion. But there seems a weight of reason in favor of maintaining the peculiarly American practice of lodging this solemn function in what is, on the whole, our most impressive organ of government—the court. As a rule, the courts are performing the function with increasing sense of the importance and dignity of the proceeding. It would be simple, and require little either of new legislation or additional personnel or duties, to make the Naturalization Examiner now in being and on duty, already equipped with honesty and zeal, something in the nature of a Master, representing the court in the taking of testimony, and reporting thereto his findings and recommendations. Thereupon the judge could pursue such further inquiry as he thought proper, accept or reject the findings, and enter his order accordingly.
In the great preponderance of practice this is what actually happens now. The proceeding should be the subject of sufficient stenographic record, to be attached to the papers on file in the court and in the Naturalization Bureau at Washington, and the index, certainly at Washington, should be so minutely exact, prompt, and accessible, that the record of every case, from declaration to final adjudication, would be available like any other public record upon a moment’s notice.
Further than that: Every alien who lands upon our shores should receive at the time his suitably detailed and descriptive certificate of lawful entry, with finger prints, if you please, duplicating a permanent record in the office of the Immigration Service; this certificate, and the record underlying it in case of its loss, should be the prerequisite to the declarations and all other proceedings leading to his permanent admission to citizenship. It would obviate an infinite deal of the confusion which now too often surrounds his later adventures in this direction; it would be his protection and the protection of the nation. All matters concerning him now are at the mercy of practices hardly deserving the name of system.