Americans by Choice

by John Palmer Gavit

NATURALIZATION COMMISSION APPOINTED

It was not until the administration of President Roosevelt, however, that definite steps were taken. During the years 1903–05 the Department of Justice became very active in unearthing and prosecuting violations of the naturalization laws. Hundreds of cases of fraudulent naturalization were discovered, and nearly seven hundred convictions were obtained. A special examiner of the Department of Justice, A. C. van Deusen, made an extensive report on the subject in 1905.[59]

By Executive Order, March 1, 1905, President Roosevelt created a special commission, consisting of Milton D. Purdy, Assistant Attorney-General representing the Department of Justice, chairman; Gaillard Hung, chief of the Bureau of Citizenship in the Department of State, representing that department, and Richard K. Campbell, attorney for the Immigration Bureau in the Department of Commerce and Labor (now Commissioner of Naturalization in the Department of Labor), “to investigate and report on the subject of naturalization in the United States,” and to recommend changes in the naturalization laws.[60] The commission’s report is invaluable in any study of the subject of Naturalization Law and Procedure.

The average citizen scarcely realizes how completely the Naturalization Law of 1906, which was the fruit of the labors of this commission, has revolutionized the whole business. Whatever may be the defects of the law, or of the practice which has grown up under it, they are in the main due to “leaning over backward” in the honest effort to clean and keep clean the flow of new blood into our citizenship. Generally speaking, it is to be said that the enforcement of this statute has abolished most of the evils of fraud and exploitation which before that were a scandal and a menace in American political life.

By this act the Naturalization Service was established and an absolutely new era initiated. As Mr. Campbell, who forthwith became chief of the Division of Naturalization in the Bureau of Immigration,[61] said in his report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1908, the process of becoming naturalized as an American citizen

... has acquired (even after so short an operation of the new system) a formality and dignity which is in some measure commensurate with the importance of the Act and the gravity of its consequences; it is no longer possible to “railroad” aliens in groups to the naturalization courts, in defiance of the law and in disregard of even an appearance of propriety; the courts which have jurisdiction are no longer such as are “devoted largely to the trifling and indecent affairs of the community,” and the conferring of citizenship is, in this respect, no longer “ranked with disturbing the peace or keeping an unlicensed dog,” as it was expressed by a judge of a court in describing the conditions under the old law.

And in his seventh report, for 1913–14, to the Secretary of Labor, Mr. Campbell remarked that:

To those who will take the trouble to compare the chaotic and disorderly conditions which characterized the procedure for more than a century of our national existence with the dignity, uniformity, and regularity of the present system, it must appear to be a matter of inexplicable carelessness that the reform should so long have been delayed.

In the same report, the Commissioner of Naturalization points to one reform embodied at least potentially in the present system, which alone would have justified it:

There is, too, for the person naturalized, a security of title to his political or national status never before enjoyed by him. The title to citizenship is the recorded order of the court. The certificate is simply the conclusive evidence of such order. If there was no written record made, as was often the case, or if that record was destroyed, as happened not infrequently, the title to citizenship hung by the slender thread of a piece of paper carried by the owner and subject to all the risks attendant upon such possessions. If lost, to all practical intents his citizenship was also lost. Now the duplicate written record, one in the court and one in the Bureau [of Naturalization], is an ample defense against all such accidents.

It would be, indeed; but what if in course of time these records in the Bureau should have come into such condition, owing to inadequate clerical force and increasing absorption of the Bureau in other activities, that the record there could not be traced!

However, any criticism or consideration of the present system, to be intelligent or fair, must take into account, first, the incredibly chaotic conditions which formerly prevailed, and second, the fact that never—not even now—has the naturalization system, as a problem in public administration, received even superficial attention of the public.