NEED OF UNIFYING INFLUENCE
The chief examiners have done their best, but differences of “personal equation” have resulted in a very wide diversity of policy and attitude. There never has been any adequate unifying influence in the service; supervision has been conducted largely by correspondence, and the correspondence has not always been self-consistent. Even in the matter of transmitting to the chief examiners the decisions of courts in naturalization matters, there has been a strong tendency to transmit chiefly those decisions which supported the contentions of the Naturalization Bureau, so that there have been cases in which examiners went on insisting upon interpretations of the law which had been overruled, “getting away with it” in courts whose judges did not keep close track of the decisions, to the detriment of petitioners who could not know their rights—since the alien, as a rule, has no one in court to protect him, and rarely is in a position to take an appeal.
In the majority of the courts, particularly those far from the great centers and having relatively little naturalization business, the judges regard it as more or less of a nuisance, do not keep posted about the law and decisions, and, looking upon the naturalization examiner not only as the accredited representative of the government, but as an expert in this field, follow his recommendations and contentions; and here, again, there being no one in court to represent the frightened or embarrassed petitioner, the point of view of the examiner becomes that of the judge, and the law is handed down accordingly. On the other hand, a few judges have taken the attitude that they would not recognize an examiner who was not an attorney admitted to practice before those particular courts.