Straight America, a call to national service

by Frances Kellor

When is a citizen not a citizen? The great game of hide and seek in America might well be called citizenship. Every naturalized male alien is a citizen as long as he stays here; but if his home country was Turkey, it is not safe for him to get back into its jurisdiction. In New York state the alien waits five years to become a citizen and vote; in Nebraska and half a dozen other states he has only to declare his intention to become a citizen and then qualify under the election law. We deny men the right to work in certain occupations unless they are citizens, yet we make them wait five years to become citizens, meanwhile failing to provide them with facilities for meeting the educational requirements for citizenship. We tolerate a system of seasonal labor and shifting of the working population which makes it physically impossible for the migratory workman to meet the legal requirements. We permit women to vote and still retain the law that naturalization follows the husband or father—thereby making it possible for the alien woman who marries a citizen or is the child of a naturalized citizen to vote as soon as she complies with the residence law, however ignorant she may be. At the same time we deny the privilege of citizenship to native-born American women who marry aliens. One of the great questions facing us to-day is the adaptation of our citizenship requirements to the needs of the country. We cannot have real Americanization until this is done. A man or woman unfit for citizenship is not wanted in America. The fit man or woman should be in every way encouraged to become the best kind of citizen and to remain so.

We have no standard definitions of the citizenship requirement as to what constitutes knowledge of English, of the constitution, of loyalty, or the meaning of the oath of allegiance. Some judges with a high sense of patriotic duty enforce one standard; others “pass them up”—and again America pays the price in its quality of citizenship and in the kind of service such men and women railroaded into citizenship will render when called upon. We have never considered a knowledge of the country, of its institutions and of Americanism as necessary for citizenship, either of native or foreign born. We rest our case upon a rather splendid series of assumptions. We assume that the school and home and job and town will do this work with never an inquiry by the Federal government as to how the task is being done. Were it not for the campaign for preparedness and the dangers we face we would still accept the public school Fourth of July oration as sufficient evidence of the interest and proficiency of the native-born son; we would still believe that the granting of papers to foreign-born men sealed their loyalty to America. We hardly yet realize the significance of the fact that no specific way of pledging allegiance is required from the men or women who come of age; even the child born here of foreign parents is not asked to make a choice between the two possible allegiances that may be dear to him. Little citizenship training is given in our schools, except in the form of diluted history or civil government, and the thousands of girls and boys that leave school at 14 years of age and go to work do not obtain even that. We assume that the child has absorbed American ideas and traditions. The feeble response to a preparedness call and our attempts at neutrality in thought have shown us how little of the national and how much of the local and selfishly “safe” attitude we as a nation have. What is our conception of citizenship? Does it mean that we, the people, are the possessors of life, liberty, happiness, and prosperity in America with no corresponding obligations? Does it mean that our obligations consist in paying taxes, being law abiding to the point of keeping out of court, and voting at some elections? We owe these obligations to any country in which we are guests. We still find ourselves, after generations of American citizens, debating whether we shall train our young men to defend America. We find the best life in the country not in government service, building a strong nation, but in business, building an individual fortune.

Are we as careless, go as you please, and perfunctory about making aliens into citizens as we are about native sons and daughters growing into citizens? It is not very flattering to America to find that up to the beginning of the war in Europe the greatest incentives to the acquirement of citizenship by aliens were political and commercial. There are many thousands of aliens moved by a general aspiration toward the idealistic privileges and traditions of American citizenship and these make our true patriots. But by far too many of our citizens have entered by way of the political club and at the behest of a self-interested politician; and by way of the job, to earn a living. How and when did citizenship become so cheap and begin to serve the commercial and not the patriotic needs of America?

The chief difficulty arose with the willingness of government to place the whole burden upon the alien. We wrote a law on the statute books, setting forth certain technical requirements; then we taxed the prospective citizen enough to pay for the enforcement of the law, providing a number of fat offices and a neat balance in the treasury. Then we sat back in our comfortable office chairs and said to the alien: Now you comply with the law and we will grant you citizenship papers.

But in drafting the law, we did another thing. We called it raising the standard. What we really did was to increase the technicalities which cost influence and money to satisfy, but which gave America no better citizens. The naturalization law provides that an alien before becoming a citizen shall have a continuous residence of five years in America, shall comply with certain rules, shall have a knowledge of the English language and of the constitution, and shall renounce all allegiance to foreign governments. He may not do this all at once. It is a long, complicated process, intended to safeguard American citizenship, but failing in its purpose because we failed to establish standards or facilities for compliance. For instance, the prospective citizen must file a declaration of intention at least two years prior to the granting of his final papers—an obsolete requirement, as his five years of continuous residence is now established by the filing of a certificate of arrival with his petition. A second document, the petition for citizenship, must be filed not less than two nor more than seven years after the declaration of intention, verified by the affidavits of two credible citizen witnesses, certifying to the petitioner’s five years’ residence in the United States and one year’s residence in the state or district in which the application is made. This latter requirement creates almost insuperable difficulties for migratory laborers who go from state to state, following the call of casual or seasonal labor. After the petition is filed, the applicant must wait at least ninety days before his appearance in court. But should he move during this period from one judicial district to another within the same state, he must file a new petition and pay an additional fee, as the court will not transfer its original records. As a result, an applicant who removes to New York City after filing a petition and paying the fee in Buffalo must go through the same process in New York City. And unless he can afford to bring his witnesses twice from Buffalo to New York City he must wait another year until two other citizens can verify his year’s residence in New York City. The two witnesses must accompany the petitioner at least twice—when the petition is filed and at the hearing in open court. If his case is not reached and adjournments are made, the applicant frequently appears not only the minimum four times, but may appear as many as six or eight times, and his witnesses as many as four or five times. Every day in court means the loss of wages and the cost of transportation to and from the county seat for himself and witnesses whom he must reimburse for their losses. The applicant and his witnesses are in constant fear that their enforced presence in court during ordinary working hours may result in the loss of their jobs.

Of what possible value can state and district lines be in a national citizenship matter? Are we a nation or are we a conglomeration of states and districts? If we need so cumbersome a machine to prevent frauds, by which the alien pays the entire cost, then the reduction in fraud is at the high cost of citizens. It is estimated that 10 per cent of all aliens who try to become citizens fail in their final examination because of technicalities, and most of them never come back, though no fraud was alleged.

When we set this highly specialized Federal machinery in motion in 1906, it was on the theory that citizenship was a national, not a state matter. In 1889 when the enforcement of the immigration laws was transferred to the Federal government, it acquired all powers of admission and exclusion, but all the protective features of the Board of Emigration Commissioners of New York state were dropped and a series of exploitations immediately arose. This is precisely what happened when our naturalization laws were transferred. We took the authority, but we neglected to establish standards, facilities, and protection for the alien. We did not settle the states’-rights question and we did not consider sufficiently our international relations.

In the matter of standards, the burden of determining the qualifications of the prospective citizens rests upon the Bureau of Naturalization, while the actual granting of final papers rests with some 2380 judges, each applying his own idea of qualifications. The Bureau of Naturalization up to 1915 has been primarily concerned with technicalities of law and proof of residence, time elapsing between the granting of papers, etc. It has been largely legal evidence which has been placed before the judge, showing that the law had been complied with.

For nine long years the Federal government enforced the letter of this law—it had no American spirit in it. It did nothing to assist the alien to qualify in the English language or in civics. It made no attempt to stimulate the opening of night schools where these could be taught; it favored no educational extension work; it saw no connection between the courts, schools, and naturalization bureaus. Then things began to happen. States like New York and California started immigration bureaus which emphasized education. Other states like New Jersey and Massachusetts had immigration commissions that studied naturalization among other things. Two cities, at least, took up the matter—Cleveland and Los Angeles—of connecting the public schools with the courts and having the certificate of the school, giving credit for work in the English language and civics, recognized by the judge in granting final papers. In a few cities night sessions were also urged, so the cost to workers in time and wages might be lessened. In 1914 the Bureau of Education established a division of immigrant education, which began a nation-wide campaign of education through the public schools. In 1915, the preparedness movement, and the discussion of hyphenated Americans and their activities, awakened the Bureau of Naturalization to the fact that a new situation confronted America.

In the meantime politics and business had been as busy as ever “making citizens” for their own purposes, putting them through the courts without qualification in English or civics. Something had to be done about this, so the Bureau of Naturalization reversed its policy and is now conducting a campaign by which the name of every applicant for first papers is now sent to the nearest school authority and the alien is followed up and urged to become qualified for citizenship.