This second form of dual allegiance, which would more properly be stated as the attempt to hold that the change of allegiance either did not take place at all or else was not thoroughgoing, bears in itself the possibility of very serious complications. Our naturalized citizens and the native-born children of foreign-born parents have a right to determine that the allegiance they have chosen to swear to the United States be protected.
The situation at present amounts to this: The United States has treaties of naturalization with Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, the German States, Great Britain, Haiti, Norway and Sweden, and Portugal. These treaties provide under what conditions naturalization does not free a former subject from obligation to the country of his birth. Theoretically, whenever a question involving some aspect of naturalization comes up with reference to a former subject of one of these countries, his rights and obligations are determined by the treaty. As a matter of fact, however, this is not always the case, for while there is a treaty of naturalization with Germany, that did not prevent the Germans from passing the law of nationality of June 1, 1914, which practically nullifies the treaty. Where there is no treaty of naturalization all that the state authorities can do is to call the attention of the foreign government to the American point of view. It has never, apparently, been considered possible to enforce the American conception of naturalization, or to make American citizenship really respected in countries that are slow to do so. When the point was brought to an issue with Russia, the only effect was to leave us without any treaty with Russia at all.
As long as we are content to treat naturalization as an isolated matter we will get no satisfaction. We shall never be in a better position than at the close of the war to insist upon a thorough understanding of matters and adoption of a uniform practice in international citizenship. We now have citizenship matters to settle nationally and internationally for which we are ill prepared.
Congress is charged by the Constitution with “establishing a uniform rule of naturalization.” It has never been established. It is the immediate duty of Congress to do so. We need a thorough overhauling of our Federal naturalization laws, and of local laws in regard to voting, holding land and property, earning a living, etc., from the standpoint of national development and defense, and from the standpoint of the future of our Americanism. We cannot do this without a thorough, impartial scientific study of the effect of the enforcement of these laws—not only as shown in official statistics and records in Washington, but in the local districts and among those naturalized. We need to know more of the cost and effectiveness of our naturalization process and the kind of citizens it gives us. We need to know about the granting of papers through the various courts and the influences at work for making good or bad citizens throughout the country. We need to know what our facilities are for educating aliens to become citizens, and more of the attitude of our newly naturalized citizens toward America. Having these matters in hand, we may then proceed to work out a citizenship policy and practice which will accord with the times in which we live and will be a national and international code which will make all native-born citizens doubly proud of their heritage and all foreign-born citizens proud to live or die for America, as the call may come.
CHAPTER V
The Popular Vote
We are facing a national election in which the “vote of the people” will decide the future of America more certainly than at any election since the Civil War. One of the most vital questions before us this year is: Will the foreign-born vote tend to solidarity and be cast in racial interests, or will it be cast for America along broad lines of national policy? Will the 1500 foreign-language newspapers influence the foreign-born vote in favor of a national policy or will it attempt to influence it along racial lines?
The returns of the next national election should have an important bearing upon our future immigration policy of admission. Should we find the vote tending to solidify along racial lines then we have an additional reason for insisting upon the development of an assimilation policy if we are to continue to admit aliens. The racial vote may prove to be a far more anti-American influence than the foreign colony. America cannot afford to have an Irish vote, a German-American vote, a Jewish vote, cast en bloc for any measures or man, if Americanism as defined in the Declaration of Independence and Federal Constitution is to prevail.
The issues promise to center more about candidates than platforms. Parties will impress us more as election machinery than as vehicles of any really fundamental ideals and program. We shall probably have three measures of preparedness from which to choose. There will be a sincere, genuine program of preparedness, including international duty, Americanism, and preparation at home carried by the Republicans, to fit its candidate, and probably indorsed by the Progressives. There will be a milder course, a kind of middle-of-the-road preparedness carried by the Democrats, in the hope of holding their own. The indications are now that there will be a third party of pacifists, anti-preparedness at most points, which will include the ultra-contented, the discontented, and a considerable socialist and labor following. Each platform will doubtless carry some planks dealing with “pressing national questions” as ballast, but few voters will consider them seriously. The main issue of preparedness will determine the lines of the vote, because America now knows that all of its internal progress and “reform” depend upon an America that can defend itself. Belgium drove that lesson home. Through the intricate paths of American honor, international duty, adequate preparedness, national service, universal training, Mexican strategy, the American voter must wend his way. He will be beset at every turn by the “record of the administration and of Congress,” interpreted first one way and then another by the propaganda of defense organizations and of their opponents. He will be deluged with accurate and inaccurate information, from which he will find it difficult to select the best. He will be bombarded with literature, and enticed to meetings and will be given promises hard to keep in 1917. Within the next few months he will receive more gratuitous condensed education on all these questions than during the entire time since 1912.
In addition to all this confusion of mind and competitive struggle, prevailing about the native-born voter, the foreign-born voter will be torn by loyalties and sympathies which go back many generations to the fatherland. Most of them have some one dear to them at the front or lying dead on some battle field. Their mail is censored and they often do not know who is dead and who is living or what has happened to their little homestead in the old country. They see ammunition going out of America, not to fight their battles, but to kill some of their countrymen. They see America growing rich from this manufacture. They are only waiting the first assurance of peace to go back and see what has happened or to help their home country.
It is inevitable that some expression of this should find voice at the polls, and the question is how to make the American issues so fine and big and strong and world compelling that they will engulf this great human sorrow and devotion and make it of service to America. How can we in this next election make every voter feel that America is for him—to serve, to guard, to use, so we may stem the great tide of discontent, aversion, and desertion which has set in among our foreign-born voters? How can we in this coming election remove the indifference, irresponsibility, and profit seeking which characterizes our native-born voter?