Government in the United States, National, State and Local

by James Wilford Garner

Who are Citizens.—The population of every country is composed of two classes of persons: citizens and aliens. The larger portion of the inhabitants are citizens, but the alien class is considerable in some states of the Union, much more so than formerly, owing to the large influx of immigrants from Europe in recent years.[109] A citizen is one who has been admitted to full membership in the state, though he may not have been given full political privileges, such as the privileges of voting and holding public office. There is a large class of citizens in every state who can neither vote nor hold public office, such, for example, as minors, sometimes illiterate persons, those who have not paid their taxes, those who have been convicted of serious crimes, and others. On the other hand, aliens in some states are allowed to vote and hold office, especially if they have formally declared their intention of becoming citizens. The terms "citizen" and "voter," therefore, are not identical, since there are some citizens who cannot vote and some voters who are not citizens. (See page 125.)

How Citizenship is Acquired.—Under the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution, all persons born in the United States[110] are citizens of the United States, and also of the states in which they reside. Persons who come here from abroad may become citizens only by being naturalized.

Naturalization Law.—To acquire citizenship in this way, they must reside here for a period of five years, they must also be persons of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same. Under the law of 1906 they must also be able to write their own language and be able to read and speak English. Two steps are necessary in the procedure of naturalization: first the applicant must go before a federal court or a court of record in some state and make oath that he is at least eighteen years of age, and that it is his intention to become a citizen of the United States. At the same time he must renounce all allegiance to the foreign state of which he is a citizen or subject and must furnish the court with a variety of information concerning his past life, including the date of his arrival in the United States and the name of the ship on which he arrived. He is then furnished with a certificate which is popularly known as his "first papers." When he has resided in the United States at least five years and possesses all the necessary qualifications the court will issue him a certificate of naturalization which makes him a citizen. Fees amounting to five dollars are now charged for filing the petition and issuing the final certificate. In order to prevent the wholesale naturalization of aliens in the large cities for election purposes, the law provides that no certificate of naturalization shall be granted within thirty days prior to any general election. Any honorably discharged alien from the United States army may be admitted to citizenship after a residence of one year, and the preliminary declaration of intention is not required of aliens who have served five years in the navy.

Disqualifications.—In addition to the qualifications mentioned above, there are certain disqualifications which serve to debar many foreigners from acquiring American citizenship. Thus only white persons and persons of African nativity are capable of being naturalized under our laws, so that those belonging to the Mongolian or other races, such as Chinese, Japanese, Burmese, and East Indians, cannot become citizens of the United States unless born here. Other persons excluded for different reasons are polygamists, anarchists, and certain other classes of criminals who are not considered worthy to enjoy the high privileges of citizenship.

The naturalization of a husband makes the wife and minor children citizens, so that they do not have to go through the process of taking out their "papers."

Other Methods of Acquiring Citizenship.—Citizenship may be acquired sometimes in other ways than the method described above. Thus a foreign woman becomes a citizen by marriage to an American citizen, and the inhabitants of foreign territory annexed to the United States become citizens by virtue of their incorporation into the body politic. In this way the inhabitants of the Louisiana territory, acquired from France, became citizens. In the same way those of Florida, Texas, California, Alaska, and Hawaii became citizens, but not those of Porto Rico and the Philippines. Residents of Porto Rico, however, were made citizens of the United States by act of Congress in 1917.

How Citizenship may be Lost.—As citizenship may be acquired in various ways so it may be lost by different acts. An American woman loses her citizenship by marriage to an alien. Acceptance of a commission in the service of a foreign country; if it involves the taking of an oath of allegiance to a foreign government, operates to divest one of his American citizenship. The most common mode by which citizenship is lost, however, is through voluntary removal from the country and naturalization in a foreign state. The right of the citizen to withdraw from the United States, renounce his allegiance, and acquire the citizenship of a foreign state, is declared by our law to be an inalienable right. Mere removal from the United States and the establishment of a residence in a foreign country, however, does not of itself operate to divest one of his citizenship. An American citizen may reside abroad many years for the purposes of business, education, or pleasure, and so long as he preserves an intention of returning to the United States he is not held to have abandoned his American nationality.

In order to prevent foreigners from coming to the United States, acquiring our citizenship, and returning to their native country for the purpose of living there without being subject to the burdens and obligations of military service, the law declares that a naturalized American who returns to his native country and resides there for a period of two years will be presumed to have abandoned his American citizenship, and unless he can show an intention of returning to America he will be considered as no longer being a citizen.

Federal versus State Citizenship.—In a country having the federal form of government, the inhabitants have a dual citizenship, that is, they are citizens of the country as a whole and of the particular state in which they are residents. Thus our federal Constitution declares that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside. A person, however, may be a citizen of the United States without at the same time being a citizen of any state, as is the case with those inhabiting the territories, the District of Columbia, and other places not forming a part of any state. On the contrary, it seems to be generally admitted that one may be a citizen of a state without necessarily being a citizen of the United States. Thus a state may give an alien full political and civil rights and declare him to be a citizen of the state before he has become a citizen of the United States. Some states have in effect done this. It follows, therefore, that federal and state citizenship are not necessarily identical and coexistent, since there may be a class of state citizens upon whom the United States has not conferred its own citizenship, and a class of United States citizens who are not citizens of any state. The citizenship of a particular state may be relinquished for that of another by removal from the former state and the establishment of a residence in the latter. No legal formality whatever is required to put off the one and take on the other.

Interstate Rights of Citizens.—There is a provision in the Constitution of the United States which declares that the citizens of each state shall enjoy all the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the several states. The purpose of this provision is to prevent one state from discriminating against the citizens of other states in favor of its own citizens. Whatever rights and privileges it accords to its own citizens must be accorded equally to citizens of other states who may be within its borders or who may wish to carry on business therein. The states are also forbidden by the federal Constitution to abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, though the Constitution does not specify or indicate what these privileges and immunities are. They include, however, such privileges as the making and enforcing of contracts, of suing in the courts, of inheriting, holding, and conveying property, of receiving equal protection of the laws, and, in general, of enjoying every right or privilege to which the citizen is entitled under the Constitution and laws of the United States.