To return to immigration problems during my incumbency as Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor, a minor though nevertheless annoying matter needing adjustment was the regulation with regard to the head tax. After the passage of the Immigration Law of 1903 a head tax of two dollars was levied upon all alien passengers, including even officials of foreign governments. In 1905 Attorney-General Moody had given an opinion to the effect that the tax applied to all alien passengers, whether officers of foreign governments or not. I thought this contrary to the law of nations and to well-established diplomatic usages recognized throughout the world.
As the subject also came within the province of another department, namely, the Department of State, I naturally brought it up at a Cabinet meeting. The President recommended that I issue orders in accordance with my suggestion, and Secretary Root agreed that it was an outrage to levy such a tax upon the representatives of foreign governments. Informally I took the matter up with Attorney-General Bonaparte, but as the decision against this immunity had been made by his Department he felt himself bound by the decision of his predecessor. He suggested that I issue the order on my own responsibility, but I decided for the time being not to do so. At a later Cabinet meeting I again brought up the matter, this time reading the order as I proposed it. The President and Secretary Root, also Secretary Taft, agreed that it should be issued, and this I did.
At the same time I discussed a provision of the Immigration Act of 1906 requiring masters of all vessels bringing in aliens, without exception, to fill out a blank or manifest giving the age, sex, calling, nationality, race, of each alien, and whether able to read or write, and whether anarchist or not. These blanks then had to be signed by the aliens. I prepared two circulars, one ordering the discontinuance of the head tax and the other discontinuing the filling out of these blanks so far as concerned diplomatic or consular officials and other persons duly accredited from foreign governments to the United States, in service or in transit.
At dinner at the British ambassador's home some weeks thereafter Lady Bryce mentioned having to sign a blank asking whether she believed in the practice of polygamy. Of course, she brought it up in a humorous way, but it was apparent that she had felt humiliated at such questioning. I told her I fully appreciated her feelings and was happy to be able to say that that stupid practice had been discontinued.
The subject of naturalization had occupied my attention for years past. Under the law then existing, as well as under older laws, a person could be naturalized not only in the United States courts, but in any State court having a seal. And the naturalization laws prior to the Act of 1906 were most carelessly administered. In the larger cities of many of the States naturalization applications were hurried through in bunches at the direction of some political boss. In that way many persons were naturalized who would have been found, had time been taken to sift the applications, not entitled to citizenship. The effects of so careless a method I saw in Turkey, and in my dispatches to the State Department I repeatedly pointed out the evil.
Largely growing out of my presentation of the subject, Mr. Gaillard Hunt, chief of the passport division of the State Department, had taken it up in his thorough manner and made a report to President McKinley, upon which the President appointed a commission to study the subject. The commission was renewed by President Roosevelt. Its report, known as House Document 326, 59th Congress, 2d Session, and entitled "Citizenship of the United States, Expatriation, and Protection Abroad," was the basis of the Act of 1906. This act went far in preventing fraudulent naturalization as well as in withdrawing protection from those who were using United States citizenship not with the intention of becoming part of the new country in which they had chosen to reside, but as a means to escape their duties as subjects of the country of their origin upon returning there to live, as had happened so often in Turkey.
For the proper carrying out of this law additional examiners were needed, and also about eleven additional assistant district attorneys. I therefore arranged with Attorney-General Bonaparte to appear with him before the Appropriations Committee of the House to explain the necessity of an appropriation to cover the enlargement of the corps for the enforcement and administration of the new law. During my experience abroad much of the time of our diplomatic representatives was taken up with questions relating to the protection of our citizens, and often this protection was invoked by persons who should never have been naturalized.
The exclusion and deportation of criminals and anarchists was another phase of the immigration service to which I had given considerable study. I found the law provided for arrest and deportation of criminal aliens only up to three years of the time of their landing, and that there was gross misconception regarding the scope of the law. There was no coöperation between our immigration officials and the local police departments for the detection of such persons. The police departments of most of our cities were disposed to assume that by virtue of the immigration law the whole subject was under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government; and on the other hand our officials did not confer with municipal officials to make use of the immigration law. It is one thing to provide for the exclusion of criminals and anarchists, but it is quite another to discover, on entry, whether a person belongs to either class. They are usually neither illiterate nor lacking in cunning and deception, but within three years they may be detected, as "birds of a feather flock together."
I decided to issue a circular to all commissioners of immigration and immigration inspectors, with a view to bringing about coöperation with the local officials. I took the subject up in the Cabinet and the President approved. It so happened that while this circular was being prepared, an Italian immigrant, recently arrived, killed a Catholic priest in Denver while the latter was officiating at a mass in his church, and a day or two thereafter another recently arrived immigrant, a Russian, attacked the chief of police of Chicago and his family with a dagger. Both of these men would have come under the deportation provisions of the immigration law had the police been aware of these provisions, as in both instances they had been suspected, by their affiliations and their talk, of being anarchists, as that term is defined in the Immigration Act of February 20, 1907. Under the local criminal laws this suspicion was not enough to justify arrest.