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IX

CITIZENSHIP VIA MILITARY SERVICE

We do not yet realize-perhaps we never shall fully realize the profound effect upon the whole structure of our political life, and especially upon the quality of our citizenship, wrought by the World War. One effect, however, stands forth clearly: the war has destroyed the underpinning of the great structure of hand-picked citizenry which, during twelve years of arduous labor and scrupulous straining of technicalities, was built up by the Naturalization Bureau and the courts on the basis of the Naturalization Law of 1906, and turned into solemn farce most of the pontifical preachments by which that policy was justified. Almost overnight the whole long campaign for the establishment of an educational standard of admission, the system of technical exactitude of papers and microscopical scrutiny of the antecedents, length of residence, and even the personal opinions of applicants, and of the competency of their witnesses, and so on, was nullified. Aliens helter-skelter, hit-or-miss, were swept into full citizenship to an aggregate well-nigh half as large as the whole number admitted previously during the entire period of the existence of the Naturalization Service.

When the United States entered the war, early in 1917, the instant necessity of raising a stupendous army swiftly out of our heterogeneous population injected an unprecedented factor into the question of naturalization. The body of native-born citizens, even together

with the great mass of those among the foreign-born who were naturalized, was not sufficient. Aside from that, there were considerations of another character; such, for example, as were set forth by the Provost Marshal General of the Army:1

As soon as the estimates of population made by the Census Bureau had been received, it began to be apparent that the rule of the Selective Service Act, which based the apportionment of quotas on total population, and yet drew the quotas from citizens and declarants only, would operate quite differently upon communities having largely differing percentages of aliens in their population. In certain local-board jurisdictions, in which the element of alien population exceeded 30 per cent of the total, the burden placed upon the citizen population was very great. . . . If in two communities of equal population the citizen population of one were 100 per cent of the whole and in the other 50 per cent, the remainder being composed of aliens, the two communities, though equal in population, in resources, in industries, and in need of labor, the efforts, and the enterprise of men of military age, would fall under a very unequal tax upon their man power. The all-citizen community would be required to furnish twice as many men as the half-citizen, half-alien community.

POSITION OF THE ALIEN SOLDIER

The Provost Marshal General 2 reported 1,243,801 aliens registered under the first draft, and estimated that of these (21-30) nearly half a million (457,713) had been called for examination, and 16.72 per centnearly 17 out of every hundred-certified for service; a few in ignorance of their right to exemption, but virtually all of them voluntarily waiving that right.

The position of the aliens, even if they had declared their intention to become citizens, was unenviable.

1 Report of the Provost Marshal General, 1917, p. 21.

2 Ibid., p. 53, Table 26.

They still owed technical allegiance to European sovereignty-many of them to the nations with which we were formally or practically at war. Many of them were of the cobelligerent nations known as "the Allies," but were here in evasion of military-service laws or other embarrassing legal obligations at home, making personally undesirable their return to the old country; and as for those of German, Austrian, Bulgarian, or Turkish nationality, there was for them short shriftupon capture while fighting against armies of the Central Powers-only the dismal certainty of summary execution as traitors. Their only possible shadow of protection would lie in completed American citizenship.

Furthermore, there was the fact that only American citizens are eligible for commissions as officers in the military service of the United States; but in the new army, and the augmented navy and marine corps-to say nothing of the merchant marine-a very large number of officers would be needed. This last consideration seems to have been the one which chiefly impressed the Commissioner of Naturalization; for, in his explanation of the necessity for the legislation of May 9, 1918, which let down the bars to citizenship for the benefit of aliens and declarants taken into the military service of the nation, he twice refers to it:1

No man engaged in the actual military and naval operations of our country can attain to the rank of commissioned officer unless he be an American, either by birth in the United States or by naturalization therein, irrespective of his training or qualifications. As this restriction, made for peace times, was no less a detriment to the country in limiting its range of selection for commissions to citizens than to those who demonstrated their efficiency, legislative action was taken to remove this restriction.

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1 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Naturalization, June 30, 1918, pp. 3, 31.

The foreign-born residents of the United States, nondeclarants and declarants, had not claimed exemption from military service because of their alienage; but, unless he could claim full American citizenship, none of them, however valiantly he might fight, could receive a commission as an officer, which is the laudable ambition of every soldier.

REVOLUTIONARY LEGISLATIVE ACTION

The revolutionary character of the legislative action with which Congress undertook to meet the situation in its various aspects is apparent in the description of it given by the Commissioner of Naturalization in this same report:1

Another authority which Congress conferred upon the Bureau in aid of the national undertaking in Europe was a new code of procedure by which recognition should be given to certain foreign residents of the country that elimi

nated the delays so necessary in the general provisions of the naturalization law. The requirement for posting petitions for naturalization for at least 90 days before the court could acquire jurisdiction of them for the purposes of admitting the applicant to citizenship was so changed as to admit of the hearing of the petition for naturalization, filed by members of certain enumerated exempted classes, without any delay, the time for hearing being dependent only upon the convenience of the court.

The Act of May 9, 1918, authorized petitions for naturalization and immediate hearing for any alien who serves in the military or naval branches of the Government, upon any United States vessel, any vessel of the American merchant marine, or anyone honorably discharged from the National Guard of any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia, within six months after honorable discharge therefrom. It repealed the provisions of the law that previously extended

1 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Naturalization, June 30, 1918, pp. 30-31.

the right of an alien to petition for naturalization after an honorable discharge from the military or naval branches of the Government at any time after such honorable discharge, and, with few exceptions, reduced the period of time to six months after such service and honorable discharge. The provisions of the law heretofore existing were saved to those holding honorable discharges from the military service where the service was performed prior to January 1, 1900. This provision was included in the law for the distinct purpose of preserving to the veterans of the Civil and Spanish-American Wars the rights which previously had been given to them. The number of aliens now holding discharges from military service prior to the date stated who have not applied for and received American citizenship is small and constantly being reduced.

To accomplish the provisions of this code of procedure it was necessary to create a corps of examiners to aid in the administration of a new statute under conditions wholly strange and different from those ordinarily prevailing. The law requires, very properly, that each candidate for naturalization whose immediate hearing is contemplated shall appear before a representative of this Bureau before filing his petition for naturalization. This particular provision has made it possible for the machinery of the law to operate with the minimum of friction. Indeed, there has been no friction at any point in this new code.

The War Department presented the largest number of candidates for naturalization under the new law. Their location and distribution were general throughout the United States, extending from points in Maine, throughout the country, to the Pacific coast, in the various cantonments, army camps, posts, and military stations. So insistent was the demand for immediate action to naturalize the soldiers of foreign birth in our ranks, in order to enable units to move solidly and prevent dismemberment, that the Bureau detailed immediately such of its experienced officers as it could spare to take charge of instructing the newly appointed examiners, even though their removal from their regular stations resulted in embarrassments to courts, court officials, and thousands

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