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to the passage of the Act, he ascertains whether the alien has been notified by the Bureau that the certificate of arrival required by law to be filed with the clerk of court at the time of filing the petition for naturalization has been placed there by the Bureau. It may be stated here that when an alien applies for a certificate of arrival, the Bureau notifies bim when it has been obtained and forwarded to the clerk of the court selected by the alien in which to file his petition for naturalization, and he is directed to proceed with the filing of his petition at the earliest practicable moment.

Upon learning that the certificate of arrival has been obtained, the examiner interrogates the candidate to learn his qualifications for citizenship and records the results of his examination. He then examines the witnesses to be reasonably certain that they are American citizens, that they are credible and of good character, that they have personally known the applicant for the statutory period, and can intelligently testify both as to his residence and good behavior during the period required by the statute to be ascertained and shown to the satisfaction of the court.

The examiner also sees that the blank form furnished by the Bureau for setting forth the statements required to be embodied in the petition for naturalization is correctly prepared. When the examiner finds affirmatively in all of these respects, he marks the filled-out blank with his initials and sends it with the petitioner and his witnesses to the office of the clerk of the court, where nothing further is to be done than the simple clerical work of filling in the petition, original and duplicate, from the blank, securing the signatures and affidavits of the petitioner and his witnesses, filing the triplicate copy of the declaration of intention and the certificate of arrival with the petition, and notifying them as nearly as may be of the date of the hearing.

This method prevails in large cities where the examiners are located in the buildings with the courts. The advantage to the residents of these large cities, in the saving of time and money to the petitioners and their witnesses, is readily discerned when it is considered that probably fifty thousand applicants for citizenship annually might follow this course

if the conditions in each large center admitted of its being done. The advantage to be derived from having the candidate and his witnesses appear before the naturalization examiner in advance of his appearance before the clerk of court were early recognized by one of the United States district courts, where a large number of petitions for naturalization are filed annually, and an order of court was entered accordingly. In other courts, while the practice has not received this formal recognition, the consistency with which it is observed is none the less definite. This practice prevails in at least one city where the office of the chief examiner is not located in the building with the court.

Further emphasizing the advantages of this practice, the Commissioner remarks that it enables the examiner to dispose of a large number of cases, and tends to obviate denials on such grounds as "that the petitioner is already a citizen"; "incompetent witnesses," "insufficient residence," "no certificate of arrival," "declaration invalid," "premature petition," etc.-"unless, as is sometimes the case, a petitioner is obstinate and insists on taking his chance of admission by the court against the advice of the examiner." The Commissioner goes on to say:

...

In some cities, by reason of the lack of proximity of the office of the examiner to that of the clerk of the court, the system does not prevail of having the candidate appear first before the examiner, but efforts have constantly been made to augment the prevalence of the practice, and since the great bulk of the naturalization work is in the large centers... the plan described, with the restricted means provided therefor, admirably accomplishes the effective disposal of the mass of work arising under the operation of the law wherever it has been adopted.

Referring to the work in regions apart from the great eities, the Commissioner said, in his report for 1912–13:

In a few of the districts there are what may be called sub-stations, where an examiner is located by his chief to attend to work in the vicinity of such sub-station, . . . to reduce the travel expense and to bring the service in actual personal contact with the public and the courts as intimately as possible.

For the rest, and the far-outlying, sparsely-settled regions, where a person desiring citizenship must travel with his witnesses perhaps even hundreds of miles not once, but twice in any event, and in some cases several times, to and from the court having jurisdiction over the territory in which he lives, the situation is not so simple. To persons completing by the essential of American Citizenship their title to a homestead on the public lands-necessarily and characteristically in such sparsely settled regions-this item of travel, expense in both money and time for three persons, to say nothing of other hardships and exasperations involved in the meticulous technicalities of the law and practice, not infrequently is a raw tragedy. Neither provision by Congress nor administrative arrangement or concession in enforcement by the Naturalization Bureau or the courts has materially mitigated the hardships involved in such cases.

RESTRICTIONS OF RACE

Not every alien, whatever his character or good disposition toward the "good order and happiness" of the United States, or his willingness to "support and defend the Constitution and bear true faith and allegiance to the same," can become a citizen of the United States. He, or she, must be either white, or black-or, in the case of the American Indian, red. And if black, he, or she, must be of African descent. A long series of decisions has been necessary to define

exactly what races are excluded; with the result that it is now, for practical purposes, well established that naturalization cannot, under existing laws, be granted to Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiians, Burmese, or the black or brown natives of India.

It is not our province here to discuss the merits either of the racial limitation or of the somewhat vague definition that has been arrived at; it must suffice to outline the situation. The Naturalization Law of 1870 limited naturalization to "aliens being free white persons; and to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent." This was enacted in the tense days of Reconstruction after the Civil War, and was a natural but wholly unnecessary fling at the South. All American negroes are citizens of the United States by virtue of their birth in this country, and those who come here from Africa are likely to be incapable of passing the naturalization tests. Congress never has enacted a clear definition of the term, "white person," and endless confusion has existed. Hawaiians, Afghans, Chinese, Syrians, Turks, and Fiji Islanders, all have been admitted by some courts and excluded by others. The Commissioner of Naturalization at one time directed the field force to oppose vigorously the admission of any Asiastic. A nonMongolian Turk, married to a white woman literally Caucasian, would be surprised to have his son excluded as not a white person; but such folk, and many others white by any common-sense definition, were excluded, the courts usually accepting as the judgment of experts the contention of the naturalization examiners; until finally the ruling was rescinded, and the matter has since then been left largely to the discretion of the courts, which have substantially settled the question so far as it may be settled in absence of a clear constitutional or legislative definition, such as exists

specifically in the Act of 1882 excluding the Chinese by name. As the law and decisions stand now, the same definition which will admit an African deckhand or cook excludes a Japanese prince or a Hindu university graduate.1

As for the Filipinos, it was held, in 1915, by the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, that a Filipino is neither an alien nor an African, and that, therefore, he did not come within the provisions of the law limiting naturalization to white aliens, or black ones of African descent; that the Filipino then before the court could and would be naturalized under the section providing:

That all the applicable provisions of the naturalization laws of the United States shall apply to and be held to authorize the admission to citizenship of all persons not citizens who owe permanent allegiance to the United States, and who may become residents of any State or organized Territory of the United States.

In another case (not, however, involving clearly the question of racial color) a native of the Philippine Islands, of full Spanish paternity, but of half-breed blood on his mother's side, was admitted by the same court.2

There was a dubious situation regarding Porto Ricans; for it was held at first that, when the United States acquired Porto Rico and the Philippines by the Spanish War, these peoples came under the "protection" of the United States, but did not thereby acquire status as citizens. The Act of Congress, March

1 See Van Dyne, Naturalization, pp. 42-50; Moore, Digest of International Law, vol. iii, p. 329.

2 In re Lopez, unreported; Supreme Court, District of Columbia, December 13, 1915. In re Fernandez, unreported; same court, September 24, 1913.

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