Americans by Choice

Let it not be forgotten that nobody compelled these men to utilize this privilege. The law stipulated only that they “may petition.” Their alienage would have exempted them from service and the peril that awaited them.

At first, the certificates of naturalization were delivered; but later, as the flood of applicants became overwhelming and the complications involved hurried departure overseas, before the papers were ready, and other considerations, the delivery was delayed, and the men were advised to arrange to have their precious “last papers” sent rather to their homes, or even retained in Washington until after the war. This was a deep disappointment to the new citizens; and at Camp Upton, for one example, a judge, who knew men by heart, caused the drawing up of a mimeographed temporary certificate, properly embellished with “SS,” “Be it known,” and all the rest of the imposing verbiage, with the soldier’s name suitably prominent in mid-page.

THOSE WHO WENT WITHOUT CITIZENSHIP

Many alien soldiers who were entitled to naturalization went overseas without having been naturalized; a large number before the permission had been made available. Many others, still in the cantonments, had not yet been reached by the process. The situation with regard to such of these as, on their discharge, took steps to get the citizenship to which they were entitled is suggested, even if not completely set forth, by the former chief examiner of one of the large districts, quoted by the Commissioner of Naturalization in his report for 1919:[147]

A GREAT COMPOSITE RECORD OF LOYALTY

Mr. Raymond F. Crist, then Director of Citizenship in the Bureau of Naturalization, pays a well-deserved tribute to the loyalty and the sacrifices of the foreign born, and points to the enhanced responsibility laid upon us by the service these men gave. In his report to the Commissioner of Naturalization,[148] “Concerning Americanization Activities,” Mr. Crist says, in part:

Without intention to cavil or quibble about what Mr. Crist says—for what he says is essentially true—it is needful to remember that neither the stress of emotion under which these mass ceremonies at the camps were conducted, nor the act and fact of naturalization itself, nor yet, in any substantial way, the experiences in the army, could make new creatures of these men. They were afterward—they are now, especially in the chill reaction from the exuberance of that excited period—what they were before—“just folks”—good, bad, and indifferent, like the rest of us.

But there is this difference in what it means to them: They were welcomed into citizenship without the heart-breaking, gnat-straining suspicion through which, in normal times, they would have had to go if they went at all. And no politician urged or herded them into voting status and power at any stage of it. For their American citizenship and share in the common sovereignty they are under obligation to nobody. They bought what they got, as it were, with their own blood.

What intellectual preparation or textbook schooling, what weary treading of red-tape labyrinth, what minute inspection by government functionary in zealous search for undotted or uncrossed letters in a seven-year-old document, would better test or attest an alien’s capacity for citizenship, or make his induction safer for Democracy?

Anyway, these men—those not dead on foreign fields as their first, and last, service to the flag—have gone back to their communities with a new status, and, we may hope, with a new sense of their relation to and responsibility for the nation’s welfare. It remains to be seen what use they and the rest of us will make of these new things.

X

THE FOREIGN-BORN WOMAN, HER HOME AND HER CHILDREN, IN AMERICAN POLITICS

The foreign-born woman plays directly in American politics a part somewhat, but not much, more important than that played by snakes in the zoölogy of Ireland. There are several reasons for this besides the fact that hitherto she has shared the legal disabilities common to her sex in the American political scheme—which fact, by itself, has now been largely mitigated by the final ratification of the Nineteenth (Woman Suffrage) Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; though even that applies only to the ballot, and has not removed either the legal or the general traditional limitations and inequities under which women, in most parts of the country, still abide. So far as the ballot is concerned, the American woman, native or naturalized, is now acknowledged to be an individual person.

But the foreign-born woman, if married, is subject to a substantial limitation. She has citizenship only if her husband has it; she derives it, not by virtue of any act or wish or character of her own, but by strict inference from that of her husband. However much she may desire to become an American citizen, she cannot do so unless her husband chooses to become one; however desirable in her own right or fitness, the unfitness of her husband, or his rejection for any other reason, ipso facto excludes her. And, per contra, however much she might desire to remain a subject or citizen of the country of her birth or former residence, the naturalization of her husband, with or without her consent, even with or without her knowledge, ipso facto inflicts American citizenship upon her. True, this is technically subject to the provision of the law requiring that she must herself be eligible for citizenship; but, as has been stated elsewhere in this volume,[149] there is disagreement among the authorities as to whether this proviso was intended by Congress to apply only to women of those Oriental races, which are ineligible per se, or is applicable generally to the individual woman; also, there has been some attempt to hold that the wife is not naturalized by the naturalization of her husband if she continues to reside in the old country. Some judges will not naturalize a man if his wife remains abroad. Generally speaking, however, the construction is that the wife, whoever and wherever she may be, comes into American citizenship willy-nilly with the acceptance of her husband.

More than that, a woman born and residing in another country becomes an American citizen by her marriage with one; the clergyman, or other official, who pronounces them man and wife attests also an automatic and instantaneous change of jurisdiction and allegiance. It works equally the other way about—an American woman, marrying an alien in this country, in the house in which she was born and has lived for twenty years, forthwith, and regardless of any wish of hers in the matter, becomes instanter in the eyes of American law—and generally of international law as well—a citizen or subject of the sovereignty to which her alien husband owes allegiance. It is conceivable, as is elsewhere remarked, that her act in marrying an alien might deprive her of any citizenship at all, since no country can actually confer upon any person citizenship in another. This, however, is academic, since practically everywhere it is fundamental in the law that a married woman’s citizenship goes with that of her husband.

REGARDLESS OF QUALIFICATIONS

By this means she may become a citizen, regardless of her age or minority or moral character, without having resided in this country five years, or any other length of time; without any inquiry as to physical or mental qualification; without taking any oath of allegiance; without necessarily being, or even claiming to be, “well disposed to the peace and good order of the United States” or “attached to the principles of the Constitution.” Coming to this country as an American citizen, she cannot be rejected or deported because of any views she may entertain on any subject, or any conduct on her part, however immoral or otherwise prejudicial it may be deemed. She is a citizen of the United States, entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities attached to that exalted state. There has been more than one case in which a woman, about to be deported as immoral, has been able to avoid deportation by marrying a citizen.

UNMARRIED WOMEN HAVE MALE RIGHTS

The unmarried foreign-born woman or widow stands, as far as citizenship is concerned, upon her own feet, and becomes a citizen under the same conditions, and upon the same terms, as if she were a man. She must be of one of the races admissible under the law, must have resided in the United States or within its jurisdiction continuously for the five years next preceding her application, and at least two and not more than seven years before that application must have filed her declaration of intention; she must (unless a dumb person) be able to speak (and, if the court sees fit to require it, also to read and even to write) the English language; she must present her two citizen witnesses, and must satisfy the court that she is not an anarchist or a believer in polygamy, and that she is in all respects fit to become a citizen of the United States, attached to the principles of the Constitution thereof, “and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same.” She must abjure any former allegiance and renounce any title of nobility which she may have borne.

If she be a widow with children, she must list them in her application, and such of them as are minors will gain their new citizenship with hers. But in order to gain citizenship with her they must be under twenty-one years of age when she is naturalized, and must become residents of this country before they are twenty-one. The child is not a citizen until he becomes a resident.

DANGERS OF “DERIVATIVE CITIZENSHIP”

The subject of “derivative citizenship” is one that has been much and deservedly on the mind of the Naturalization Bureau, especially since the aspects of citizenship brought to the front by the war came into wider attention. In his report to the Commissioner of Naturalization for the year ending June 30, 1919, Raymond F. Crist, as Director of Citizenship, points out that on the whole the male applicants for citizenship

The man has to pass an increasingly rigid examination; he is personally put through a severe inspection of his antecedents, his character, his personal opinions. His wife becomes a citizen without any examination whatever. The most meticulously particular court, the most painstaking naturalization examiner, cannot prevent her becoming a citizen and a voter without excluding the husband, who may, on his own account, be exceptionally desirable.

The Director of Citizenship goes on to say:

The vital importance of this question of “derivative citizenship” is clear in the statistics gathered by the Americanization Study for the fiscal year 1913–14. Of the 26,284 naturalization petitions covered by that analysis, only 154, or .6 of 1 per cent, were those of women. But more than two-thirds (68.5 per cent) were married, from which it is evident that, in the large majority of these cases, foreign-born women were swept into citizenship by the naturalization of the husband. For less than one in ten of them were married to women born in the United States. And even these American-born women had lost their citizenship through marriage to aliens, regaining it only when their foreign-born husbands became citizens.

CHILDREN OF ALIENS HERE AMERICAN BORN

These statistics bring out also another extremely interesting, and to most people surprising, fact; that is, that the children of our foreign-born citizens largely were born in this country and are therefore, in their own right, American citizens. Probably most persons think of the foreign-born population as coming to this country with a horde of foreign-born children. This appears to be contrary to the facts. As can be seen in Table 56, in the Appendix, four out of five of the petitioners studied had children, and nearly three-quarters of them had native-born children only. One-fifth had foreign-born children only, and the rest had both foreign and native-born. The total number of foreign-born children under twenty-one years of age was 4,843.

“DERIVATIVE CITIZENSHIP” ALMOST EQUALS THE DIRECT

The thing that appears plain and highly significant in these figures is the fact that every 100 certificates of naturalization granted carried into citizenship on the average of 93 other persons, of whom 62 were women, virtually regardless of their own qualifications, and 31 boys and girls under twenty-one years of age. The number of unmarried women and widows was altogether negligible. And these 62 women were virtually all foreign born, the proportion of those men having native-born wives, who were thus restored to their birthright citizenship, being only 9.1 per cent. (It should be remarked, however, that the proportion of petitioners having native-born wives varies greatly—from less than 4 per cent in one court to more than 30 per cent in three of the smaller courts.)

Hitherto, no information whatever has been available as to the number of persons carried into citizenship by the naturalization of the father. Assuming, as probably it is safe to do so, that the ratio has generally been maintained in the past, the totals of “derivative citizenship” become portentous. In 1910, the census reported 6,646,817 foreign-born white males over twenty-one years of age. Of these, not quite one-half (3,034,117, or 45.6 per cent) were naturalized. It is not safe to assume that all of the remainder were unnaturalized, because it is not clear that the enumerators were careful to report as naturalized those who, though foreign born, had been automatically carried into citizenship by their father’s naturalization before they were twenty-one. Possibly a part of the relatively large number of cases (11.7 per cent) in which citizenship was not reported may be accounted for by ignorance or doubt as to the status of the father.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE WAS WIDESPREAD

However that may be, it is sufficiently evident that a vast number of mothers, actual or potential, have been accorded full and irrevocable citizenship, and the voting power involved, through the naturalization of their husbands. Of these, the proportion of those to whom it really meant anything, or means anything yet, is small. The danger, as far as the ballot was concerned, was and is inconsiderable. Yet it was potentially large, in a good-sized part of the country. Prior to the ratification of the Woman Suffrage Amendment women already had full or partial suffrage in most of the states, as will be seen in the following table:

The ratification of the Suffrage Amendment makes every woman a voter for all purposes, subject only to the provision in the Constitution or statutes of such states as prescribe for those foreign born a residence qualification, as in the cases of New York and Rhode Island. The latter state, for example, provides “that no woman citizen of foreign birth shall be entitled to vote unless she has resided in the United States five years.”

It is to be remembered that the question of citizenship involved many considerations besides the right to vote; it is an exceedingly intricate and important subject, including title to property, the parental relation, etc. It would seem to lie within the powers of individual states to govern by statute the qualifications of voters, by means of a residence or educational standard, personal oath of allegiance, or what not. The only thing they cannot now do under the Constitution of the United States, so far as women are concerned, is to exclude any citizen from the ballot box by reason of sex.[150] But only Congress can grant full citizenship to the foreign-born married woman regardless of that of her husband, and to make such citizenship optional with the wife would occasion much confusion in international law, as well as in domestic matters. It is relatively simple from the point of view of lay ethics and common sense; but by no means so simple as it looks.

APPLICANTS CAME AS YOUNG MARRIED MEN

The elaborate statistics compiled by the Americanization Study from examination of more than 26,000 petitions for naturalization seem to indicate that the great majority of immigrants who subsequently seek citizenship are young married men, accompanied by foreign-born wives; but their children are born in the United States, and are therefore citizens by right of birth. These men do not file their petition for citizenship, in the average case, until they have been in this country more than ten years. In the meantime, their children, who presumably do not wait to be born until their parents have become American citizens, live in homes presided over by alien parents who still cling to the thought, traditions, and customs of the old country; what these children get of the American atmosphere they get in the public schools and in the streets. And it probably is fair to infer, as many students have inferred, that a large measure of the breakdown of home control and discipline, showing in the greater percentage of delinquency among young people of the second generation, is due to this exotic condition of the homes; to the fact that the children are acquiring an American life of their own without the old restraints; they have lost—never had, indeed—something they would have had in old-country homes, and have gained nothing to take its place because the homes are still “foreign.” The children quickly learn “the ropes” of American life; they feel themselves superior to their parents in this respect, and this inevitably undermines the parental authority.[151]

THE MOTHER MUST BE “AMERICANIZED”

The mother is the keystone of the home. Some way must be found to take her into the American life. The citizenship which she gains willy-nilly through the naturalization of her husband, even after she has lived here for ten years, bears no necessary relation to her life or character. As Mr. Crist in the Naturalization Bureau’s report for 1919 implies, she is confined within the four walls of her home, chained to her household routine; and nothing in the ritual or system of naturalization calls upon her to be American in any respect.

The position, reactions, and influences of the foreign-born woman in American social life—any aspect of it, domestic, industrial, political—cannot be intelligently understood or discussed unless and until we cease to think of her as in any sense a peculiar animal, or even a human being different in any fundamental way from other human beings. She lived her life in the old country, grew up from childhood, married, came to this country, bore her children here or before she came here, conducts her home, and participates or fails to participate in all the activities of life, under exactly the same kind of motives and impulses, and with essentially the same kind of results, as would be the case with an American woman with the same antecedents, education, resources, in the same circumstances.

She has, however, an additional handicap, and it is of the utmost importance to bear this handicap in mind in the consideration not only of her place in the general problem of the assimilation of the foreign-born population, but of her possibilities and influence as a potential voter, helping to decide by her ballot the great questions which in America are supposed to be settled at the ballot box.

Consider the native-born woman, of the old stock, as she has actually functioned in the widening field of political activity opening to her with the spread of woman suffrage. It is no wonder, but it is true, that the mass of women thus enfranchised have shown the results of the long-standing belief that “the place of woman is in the home.” She has had no reason for learning, and little opportunity to learn, the things pertaining to political life; she has not understood its problems, grasped the significance of its slogans, or brought her mind to bear upon its significances.

Slowly, very slowly, there has grown up a group, larger and larger in numbers, but still very small in proportion, active and intelligent in the movement for enfranchisement, developing rapidly—perhaps even more rapidly than would have been the case with men—in the intellectual grasp of the subjects involved. But the mass of the American-born, English-speaking women of the country have remained what they were before—devoted mothers, quiet, homekeeping housewives, not only content to leave these matters to their husbands and sons, but more or less bored by “politics” and on the whole somewhat resentful toward the effort to enlist them in the turmoil. A large proportion of them have been, in fact, relatively oblivious to the whole business.

MUST LEARN POLITICS BY POLITICAL ACTIVITY

It is the activity in the political function that both awakens interest and inspires intelligence. Why should a woman, brought up in the old, restricted, domestic tradition, forthwith become a vital, vigorous, political force merely because the ballot is put into her hands? Those who have been in the long fight for suffrage have been thinking, talking, agitating, and when finally their effort came to success they were ready for the new responsibilities and activities; indeed, they often have gone beyond the desire for mere participation in the routine of the layman’s place in ordinary party politics, and have shown distinct tendencies toward not only independence, but what the old-timers would call radicalism, to say nothing of going farther into the ranks of the avowed radicals. A large number of these were active and vociferous in the Progressive party in 1912, and in subsequent years. But the vast bulk of their sisters viewed all this askance or with relative indifference, and indifference decreasing slowly but steadily with the lapse of time. In those states which have had woman suffrage the longest and most completely, the interest and participation of the average native-born woman has been the most general and the most intelligent.

This is, and undoubtedly will continue to be, the case with the foreign-born woman. She will emerge from the status of a household drudge, subject to the taboos of tradition, the circumscribing effects of residence in a foreign land, and the various other kinds of narrowness in her life, just so rapidly and by just so much as she is made aware that it is to her interest to do so, is impelled by influences from without herself, and is taught by political activity itself to realize its practicability and value in the concrete things of her life.

Thus far, only one or two of the foreign racial groups have, as such, exhibited any material response to the political opportunities opening before their women. The outstanding group is that of the Bohemians, who for many years have been, comparatively speaking, awake to both opportunity and duty. They have long been more articulate politically than any others, earlier participating in the movement for woman suffrage, and passing on in the more radical directions. Next have come the Scandinavians, excepting the Swedes, who seem to have been more subject to the old Teutonic conservatism about the “place of woman.”

Generally speaking, and as might be expected under the circumscribing influences of all kinds, the foreign-born woman has epitomized all the spiritual, intellectual, social, and political traditions and heritages with which immigrants come to America. The children, the husband, the working uncles and male cousins, all mix immediately with the civilization of the street, the factory, the shop. They have to learn English with all possible promptness in order “to get along.” They hear the political patter of the street corner, they listen to the soap-box orator, they have to have some sort of relations with the politicians in order to do business of any kind.

But the woman is shut in by the four walls of her home. If she lives, as she mostly does, at the top of long flights of tenement-house stairs, she is too weary to venture out where she may hear of the wider things and doings of the world. She has no clothing in which to go more than a stone’s throw from her door. The routine of her life is pretty much that of a prison.

FEW WOMEN SEEK NATURALIZATION

Or, if she be unmarried, the conditions are little better so far as concerns encouragement to be interested in political affairs. It is only potentially that she is a factor in the political future of the country. The fact that the statistical analysis of the Americanization Study of more than 26,000 naturalization petitions filed in twenty-nine courts in the fiscal year 1913–14 showed only 154 women petitioners indicates that the unmarried foreign-born woman does not excite herself on the subject of the ballot. The real problem of the foreign-born woman, so far as her equipment as a voter is concerned, has reference almost entirely to the vast number of women who are carried into citizenship and potential voting power by the naturalization of their husbands. This is a serious matter.

The Naturalization Bureau makes much of its effort to enlist the interest of the women, by calling their attention to the educational opportunities in the vicinity of their homes; it may be conceded that this has had beneficial results in general, and has been vastly better than the former policy of ignoring the newly made woman citizen; but even giving full value to the claims made by various persons as to the increased interest and response of the wives of naturalized men, the total of actual accomplishment, as against the total of available foreign women is negligible. The plain fact of the matter is that the foreign-born women, naturalized by the act of their husbands in the proportion of more than sixty women to one hundred men, pay just as much attention to the business and to their new opportunities, as might be expected in the circumstances.

During the war it was even the subject of resentment, on the part of the wives of alien enemies, that they were thus forced into American citizenship regardless of their wishes or sympathies. In many instances of the so-called “military naturalization,” elsewhere described,[152] in which the husband had been taken regardless of his personal sympathies, and had become, while in uniform, a citizen under the provisions of the law which waived all questions of length of residence, and to a great extent the other qualifications which would have been insisted upon in ordinary times, the wife was a rampant enemy, aggravated by the conscription of her man—and often also of her grown sons—yet she became automatically a citizen of the United States, regardless of length of residence, without being required even to go through the empty form of an oath of allegiance. Forthwith she was absolved from the necessity of registering as an alien enemy; forthwith she became for all purposes as much an American citizen and as much a voter potentially as any Daughter of the American Revolution!

SOME COURTS NOTICE THE WIVES

Some of the courts—the number of such is steadily increasing—have taken judicial notice of this extraordinary situation, and scrutinize with substantial care the qualifications of the wife. Many of them refuse to naturalize a man whose wife still resides in the old country. In his report to the Commissioner of Naturalization for the fiscal year 1918–19 Mr. Crist, as Director of Citizenship, dwells upon this matter, quoting especially an order issued May 27, 1919, by Judge Gustav Anderson in the Circuit Court for Baker County, Oregon, which goes about as far as the court can go under existing law. The text of the order, so far as this aspect of the question goes, is as follows:

Judge George G. Bingham, in the Circuit Court for Marion County, Oregon, previously, in September, 1918, had issued a similar order, in which he directed that if the petitioner be married he should be accompanied by his wife not only in applying to the school authorities for assistance in preparation, but also in his attendance upon the court.

Similar action in other courts is referred to by Mr. Crist in the same report:

OBSTACLES OF DISTANCE AND EXPENSE

The Director of Citizenship does not mention one of the most serious difficulties in the way of a general practice of this kind, operating in sparsely settled districts; that is, the matter of expense. When a man has to transport himself and his two witnesses anywhere from twenty to two hundred miles, pay not only their cost of transportation, but usually their wages for time lost, to say nothing of his own loss of wages or time, or anything paid as extra compensation to the witnesses, and this twice within the space of some ninety days, the necessity of adding the cost of taking also his wife becomes serious if not prohibitive. And in most cases, in city or country alike, a young mother is so tied down by the routine of domestic duties, care of infants, etc., that a considerable absence from home is flatly impossible. If, in addition to this, she has no interest in the matter, or is frankly hostile, it is likely to mean that she will not go to court, and her husband’s petition may be denied for “want of prosecution.”

The Naturalization Bureau and the courts have done all they can under existing law to bring to bear upon the foreign-born woman who will be made a citizen by the naturalization of her husband the influences tending to awaken in her a sense of her opportunity, privileges, and obligations. Strictly speaking, the court has no lawful right to summon a woman from her domestic duties to be a party to her husband’s naturalization. The spirit of the law of substantially all countries from time immemorial has been to regard the citizenship of a woman as merely incidental to that of her husband. There was little or no necessity or reason for her to play any part in the business as an individual. She became American with her man, just as his goods and chattels did. No political activity or responsibility on her part was implied. And she, if she were an American by birth, or a widow Americanized by the citizenship of her deceased husband, would lose her citizenship instanter upon her marriage with an alien here or elsewhere.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE OPENS A NEW ERA

Woman suffrage entirely alters the situation. Now she becomes, at least potentially, a political factor in her own right as an individual. No longer may her fitness, or her probable action as a voter, be in any way assumed from that of her husband. He becomes a citizen by a process presumed to search out his qualifications, and after preparation designed to perfect them. The law has provided hitherto no process by which hers may be adequately ascertained. Yet her vote, her political action in any respect, may aggravate the evil embodied in his by duplicating it; may cancel all the public benefit embodied in his by her opposing action.

Whatever may have been said in the past, it is hard to find any argument adequate on the whole for continuing this antediluvian principle and process. Every adult individual should come into or stay out of voting rights on his own merits, and not otherwise. It may well be argued that even minors as young as sixteen years should not come into citizenship by the act of their parents, so far as concerns their becoming voters at twenty-one, without act of their own.

The voice of naturalizing judges all over the country, who have expressed themselves on this subject, is preponderantly in favor of a radical change in policy. The Naturalization Bureau does not go so far, but stresses what it regards as the need of an educational test of the wife as a condition precedent to the naturalization of the husband. In his report for year ending June 30, 1919, to the Commissioner of Naturalization, Mr. Crist says: