When Is a Citizen Not a Citizen?

I

WHILE war clouds were hovering over Italy and Greece, an Italian-born gardener said to his American employer: ‘I hope there will be no war between Italy and Greece, for if there is I ‘ll be called and I’ll have to leave you.’

‘Why should you be called?’ asked his employer. ‘You are a naturalized American citizen and have voted here for ten years.’

‘Yes,’ assented the naturalized citizen, ‘but Italy never gives up her children.’

That a man should be a voter in an American community and at the same time subject to call from a foreign Power seemed a subject worth inquiring into, and after learning more about the gardener and his understanding of the situation I wrote to the State Department for information concerning the rights and the immunities of naturalized citizens. I found the gardener was right. He was subject to call from his native country. There is no treaty between the United States and Italy defining the status of Italianborn subjects who have become American citizens. Natives of Italy are subject to military service between the ages of eighteen and thirty-nine, and naturalization in a foreign country without the formal consent of the Italian Government does not interfere with the necessity of that service. An Italian who has left Italy without fulfilling his military service and has become naturalized in the United States is subject to arrest and forced military service should he return between the ages of eighteen and thirty-nine. After thirty-nine he is not liable to service, but may be punished for desertion.

In a special notice to American citizens formerly subjects of Italy who contemplate returning to that country, the State Department advises that in case such American citizens have not performed their military service in Italy it would be well before returning to that country to send a petition for pardon for the offense of desertion or evasion of military service to the Italian Government direct, since ‘the State Department of the United States does not act as intermediary in any such matter.’ That is to say, a naturalized Italian, who is a voter in an American community, must send a petition for pardon for desertion to the ‘king and potentate’ he has formally renounced in his oath of naturalization before he can safely return for a visit — and the United States has nothing to say.

The Italian-born naturalized citizen is not alone in having two allegiances, with the one to his native country holding precedence. There is no treaty on the subject of naturalization between the United States and Greece. A former Greek who has not completed his military service is liable to arrest should he return to Greece. The Greek Government has stated that none of its subjects who have been naturalized as citizens of other countries since January 1914 will be held exempt from service should they return home, and our State Department notifies its Greekborn citizens who were naturalized before 1914 that it can give them no assurance that they will not be arrested should they visit their native country; therefore ‘it is deemed advisable for an American citizen of Greek origin to defer his visit to Greece until he can obtain from the Greek Government direct definite assurance that he will not be molested in case of his return.’

There is no treaty between the United States and Rumania defining the status of naturalized citizens of Rumanian birth returning to their native country. All male inhabitants of Rumania are liable to military service between the ages of twenty-one and forty-six, and a Rumanian naturalized in the United States remains subject to punishment for evasion of this duty as well as for the violation of any other Rumanian law committed before he acquired American citizenship.

There is no naturalization treaty between the United States and Poland, ‘therefore,’ says the notice to American citizens of Polish origin who contemplate returning to Poland, ‘it may be desirable for such persons before returning to ascertain whether they may be held there for military service.’

No naturalization treaty exists between the United States and the Netherlands. A subject of the Netherlands must register in person or by proxy to take part in the drawing of lots for military service in January of the year in which he reaches the age of nineteen. Should any subject of the Netherlands become a citizen of the United States before the age of nineteen, he may be relieved of military service by applying to the burgomaster of the community in which he was registered to have his name removed from the register. Should he fail to do this, his naturalization in the United States does not affect his military obligations to his native country, and if he returns for a visit he is liable to forced service in the army, or to be punished as a deserter.

There is no treaty between the United States and Switzerland defining the status of former Swiss citizens who have become American citizens. Every Swiss citizen is liable to military service from the beginning of the year in which he becomes twenty years of age until the end of the year when he becomes forty-eight. Every Swiss of military age who does not perform military service is subject to an annual tax until the end of his forty-eighth year, whether he resides within the Confederation or not, or to punishment for nonpayment of the tax should he return to Switzerland. If a Swiss citizen renounces Swiss allegiance in the manner prescribed by the Swiss law of 1903 and his renunciation is accepted, his naturalization in another country is recognized, but without such acceptance it is not recognized, and his Swiss citizenship is held to descend from generation to generation. A Swiss, therefore, who becomes an American citizen, but whose renunciation of his native country has not been accepted, leaves to his descendants unto the third and fourth generation a Swiss citizenship which takes precedence over the American citizenship acquired by birth. His children and their children’s children may not return to Switzerland without becoming subject to arrears of military tax, or arrest and punishment for nonpayment of such tax.

No naturalization treaty exists between the United States and France, but since French immigration to this country is too small to be considered seriously the lack of such a treaty is a matter of little importance. In its notice to the American citizens of French birth who desire to visit France, the United States does, however, take its courage in both hands and declare, as it distinctly does not do in its notices to naturalized citizens returning to other countries, that the Government of the United States does not admit the right of the French Government to require military service of former French citizens who have obtained naturalization in the United States. ‘However,’ the United States goes on to say, ‘in the absence of a treaty of naturalization between the United States and France defining the status of such persons, the State Department cannot give such former French citizens any assurance that they will not be molested on their return to France unless they meet the specified requirements of the French Government.’

There is no naturalization treaty between the United States and Russia; in fact, Secretary Hughes declares that no treaty of any kind is possible with that country so long as it sends to us propagandists whose avowed object is the overthrow of the American form of government; and yet we continue to naturalize Russians. When these former Russian subjects vote in our elections and take part in our government do they do so as American citizens or as Russians subject to recall?

No naturalization treaty exists between the United States and the present Government of Germany. Under the Treaty of Versailles, ‘Germany undertakes to recognize any new nationality which has been or may be acquired by her nationals . . . and to regard such persons as having severed their allegiance to their country of origin,’ but Germany is protesting vigorously against the Treaty and the United States was not one of the signatory Powers. What, therefore, is the international status of a German immigrant naturalized since the war? This becomes a live question, since the new immigration-law increases many times the German quota as prescribed by the last law. Will the process of naturalization turn all the Germans of the new quota into loyal Americans or will they retain a German allegiance which will call them to military service, perhaps against the nation to which they will have sworn a new allegiance?

II

It is apparently true that American citizens of Italian, Greek, Rumanian, Polish, Dutch, Swiss, French, Russian, and German origin may refuse to heed a call to service from their native countries and that none of these countries will hold the United States Government responsible for such refusal, but it is very certainly true that should any such citizens return to the country of their birth they will be subject to forced military service or punishment for desertion and the United States will not be able to make a protest. In all the notices to citizens of foreign birth returning to the country of their nativity, the State Department tacitly admits that the American Government is powerless to protect such citizens from service or punishment in the countries they have renounced in accordance with American law. That is to say, a naturalized citizen born in a country with which we have no naturalization treaty is not a citizen. Immigrants from those countries must be well aware that their oaths of renunciation are meaningless; that they are still subject to call from the countries they have gone through the form of renouncing; and the judges who administer the oaths know, or should know, that they are taking part in an international farce.

Why do we then as a nation insist that immigrants accept a citizenship which cannot protect them? Why do we coerce them to be naturalized? For coerce them we do!

In my own city, for example, and in every other city with which I am familiar, no unnaturalized citizen may have any municipal job. Until he becomes naturalized he may not even be a street-sweeper or a garbagecollector, occupations for which the demand is always greater than the supply. That is coercion.

Large employers of labor in Pennsylvania, and I am credibly informed in other states as well, specify in their advertisements for workmen that no unnaturalized citizens need apply. That is coercion.

An unnaturalized citizen in Pennsylvania may not keep a dog. That is coercion. The town of Chester, Pennsylvania, has adopted a slogan: ‘No aliens in Chester after 1926,’ meaning not that no aliens will be admitted to Chester after that date, but that all will have become naturalized. That is coercion. When the new immigrationbill was under discussion in Congress, it was proposed that the quota from each country be based upon the number of immigrants from that country who had become naturalized. Had that proposition been incorporated in the bill, it would have been coercion of the strongest kind, for in order to have the quota from his own country increased every alien would have hastened to the naturalization court whether he really desired to become an American citizen or not. This insistence that aliens of every grade of intelligence become voting citizens as soon as possible, regardless of the fact that a dual allegiance will be thrust upon large numbers of them, is due to a public sentiment engendered and fostered by three classes in our national community.

First, the sentimentalists who believe that ignorant aliens, after five years spent in America in a colony of their own countrymen and picking up a few words of broken English, become by the mere process of taking out their papers intelligent and loyal citizens with an intuitive knowledge of our multitudinous and complicated laws, of which we ourselves know little or nothing.

Second, the large employers of labor who, since they advertise that they want naturalized citizens only, must prefer them either because such employees are less disposed to move on should the job be not to their liking or because they have votes which may be utilized. The Pittsburgh Survey, published some years ago, gave some interesting details of the methods used by steel and iron corporations to make the votes of their foreign-born employees serve their own interests.

Third, the politicians who want ignorant and cheap voters.

A lawyer who has had much to do with the prosecution of electoral frauds in my own city tells me that in every political campaign the unnaturalized citizens are rounded up, rushed through the naturalization courts, and taken in droves to the polls, where they vote as they are bidden. During one municipal campaign, an Italian woman came to the office of the Woman’s League for Good Government, of which I was a member, and said amid sobs: ‘No vota — no vota.’ An interpreter was found and the woman explained that her husband had just been told by his boss that he would have to be naturalized and vote as directed or lose his job. He did not want to lose his job, but neither did he want to become an American citizen. He wanted to remain an Italian and eventually go back to his own country. The Good Government League saved him from instant naturalization, and I have reason to believe that the publicity given to the case saved him his job.

The New York papers are responsible for the statement that before the last municipal campaign in that city such throngs of aliens were taken to get their papers that the naturalization courts were swamped and every court in the city had to postpone its own cases and go to their relief. With all the courts working together it was possible to make aliens into citizens at the rate of fifteen a minute.

A Polish miner in the coal fields of Pennsylvania once asked his boss to write a letter for him to his brother in the old country. ‘Tell him,’ said this naturalized American citizen, ‘to come over here. Wages are good and every year there comes along a thing called a vote and you can always get two dollars for it.’

Two dollars is a fair average price for an ignorant vote. In my own ward, as I have been told by a ward worker in whom I have confidence, the price varies from one to live dollars according to the strength of the independent party.

In addition to the sentimentalists, the large employers of labor, and the politicians, there are many thoughtful men and women who favor prompt naturalization because, as they say, large groups of aliens, living together outside of our national life with no interest in the affairs of city or state, become a menace to the community. These must be reminded that aliens from countries with which we have no naturalization treaties cannot become real citizens. Having a dual allegiance, with the one to their native countryholding precedence, it is they who constitute the menace we should beware of. They live in racial groups, maintain their own schools, read newspapers in their own language, cherish their racial traditions, and vote racially in our elections.

In view of the number and strength of such groups throughout the country, it has been seriously proposed that each of the races domiciled in the United States shall elect its own representatives and that our American Congress shall be composed of naturalized Poles, Italians, Greeks, Germans, Irish, and whatever other races may be numerically strong enough to demand national recognition.

Cheap politicians already make appeals to German-Americans, Irish - Americans, Polish-Americans, and other hyphenated groups, thus recognizing and stimulating race consciousness. It would be idle to deny that some of these hyphenated groups have their representatives in Congress, and it is quite possible that the nations with which we have no naturalization treaties make no protest against our claims to their subjects because of the influence they can exert in Congress upon our foreign policies.

William Hohenzollern once said: ‘I have 2,000,000 Germans in America who do my bidding in every election,’ and though that was the foolish boast of an ill-balanced mind, we cannot offer the same explanation when deputies in the Italian parliament speak of ‘our colonies in America.’

III

The head worker in a long-established college settlement in one of our largest cities tells me that in her youthful and optimistic days she held to the opinion that this country could absorb and assimilate immigrants from every country and in any number, but that her experience in late years has taught her the folly of that opinion.

‘Widely different races,’ she says, ‘have come to us in such throngs, and live so closely among themselves, that they retain all their racial intolerances. Men and women of different races will no longer meet peaceably in our settlement house. At one time we must entertain the Italians, at another the Greeks, at another the Russians, Poles, or Irish as the case may be. Each race is jealous of the other; each believes that the privileges of the settlement and of the country at large are for it alone. They unite on but one point — their enmity to the Negro.’

A member of one racial group living in Boston had lately a difficulty with a member of another group, and was arrested for disturbance of the peace. She was highly indignant and exclaimed to the police officer: ‘We could get on all right in this country if it was n’t for you Americans!’

The American melting-pot, if there ever was one, has become a saturated solution full of insoluble lumps. Quite recently I had a heart-to-heart talk with a representative of one insoluble lump, a Polish lump. Little Poland in my city covers an area of many squares. Its people have their own schools, conduct their church services in their own tongue, and live quite apart from American thought and American happenings. ‘ Do your people begin to feel that they are citizens of the United States, and are becoming real Americans?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he answered frankly. ‘Poles we are and Poles this generation will remain. You cannot Americanize the first generation of immigrants. They cannot forget their traditions nor change their language.’ ‘But you are naturalized and vote in our elections,’ I reminded him. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but we did not seek naturalization. It was thrust upon us. Can you not realize,’ he added earnestly, ‘what a mistake you make in insisting that masses of people who do not understand your laws and institutions and have no real desire to understand them shall become voting citizens?’ ‘But think,’ I returned, ‘of the many colonies of different races that exist within the limits of this city. You know only your own Little Poland, but there is also a Little Italy, a Little Russia, and a Little Bohemia. What are we to do with these groups of alien peoples if they take no more interest in our American life than your Poles?’

‘I see your problem,’ he answered thoughtfully. ‘I have had in my mind only my own people, but I still think that by insisting that all these different races shall be naturalized and become voters you are making them a still greater problem. I repeat, you cannot make Americans of the first generation, and to think that you can is your greatest national blunder. You will doubtless get the children, but the first generation will remain alien.’

The head worker before quoted thinks my Polish friend unduly optimistic. She believes we cannot get the children.

‘The first generation remains alien,’ she says out of her long experience. ‘The second generation has no country. The boys grow up lawless, despising their ignorant parents and, from too near acquaintance with police courts, contemptuous of all government. They call themselves Americans; they have learned to salute the flag and sing the Star-Spangled Banner; but they have no more conception, if as much, of what America really stands for than their parents have. From this class comes the majority of our youthful bandits and desperadoes. The third generation, through the agency of the public schools, may produce good citizens, but much depends upon the intelligence of the grandparent and the environment of the grandson.’

Yet these conclusions forced upon this experienced settlement-worker are optimistic compared with those of present-day ethnologists, who are telling us that widely different races never do assimilate and that a man is no more an American because he was born in the United States than he would be a Chinese had he been born in China or a Japanese had he first seen the light in Kyoto or Tokyo. There is no American melting-pot, say these students of racial characteristics, neither is America a nation in the making. It was made when the Constitution was adopted.

The question of assimilation, however, has no connection with my present inquiry, which has to do only with the status of naturalized citizens and the effect upon the country of voters who through lack of naturalization treaties are really subject to foreign Powers. Such citizens, living in racial groups and voting racially, as they will do increasingly as their groups increase in number and influence, offer a passive resistance to what we call Americanization, and consciously or unconsciously de-Americanize the communities in which they live and vote. The effect of this de-Americanization is already visible in our public schools. The history of the United States as taught in our schools must no longer be a statement of facts, for simple historical facts refracted through racial prejudices become distorted. A racial group in my own city, for instance, has protested against the inclusion in our school histories of a letter written by Washington in which he speaks of his affection for England and his regret at the approaching war. There is no question of the authenticity of the letter. It must be omitted from school histories because, as refracted through racial spectacles, it shows a regard for England which this special group calls dangerously un-American. Another group sees by racial refraction that the influence of the early Italian discoverers upon our colonial history is not sufficiently emphasized. Still another sees that it was German thinkers and German thought that inspired the Declaration of Independence and made possible the Constitution, and insists that these refracted statements must be more clearly brought out in the histories studied in the schools.

I have a copy of a manifesto issued by one militant group which asks indignantly if ‘red-blooded Americans’ will stand idly by and permit their children to be taught that Washington, Adams, and Jefferson were English and that the English Bill of Rights was the inspiration of the Declaration of Independence. The same manifesto mentions several histories that red-blooded Americans will never tolerate in their schools, and with these it includes Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with America, which, for the vigor of its style, the purity of its English, and the nobility of its sentiments, has been for years an entrance requirement in our colleges and universities.

We were all amused when Mayor Hylan of New York, who, as I understand, claims to be Irish by descent and sympathies, appointed a committee whose chairman was David Hirshfeldt, an Austrian, to summon before it the historians of the United States and demand of them why they persist in emphasizing the influence of English law and the English language upon the American nation during its formative period. We were still more amused when the historians failed to answer the summons, but perhaps we were not wise to find only entertainment in Mayor Hylan’s committee. The time seems not far distant when American history as taught in a given public school will be merely a reflex of the prejudices of the racial group that polls the largest vote in that school district. I have read an elaborate argument which aims to prove that Washington was of German descent. In certain school districts, therefore, it may easily be that the school histories will in time record him as a German. In another district he and Adams and Jefferson may be of Italian ancestry, in another they may be the descendants of Irish kings. They may even become Russians, a possibility not so remote as it would appear, since I have myself heard a Russian, naturalized in this country, speak of her ancestors and mean, not her progenitors on the borders of the Black Sea, but the Pilgrims who landed from the Mayflower.

IV

Another effect of the de-Americanizing process at work in this country is visible in our changing form of government. We were a representative democracy; we are becoming a pure democracy. The Fathers knew and feared the effect of sudden popular impulses, and they interposed legislatures between the people and the senate, and the electoral college between any momentary national delirium and the presidency. We have removed the barrier of the legislatures; senators are elected by popular vote; and who can say that the doubts of the Fathers have not been justified?

It is safe to say that one half of our voters have never heard of the electoral college. Its functions have been rendered useless by conventions which may soon disappear before a presidential primary. The authority of the Supreme Court has been questioned and a Constitutional amendment may in time permit its decisions to be reversed by Congress.

The aspirations of the men of 1776 were satisfied with the assurance of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It was left to later generations to discover that happiness can be pursued only through the ballot box. Suffrage was limited when the Constitution was adopted. There was apparently no thought that to cast a ballot which he could neither read nor understand was the inalienable right of every ignorant American, nor one to be thrust upon naturalized citizens having a dual allegiance. It is surely not the descendants of the men who made the nation, who inherit a love of constitutional government as they inherit, their language and their literature, whom we can hold responsible for these radical changes. As the popular current bears us swiftly to pure democracy, and thence to ports unknown, our pilots are citizens, or immediate descendants of citizens, of countries where government has meant either despotism or revolution. Despotism these citizens left behind them when they crossed the ocean; therefore, they think, they have come to revolution. If the United States has a settled form of government, it must be changed or overthrown.

An inevitable result is the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan is the prejudiced, race-conscious American opposing himself to the prejudiced, race-conscious alien. However much we may deplore the Klan’s methods or condemn its intolerance, it is a symptom and not the disease. To get rid of the symptom we must cure the disease. A radical restriction of immigration is the first part of the curative prescription, but the restoration of the body politic to health requires, in addition, the drastic remedy of a greatly restricted naturalization. No immigrant from a country with which we have no naturalization treaty should be permitted to become a voting citizen, and every immigrant from any country should be required to show wherein he has been of actual service to this country before being granted the boon of citizenship.

No other country coerces alien residents to become citizens. Thousands of Americans spend their lives in England, France, Italy, China, Japan, and no attempt is made to divert their allegiance from the United States. A man who desires to be a British subject must show very good and sufficient reasons for his desire to renounce his native country; but once naturalized he becomes in his rights and privileges the equal of a native-born Englishman. The country he renounced has no further claim upon him and any threat that such a claim will be made is speedily withdrawn under the menacing growl of the British lion.

But even in the confusion created by our naturalization laws and policy, there exists a legal way to check the influence of alien racial groups. The Constitution as amended declares that the right to vote shall not be abridged by race, color, previous condition of servitude, or sex, but it does not intimate that it may not be abridged by ignorance. Several states require that voters shall be able to read and write some language, but it was left for New York State to adopt a constitutional amendment which withholds the franchise from any citizen, native-born or naturalized, who cannot read and write English understanding. The State Supreme Court has upheld this amendment, and authorized the State Board of Education to define what is meant by the phrase ‘ read and write English understanding.’ The decision of that Board is that to read and write English understandingly a voter must have a knowledge of English equivalent to that demanded in the sixth grade of the state public schools.

It is possibly true that a man who can neither read nor write may be a better citizen than one who knows and speaks the English language in its purity, but a man of the most truly patriotic intentions who cannot read and mark his own ballot, and must depend upon assistance, never can really know for whom or what he has voted. He is forced to depend upon the honor of the watcher at the polls who gives the assistance. By requiring an educational qualification for the franchise and making it binding in New York City, where it has been possible to naturalize aliens fifteen to the minute, and where every native or foreign-born citizen, however ignorant, has been able to leave his impress on the government, New York State has blazed a trail toward a safer and saner America.