The Sovereign Citizen. Patrick Weil
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asserted that “section 11 and section 15 were designated to afford cumulative protection against fraudulent or illegal naturalization.”22
In 1926, in Tutun v. United States, the Supreme Court finally decided that a naturalization proceeding in a federal court was a case within the meaning of the Constitution, the Judicial Code, and the act establishing the Court of Appeals.23 The Court ruled that the cancellation proceedings authorized by section 15 of the 1906 act were not a denial of the usual method of pursuing appeals in courts. In the matter of contesting naturalization, the United States was given another “cumulative remedy”:24 it could both appeal a naturalization decision and start a suit to attack the same decision for having been “illegally procured.” For the Naturalization Bureau, the separate denaturalization procedure still had some clear advantages: the right to appeal decided in Tutun by the Supreme Court did not concern naturalization by state courts,25 and there was no time limit for denaturalization proceedings.26
In addition, the Supreme Court had interpreted “illegally procured” based on the doctrine of jurisdictional fact.27 To be legally naturalized, an alien had to:
1. fulfill certain procedural requirements such as filing a certificate of arrival, a declaration of intention, or a petition for naturalization; or obtain the decree of naturalization in open court,
2. be “racially” eligible, either black or white;
3. be able to speak English;
4. have established permanent residence in the United States for five years and have waited two years between the day of the declaration of intention and of the application for naturalization;
5. be of “good moral character”;
6. be attached to the “principles of the Constitution” and to organized government in general;
7. take an oath of allegiance to the United States.28
Any decree of naturalization that had not been obtained in full compliance with the letter of the law could be revoked. Under the pressure of an increasingly burdensome number of tasks, courts seemed increasingly agreeable to transfer their power to treat the first stage of the naturalization application. In 1909, naturalization examiners began using a creative interpretation of the 1906 Act as authority to conduct interviews with applicants for citizenship before they appeared in court.29 When a large number of petitions for naturalization began being filed each year, one federal district court decided to formally require that citizenship candidates and witnesses meet with a naturalization examiner in advance of appearing before the clerk of court.30 In other jurisdictions, however, pre-court interviews were used without this formal recognition.31
By 1914, the Division of Naturalization could claim that 50,000 of the 123,000 applicants for citizenship sat through a preexamination interview conducted by a naturalization examiner. It was easier for citizenship applicants to appear before examiners because the Bureau’s district headquarters were located in many of the United States’ largest cities and in close proximity to the courts (sometimes even in the same building). This system saved the clerks time and permitted the examiners to review the greatest number of cases, “all at a far less expense and embarrassment to the applicants for citizenship.”32 The eleven chief examiners running the country’s eleven naturalization districts performed the work, assisted by forty-eight assistant examiners and fourteen clerks.33
In addition, the outbreak of World War I and America’s eventual military involvement drove the creation of a special new procedure permitting aliens who volunteered for the armed forces to be naturalized rapidly without meeting many requirements of the 1906 Act—including the normally required delay of ninety days. Under the wartime measure passed on May 9, 1918, before filing a naturalization petition, aliens who enlisted in the armed forces of the United States could pass a preliminary examination and appear with two witnesses before a representative of the Bureau of Naturalization. In order to operate the new system, which made official the centrality of the Bureau’s role in the naturalization process, new examiners were recruited and trained by more experienced naturalization officers. By the end of June 1918, 63,993 foreigners serving in the military were naturalized.34 One year later, on June 30, 1919, the total number had reached 128,33535 and rose still further to 244,300 by the end of 1920.36 At the same time, the Bureau’s force of examiners increased, and its appropriations doubled from $305,000 in 1918 to $675,000 in 1919.37 The Bureau of Naturalization was able to take satisfaction in demonstrating that the administrative naturalization process could work: “This particular provision has made it possible for the machinery of the law to operate with the minimum of friction.”38
But the Naturalization Bureau’s satisfaction was short-lived. After 1918, the number of declaration of intentions and naturalizations rose to double their previous levels. At the same time, in the years following the war, the Bureau of Naturalization was forced to process these under a significantly reduce budget.39 Eventually, the Bureau staff began to examine the documents of many candidates for naturalization by correspondence.40 In such instances, an alien would file a petition for naturalization before a clerk of a court who would contact the Bureau so that it could send the applicant a questionnaire through the mail. Each applicant’s witnesses also received by mail a written questionnaire that asked them about their knowledge of the applicant. Largely on the basis of these written statements, “made ex parte of course, the court [would] admit[] that man to citizenship,” after he appeared in person.41
In 1922, of the 170,000 aliens applying for citizenship, 29,000 mailed in applications. In areas where it lacked offices, mainly in the western part of the country, the Bureau found that, “We do not have the force to go and investigate those cases as they should be investigated, and as a consequence we must adopt this expedient.” The Bureau of Naturalization found this new mail-based process “totally and entirely unsatisfactory,”42 carrying with it considerable risks: “Now, with all the isms rampant as they are, it seems to me that at a time like this we should stop that sort of practice.” At the beginning of 1923, the Bureau launched a program to extend its preliminary investigation process to every court with naturalization authority around the country. In order to implement the expanded program, Bureau officials tried to convince “the more than 2,000 clerks of courts . . .engaged in naturalization transactions” to require each applicant to establish contact with the naturalization examiner “before he files his naturalization petition.”43 But in large cities, where the Bureau of Naturalization had existing agreements with the courts to investigate applicants, examiners were overwhelmed with a flood of applications. In 1925, only 20 percent of all the naturalization papers were fully completed in the presence of a naturalization examiner.44
In response, the Bureau pursued a successful strategy of increasing its authority—and budget—by tapping into the currents of political paranoia and anticommunism. It urged Congress to allocate more resources, and insisted that, without that increase, it could not prevent a growing tide of “reds” from becoming American citizens: “There are reports showing that socialist organizations are urging their members to become naturalized. We cannot withstand that action without funds. If they have funds, as they seem to have, from abroad and other sources, to carry on their propaganda work, in 90 days you will have them coming into citizenship.”45
To prevent the naturalization of Communists, the Bureau cooperated with civil society organizations, which it used to feed it with information: “the Americanization societies . . .and the American Legion are pointing out to our men daily cases—I should not say daily, perhaps, but cases which require more careful investigation, all of which necessarily takes time.”46 Raymond Crist, who in 1923 was selected as the new Commissioner of the Bureau of Naturalization, also strove to develop strong ties with industry, “so that we can arrange to get reports from employers about their employees who are coming into citizenship.” But he pleaded that relying on outside groups was plainly insufficient and that the Bureau required additional funds to recruit new examiners to investigate so “that we can not only know what the candidates for citizenship are doing in the day time, but we can know