The Sovereign Citizen. Patrick Weil
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involving the complicity of a naturalization examiner in the issuing of fraudulent naturalization certificates.68 Ultimately, cases that resulted in twenty-seven denaturalizations and five criminal prosecutions were handled by the Department of Justice. The district director of naturalization who had manifested a “lack of interest” in ordering an investigation, was eventually replaced, but not before he attempted to implicate the commissioner of naturalization in the charges of corruption.69
As a result, between 1922 and 1926, a compromise was negotiated regarding the management of naturalization and denaturalization procedures between the Justice, Labor, and State Departments, the Supreme Court, and finally Congress. The Bureau of Naturalization agreed to accept the Department of Justice’s resumption of its leadership in denaturalization proceedings: denaturalization cases would be handled exclusively by U.S. attorneys. The decision to institute cancellation proceedings would be approved centrally by the Department of Justice before being dispatched to the appropriate U.S. attorney’s office.70 The Department of Justice, in turn, backed the Bureau of Naturalization in its effort to attract into its sphere of competence naturalization responsibilities that had formerly been performed by the courts.
At the request of several judges, and with the strong backing of Supreme Court Chief Justice and former president William Howard Taft, Congress decided to intervene.71 At a series of hearings entitled “Relief of Judges in Naturalization Cases,” Taft pleaded for changes to be made to the naturalization process in order to relieve the federal judiciary of overly burdensome tasks and to preserve the judges from an atmosphere that threatened to soil their dignity. He quoted the complaints of Judge Augustus Hand, a renowned federal trial court judge from the Southern District of New York: “The whole courthouse is swamped with 1,800 persons a week who hang around for the purpose of being naturalized. That is not a good environment for the court. It makes the going to court very burdensome to the litigants who have to be there.” Taft advocated in favor of a new naturalization process “by which these applicants can be disposed of somewhere away from the court, and the intervention of the judges to be limited to a mere office examination of the work of some subordinate . . .who is more familiar . . .with the details of the facts, and relieve our court atmosphere of this great burden.”72
In response, on June 8, 1926, Congress passed amendments to the naturalization laws authorizing federal courts to designate one or more officers of the Bureau of Naturalization to conduct preliminary hearings on petitions for naturalization and to make findings and recommendations to the courts.73 If the examiner found the testimony of the witnesses satisfactory, he was given authority to exempt them from attending a final judicial hearing. Under this procedure, the petitioner was only required to appear before the court to take the oath of allegiance, “thus relieving the court of a large amount of work.”74
The 1926 Act was of great satisfaction to the interested parties. It benefited the Bureau of Naturalization, which was now permitted to hire additional examiners and to involve itself more directly with naturalization cases handled by federal courts.75 At the same time, the federal district courts were freed from a tedious and demanding task, even while they preserved their right under the law to exercise final authority in naturalization cases.76
In considering the original bill, Congress also debated extending the new procedures to the various state courts. Democratic Congressman Adolph Sabath, for instance, advocated strongly for placing the state courts on an equal footing with the federal courts—this would have helped to preserve the economic windfall and the influence conferred by the naturalization business on many state courts. But, in the end, only the federal courts were permitted to partake in the benefits of the new system.77
The passage of 1926 amendments to the Naturalization Act was a key moment in the history of the naturalization authority in the United States. Its impact was immediately measurable. Within six years, 90 percent of the federal judiciary availed itself of the new procedures permitted under the 1926 Act.78 In those areas where state courts were still permitted to confer citizenship, the less demanding procedures available to those applying for citizenship in federal courts—requiring only appearance of witnesses and one examination for applicants, in most cases—provoked a decided shift in favor of increasing the proportion of federal court naturalizations.79 At the same time, the allowances to clerks at state courts, already reduced more than 50 percent in 1924, faced further reductions every year between 1927 and 1930. Thereafter, many of the states’ courts surrendered naturalization jurisdiction altogether. In 1926, state courts still conducted the majority of civilian naturalizations, 79,515 of 146,239 or 54 percent. Five years later, they conducted only 34 percent (48,256 of 140,271).80 Slowly but surely, the naturalization process was becoming federalized.
CHAPTER 3
The Victory of the Federalization of Naturalization, 1926–1940
Nonetheless, in the period between the 1926 amendments to the Naturalization Act and the outbreak of World War II, denaturalization was at its peak. The number of revocations of citizenship averaged about a thousand a year between 1935 and 1941, reflecting three historical phenomena.
First, the Bureau of Naturalization continued to be vigilant in ensuring that state courts respected the requirements of federal naturalization laws. Thomas Ellis Isaac, for instance, was naturalized on March 18, 1926, at the Court of Common Pleas for Clarendon County, South Carolina. But the Court of Common Pleas had not been authorized to conduct naturalizations since 1911. As a result, Isaac’s certificate was annulled in 1927 for having been illegally procured.1 The Bureau eventually discovered that the Clarendon court had illegally naturalized six other people as well and decided to pursue the denaturalization of all of them.2
Just as often, however, after the Bureau targeted the courts themselves, it endeavored to protect the interests of the denaturalized. Edla Lund, a Swedish widow and music teacher born in Stockholm in 1867, arrived in the United States at the age of twenty. She had been naturalized on December 5, 1932, not using the appropriate forms. Her naturalization was cancelled on April 9, 1934, but, characteristically, the district director of naturalization was asked to assist Lund in regaining American citizenship. Others were advised to reapply for naturalization after their certificates were cancelled.3
Second, a general toughening in immigration law combined with some liberal provisions aimed at naturalizing World War I foreign combatants and seamen, encouraged fraud. Before 1921, an immigrant entering and residing in the United States illegally, who was also interested in becoming a naturalized citizen could follow an easy procedure. He could cross into Mexico or Canada and have his subsequent reentry into the United States officially recorded.4 This would serve as a record of legal entry into the country and would begin the official countdown toward citizenship.
After the Immigration Restriction Act was passed on May 19, 1921, however, immigrants to the United States had to be admitted within a national quota, with the exception of immigrants from nations in the Western Hemisphere. This meant that many immigrants could no longer “reset” the record of their arrival through a quick jaunt south of the border. Moreover, many immigrants who had arrived before 1921 could not prove their entry date—some arrived before records of arrival were kept at all ports of entry, while in other cases entry records were lost or destroyed.5 With legal methods for circumventing America’s entry requirements no longer available, some individuals seeking American citizenship used the assistance of dishonest immigration bureaucrats to modify boat records from years past.
The new system reinforced the Bureau of Naturalization’s control of the naturalization process. On August 1, 1924, the Bureau requested that the clerks of naturalization courts throughout the United States forward the declarations of intention of applicants for citizenship who had arrived in the United States after June 2, 1921. The Bureau also asked clerks to defer filing these applications with the courts until proof had been furnished that the applicants’ entry into the United States was by a permanent admission: “Large numbers of aliens who had entered the country illegally or who were unlawfully remaining