Denaturalization, the Main Instrument of Federal Power

      Naturalization fraud was not a new phenomenon in nineteenth-century America, but it reached its peak in New York City in the November 3, 1868, election that placed Ulysses S. Grant in the presidency. In October 1868 alone, fifty-four thousand foreigners were naturalized in New York City by only two judges.¹ Grant ultimately lost the state by ten thousand votes to his opponent Democrat Horatio Seymour, a New York governor. A senatorial inquiry later showed that, in addition to New York, the Democrats won three other states—New Jersey, Georgia, and Louisiana—through fraud.²

      In response, the Republican leadership in Congress proposed to cede exclusive jurisdiction for naturalization to the federal courts. But just as had happened after the contested 1844 election,³ a congressional inquiry did not lead to any major change in the law. Instead, western Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the granting of exclusive authority over naturalization proceedings to the federal courts.⁴ At the time, naturalization was a tool for political machines to increase the number of loyal voters on the eve of local, state, and federal elections. For the naturalized themselves, naturalization provided access to jobs restricted to those possessing American citizenship. Furthermore, naturalization was a means for the clerks of local courts to generate revenue.⁵ Finally, naturalization fraud was not a priority for reformers, who wanted to cure and purify citizenship in all its dimensions and who had placed the elimination of patronage jobs in civil service and reform of the ballot higher on their agenda.⁶

      On April 1, 1890, the House of Representatives ordered a subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary to investigate the naturalization practices of American courts. In a March 1893 report, its chairman, Congressman William Oates of Alabama, described them as completely dysfunctional: “What a ridiculous farce! The making of citizens out of aliens, which should be a grave judicial proceeding in the exercise of a constitutional function, is left by the courts to its mere ministerial officers who can exercise no judicial power, but run the machine merely for the fees they can make out of it.”⁷

      A 1902 scandal in St. Louis, in which several politicians were indicted for violating naturalization laws, finally turned the wheels of naturalization reform.⁸ But it was not until March 1903, in reaction to the assassination of President William McKinley,⁹ that Congress passed a bill prohibiting the naturalization of those opposed to organized government and who advocated the killing of government officials. The bill also included a provision that required courts to record the affidavits of applicants for citizenship and their witnesses and to check “the truth of every material fact requisite for naturalization.”¹⁰ At that time, many judges eventually discovered the requirements of the law; they undertook efforts to implement them, but they did so with uneven results: “some of the certificates [contained] less than 200 words and others 4000, some [created] new forms, others [used] the old ones.”¹¹

      At around the same time that Congress launched legislative reform efforts, in April 1903, Joel Marx, special assistant to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, began an investigation into immigration fraud which had become endemic to New York, the epicenter of naturalization.¹² In a single two-year period, from April 1903 to May 1905, “through the efforts” of the U.S. attorney’s office, there were 791 arrests for naturalization fraud in New York, with 685 convictions. Of these, 418 arrests were based on either false testimony or an ineligible age of arrival in the United States while 89 others were for lacking the five years of residence required prior to naturalization.¹³

      Based on the first results of Marx’s efforts—as presented to a federal grand jury in New York¹⁴—President Theodore Roosevelt called on December 7, 1903, “for the immediate attention of the Congress.” Railing against current naturalization practices, he exclaimed: “Forgeries and perjuries of shameless and flagrant character have been perpetrated, not only in the dense centers of population, but throughout the country; and it established beyond doubt that very many so-called citizens of the United States have no title whatever to that right, and are asserting and enjoying the benefits of the same through the grossest frauds.”¹⁵

      One year later, President Roosevelt called for “a comprehensive revision of the naturalization laws” and for an inquiry into the subjects of citizenship, expatriation, and protection of Americans abroad, with a view towards mending the problems with appropriate legislation. Toward that end, Roosevelt suggested that naturalization authority be vested exclusively in certain courts that would require written naturalization applications and deliver regular reports to the Secretary of State. Under this plan, Congress would clarify the evidentiary standards that courts should apply. On March 1, 1905, Roosevelt appointed a commission to further investigate this proposal.¹⁶

      By the time Roosevelt began lobbying for naturalization legislation, many of the previous obstacles to reform had dissipated. Perhaps most important, the interest of party machines in minting new voters before elections had declined. The inauguration of the secret ballot in the majority of the states by 1892 had made the control of voters at the ballot box difficult and even inefficient.¹⁷ The political parties thus no longer resisted naturalization reform.

      Roosevelt’s new Presidential Commission on naturalization reform comprised three members: the chairman, Milton D. Purdy, from the Department of Justice; Gaillard Hunt, from the Department of State; and Richard K. Campbell, from the Department of Commerce and Labor. They were the foremost experts on naturalization in their respective departments. The Purdy Commission delivered its report on November 8, 1905. It would become the basis for the 1906 Naturalization Act, which, for the first time, created a mechanism for statutory denaturalization.¹⁸

      Before the 1906 Act, in order to be naturalized, an alien was required to have resided in the United States for five years and within the state where the naturalizing