Unnatural Naturalization
Christowe, Stoyan
126 THE COMMONWEAL June 4, 1930 UNNATURAL NATURALIZATION By STOYAN CHRISTOWE THE laws restricting immigration have sent to the naturalization courts many immigrants who never...
...A recognition of this fact is no crime and should not be a deterrent in conferring the desired citizenship...
...Every large American city has its little Italy, Poland, Balkania...
...Many young immigrants paying their way through college unknowingly pay their way through Americanization...
...Furthermore, selfish motives in themselves do not preclude sympathy with American institutions and admiration for them...
...And intention of permanent residence in the United States is one of the basic requirements of the naturalization law...
...A non-citizen resident can bring no relative as non-quota immigrants and himself can go abroad only for a year...
...At the United States consulate in Sofia there are registered 7,000 applicants for visas to America...
...Christowe advocates moderation and good sense, offering at the same time no little comment on the immigrant.—The Editors...
...If he is married and his wife is the subject of a foreign nation (prior to September, 1922, an immigrant's wife became an American citizen automatically with her husband's naturalization—since then she must procure her citizenship independently of her husband and until then, whether in this country or outside of it, she must remain the subject of a foreign power) That some aspects of naturalization continue to worry whole sections of public opinion is evident from such proposed legislation as the Blease bill, designed to promote the registration of aliens...
...he is not baptizing him into some sort of faith...
...If the judge believes that granting the alien his second paper makes of him an American he is mistaken...
...This is done on the assumption that if the candidate has no intention of bringing his wife and children to America he has no intention of residing permanently in it...
...And when from such surroundings a foreigner finally undertakes the eventful journey to the naturalization court he is doing a courageous thing and he is making his first stride toward the America that he has been missing...
...It seems, therefore, no longer necessary to have Americanization agencies and societies engaged in preparing aliens for citizenship and urging them to get their papers...
...The best Americans are made of those immigrants who come to our shores at an early age and who go through our public schools and colleges...
...I myself am a naturalized citizen...
...In the public school the immigrant youth is not only learning civics, history, geography, but playing, competing and fighting with native school-mates and thus subconsciously saturating himself with Americanism...
...Aside from the legal and educational requirements which it prescribes, it stipulates that the candidate for citizenship should be "attached to the principles of the constitution of the United States and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same...
...Americanizing the immigrant who arrives at an age beyond that of high school and college is very difficult...
...The only hope for him then, in view of the fact that his wife cannot come as a non-quota immigrant until he becomes a citizen, and he cannot become a citizen until he can convince the court that he intends to bring his wife to this country, is for him to wait until his wife can come as a quota immigrant...
...And here I might point out that nearly all the scholarships available in the colleges and universities are restricted to American citizens...
...He puts his paper in his inside coat pocket, conscious of its magic powers, takes his witnesses to lunch and deems himself qualified to appear as witness for any friend and recommend him for the same privileges...
...Secretary Davis admits that "there have been instances in which courts have refused to confer citizenship because applicants stated that they desired it in order to facilitate the coming of their wives and children...
...I have been for years, and I am convinced that the predominant motives in acquiring American allegiance are selfish ones...
...Denying him citizenship because it is obvious to the court that his motives are selfish seems to me an error...
...parents, they can be placed on the quota-preference list and their coming greatly facilitated...
...Of their own accord they now learn the answers to the questions that are usually propounded by the naturalization examiners, and ergo, the foreigner is no longer a foreigner...
...It is my belief that the greatest drawback to assimilation is the colonization of the foreigners in the United States...
...This seems all the more plausible when one reflects that of the quarter million immigrants who obtained naturalization rights during the last fiscal year more than one-half were Slavs and dusky southThe naturalization law itself has nothing to say on this point...
...Moreover, Americanism, like any nationalism, is an impalpable and elusive thing...
...Classifying one-third of this number as non-quota immigrants, such for instance as the wives June 4, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 127 and unmarried children under eighteen years of age of American citizens, there are enough to have established priority for at least fifty years to come...
...An alien who has the honesty to reveal to the court his chief motive for seeking American citizenship is worthier of it than the one who simulates some sort of sympathy with and attachment to American traditions and institutions...
...There is no reason for hiding the fact...
...Christowe discusses the motives which prompt a newcomer to betake himself speedily to the courts...
...The influence exerted by the American college is not given due appreciation by those interested in the assimilation of thir foreign-born brothers...
...We find little states within the states, cities within the cities, sometimes so power-, ful and so at odds with the prevalent spirit as to form an engaging social or political problem...
...In some instances this by no means disinterested haste has caused judges to doubt the fitness of given applicants...
...The funds expended in maintaining diverse and useless Americanization agencies could be used to better advantage if they were applied to scholarships for ambitious and worthy young men of foreign birth...
...126 THE COMMONWEAL June 4, 1930 UNNATURAL NATURALIZATION By STOYAN CHRISTOWE THE laws restricting immigration have sent to the naturalization courts many immigrants who never dreamed of becoming American citizens...
...He is deeply offended if his comrades make even a remote allusion to his foreign birth...
...This process goes on endlessly and the naturalization bureaus throughout the country are so overcrowded with work that where before one could file application for the second paper and within six months come into possession of it, he must now wait nearly six months to be called with his witnesses for the preliminary examination and then another six months to appear before the court that grants him his certificate of citizenship...
...The naturalized American, like the native, can leave the United States as many times as he wishes and return whenever he wishes without even knowing that there is such a thing as a quota...
...It will solve neither his own problem nor that of the United States with relation to him...
...Everything is foreign to them and they are foreign to everything in the country where they reside...
...It makes him an American citizen, to be sure, but making him an American is quite another matter...
...Life in the old country was intimate and social...
...The Secretary further comments that the motive is a commendable one but adds that it is "a he can bring her to the United States as a non-quota matter of regret when American citizenship is sought immigrant, as he can also his unmarried children under for that reason alone...
...An applicant's motive may be a selfish one and still he may be as attached to our institutions as another who is prompted solely by unselfish motives...
...eastern Europeans, aliens who have not been noted for their attachment to American principles, and nationals of countries whose quotas are small and whose only chances of bringing their relatives to this country are by becoming citizens...
...The Bulgarian quota for example is 100 for the year...
...Some states, for example, require foreigners holding real property in the state to become citizens within a specified number of years after acquiring title to the property...
...Some naturalization courts hold that if an immigrant's motive in becoming a citizen is merely to bring his wife and children here citizenship should be denied him...
...And if the petitioner waits not fifty but five years for his family to come here and then to become a citizen other complications will arise...
...In an effort to dispel any possible suspicion of foreign sympathies or attachments he is always ready to avow his Americanism more passionately than his American-born playmates, concerning whose loyalty and allegiance no such suspicion could be harbored...
...Should he desire to bring his eighteen years of age...
...It seems to me the court's chief duty is to inquire into the applicant's fitness for citizenship, his sanity, his moral qualifications, his readiness to assume the responsibility which citizenship imposes, and to ascertain whether he has fulfilled legal and educational requirements...
...Other judges flatly deny the petition for citizenship to any alien who has not already brought his wife to this country...
...I would not even venture to predict which one of the two would make the better citizen...
...But in view of the negligible quotas for some countries and of the preference given to parents and other relatives of American citizens this is an utterly bare hope...
...On the other hand there are naturalization courts which refuse citizenship to an alien who cannot show satisfactorily that he will bring his wife and children to this country...
...Had there been no advantages offered by American citizenship I doubt that I would have been anxious to become one...
...They drink Turkish coffee and Greek tea in their quaint, smelly coffee houses, satisfy their palates with spicy, old-country dishes and talk about the glories of their native lands, totally indifferent to the bustle and chatter of American enterprise that surrounds them...
...His motives, however selfish, cannot be dangerous to the American commonwealth...
...The judge is granting the alien the mere right to be an American citizen...
...If they ever speak about this country it is to deride it, to point out its lack of art, its backwardness in everything cultural, not forgetting to add with pomp and expansion of the chest that whatever art and culture there is here thrives upon exotic soil...
...That the whole trend is not an indication of a growing admiration for American institutions on the part of the would-be citizens but rather an eagerness to avail themselves of the privileges and advantages which citizenship confers has justly been suspected by naturalization authorities...
...Naturalization does not presuppose Americanization...
...here they are cast into immense whirlpools of humanity and find themselves lonely...
...In the colonies they quench their craving for social contact without rubbing shoulders with native Americans...
...Thus the applicant with a family in the old country finds himself in a dilemma...
...The immigrants in these colonies read newspapers in their own languages, go to their own churches, observe their own national holidays and oftentimes send their children to their own schools to be taught in their native tongues...
...The latter may come either before or after it...
...Denying citizenship rights to a petitioner who openly declares in court that his aim in seeking these rights is to expedite the coming of his family to America seems to me unjust...
...In the following paper another approach to the question is afforded...
...In either case, Americanization is a process which involves a remaking, a reshaping, a kind of mental and spiritual metamorphosis effected with no tricks of magic but with genuine suffering...
...Immigrants travel miles to come together and form homogeneous colonies...
Vol. 12 • June 1930 • No. 5
