Table VII
Number of Declarations of Intention and Petitions for Naturalization Filed, and Certificates of Naturalization Issued by the Bureau of Naturalization, 1907–20{1}
| ——— | |||
| ——— | |||
| Year | Declarations | Petitions | Certificates |
| ——— | |||
| 1907{2} | 73,723 | 21,094 | 7,953 |
| 1908{3} | 137,229 | 44,029 | 25,963 |
| 1909 | 145,794 | 43,161 | 38,372 |
| 1910 | 167,226 | 55,038 | 39,206 |
| 1911 | 186,157 | 73,644 | 56,257 |
| 1912 | 169,142 | 95,627 | 69,965 |
| 1913 | 181,632 | 95,186 | 82,017 |
| 1914 | 214,016 | 123,855 | 105,439 |
| 1915 | 245,815 | 106,317 | 96,390 |
| 1916 | 207,935 | 108,009 | 93,911 |
| 1917 | 438,748 | 132,320 | 94,897 |
| 1918 | 335,069 | 110,416 | 151,449 |
| 1919 | 346,827 | 107,559 | 217,358 |
| 1920 | 200,106 | 166,925 | 125,711 |
| ——— | |||
| Total | 3,149,419 | 1,283,180 | 1,205,170 |
| ——— | |||
| ——— | |||
note 1: Annual Report of the Commissioner of Naturalization, 1919, p. 16.
note 2: Nine months only.
note 3: First full year of 12 months.
The annual reports of the Commissioner of Naturalization, like those of many other government bureaus, are written not so much to afford information to the public as to extol the work of the Bureau, pointing out the remarkable extent of the ground covered, the great number of letters written, and of cases handled by a force grievously and increasingly inadequate since the very beginning of the service, and so on. They are, however, most unsatisfactory as a source of sociological information; particularly barren are they of any hint of information regarding the various races whose representatives seek citizenship; their relative promptness in seeking and success in getting it; their respective standing as regards the various reasons for denial. They do show voluminously how many declarations and petitions are filed annually in each state and subdivision; increase or decrease in totals; how many clerks of courts are delinquent in sending in the government’s share of fees, and other more or less significant minutiæ of the routine work of the field and clerical force and the courts.
Vast Arrearages in Examinations
Moreover, for the past four or five years, the bulk of the Bureau’s reports has been increasingly augmented by large sections devoted entirely to its efforts in the field of education, and its relations, actual, attempted and imaginary, with the public-school authorities. The degree to which the Naturalization Bureau has neglected, perforce of circumstances, the study of the material under its nose is apparent in the fact that the Commissioner’s report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1919, says, in so many words, not only that it no longer is preserving in its files any records of general correspondence, but that it has altogether ceased any pretense of examining naturalization papers!
To illustrate the expedients to which the Bureau has been compelled to resort, in order to relieve the files section, it has adopted the practice of returning, with its replies thereto, letters of general inquiry not referring to some specific naturalization case already a part of the Bureau file, thereby leaving no record of such correspondence.
It has virtually ceased to make an examination of certificates of naturalization to insure the discovery and correction of errors, and it has abandoned a personal card-index of naturalized aliens, etc., not as a matter of choice but of compulsion.99
The magnitude of the arrearage thus naïvely accounted for, and the bulk of the potential information involved, may be seen in the fact that on July 1, 1919, according to the Commissioner’s own figures,100 there were unexamined in the Bureau at Washington more than one million (1,011,676) declarations of intention, 26,726 petitions for naturalization, and 721,742 certificates of naturalization. This was an increase in arrearage, for one year alone, of 382,963 (60 per cent) in declarations; of 73 per cent in petitions, and of nearly 25 per cent in certificates. At the very time when the excitement about vigilance in admitting new citizens was at its height, the Naturalization Bureau was diverting to other channels a vital energy which might have been devoted to that vigilance and to collating the elementary information already in its possession, for the benefit of lawmakers and others needing information in dealing intelligently with this subject.
Report of the Immigration Commission of 1907
In point of fact, the only substantial body of statistical information about the naturalization of the foreign-born voter which hitherto has been even ostensibly sufficient for the student as a basis for any racial comparisons, is that gathered by the United States Immigration Commission of 1907. That body, created by an Act of Congress approved February 7, 1907, of which Senator William P. Dillingham of Vermont was chairman, consisted of three Senators, three members of the House of Representatives, and three other persons appointed by the President of the United States, and was directed by the statute to “make full inquiries, examination, and investigation, by sub-committee or otherwise, into the subject of immigration,...” and to report such conclusions and recommendations as in its judgment might seem proper.
The information gathered by this Commission is very voluminous, and has been of great value to sociologists and others concerned with various aspects of the subject. Indeed, its report has come to be called “the bible of the immigration question.” Nearly all the modern writings on the subject have been based upon it in at least a general way, and their color taken largely from its conclusions and its point of view.
Legend of “The New Immigration”
To this report is attributable almost entirely the familiar conventional generalization that there is a marked distinction in what might be called quality of assimilability, between the immigration of former years and that of the three decades preceding the Great War; between the so-called “old immigration” and the “newer.” This distinction is drawn in the report and, in most of the writings of individuals, based upon it, between the group of races from northern and western Europe—the English-speaking races, the Scandinavians, Germans, Dutch, Belgians, French, and so on, and those from southern and eastern and southeastern Europe, Russia, Austria-Hungary, the Balkan States, Italy, Greece, Turkey-in-Europe, Asia Minor, etc.
This quality of assimilability was regarded by the Commission as inferable to a large extent from the degree to which the representatives of these racial groups concerning whom it got information of various kinds were naturalized or had exhibited interest in naturalization at least to the extent of declaring intention to become citizens. It was assumed in a general way that a racial group showing a high proportion of persons who had become citizens, or taken steps thereto, might fairly be regarded as more adaptable to American life, customs and ideals than one in which relatively few naturalized citizens were found. With this assumption as a starting point, it seemed reasonably obvious that inasmuch as the “older” race showed the higher percentage of naturalized persons, the inference of a difference in essential civic quality followed as a matter of course.
Inasmuch also as this inference coincided with the general public impression and prejudice to precisely the same effect, it occurred to nobody to dispute or seriously to question its validity. Anybody could tell you offhand that the Englishman, Frenchman, German or Swede was more available for citizenship and more easily assimilated than the Syrian, Croatian or Sicilian. It was a matter of common knowledge! And the Immigration Commission gave you the statistics—as if you needed any! For example, here is a table that shows the per cents naturalized for the “old” and “new” races who had been in the United States ten years or more. As is to be expected the “old” races show the highest per cents on both counts.
The Commission recognized a general “tendency on the part of wage-earners of foreign birth to acquire citizenship,” and that this tendency “increased according to length of residence in this country.” But it construed its statistics as showing that while “more than three-fourths of the Bohemians and Moravians, Danish, German, Irish, Norwegian, Scotch, Swedish, and Welsh races who had been in the United States ten years or longer had been fully naturalized,” there was a “lack of political or civic interest” (only 37.7 per cent) “on the part of the southern and eastern European wage-earners” with a similar residence of ten years or longer, and proceeded to assert that these did not possess that “tendency to acquire citizenship which increases according to length of residence in this country.” This assertion was supposed to be supported by the facts given in the above table regarding the races from southern and eastern Europe showing low percentages of individuals who had come to this country when twenty-one years of age or older, who had lived here ten years or over, and were naturalized.
The Commission regarded the table from which these facts were derived as highly significant in its implied indication of the “civic interest” exhibited and capable of being exhibited by the various racial groups.
Disparity in Numbers Among Racial Groups
It should be remarked at once that inferences from these figures and others presented by the Immigration Commission require considerable discount and discrimination by reason of the fact—to which Miss Grace Abbott already has called attention101—that
... the numbers in the different races from whom information was secured by the Commission varied so greatly as to make it impossible to accept these conclusions as indicating the assimilability of the various national groups. For example, according to the percentages the Armenians appear to be more eager to become citizens than the North Italians or the Poles; but the comparison was made on the basis of information from 171 Armenians, 4,069 North Italians, and 10,923 Poles.