process altogether.43
In addition, the new naturalization process was cumbersome, with numerous actors tasked with participating across four distinct stages. First, a naturalization application had to be filed with a competent court, most often in a clerk’s office. Second, in the three months following the application, the court or the federal government could investigate the facts alleged by the applicant and the applicant’s two witnesses. Third, the naturalization hearing would then take place in open court, and the government could intervene if it felt it necessary. Fourth, at any time after the successful completion of the naturalization process, a U.S. attorney could institute proceedings for the cancellation of the naturalization on the grounds of fraud or illegality.
The new scheme did not clearly delineate the authority and responsibilities of the various interested parties and opened the ground for conflicts between the courts—federal and state—and between the Division of Naturalization and the Department of Justice. For example, the new law permitted the executive to intervene at stages 2, 3 and 4 of the naturalization process. But if the law was clear in assigning to the U.S. attorneys the tasks of instituting cancellation procedures, no mention was made of which department was in charge of intervening in open court at the naturalization proceeding itself, and, prior to it, in the examination of the application.
Figure 1. U.S. Naturalization Process, 1906–1926
At first, in 1906 and 1907, the Department of Justice was able to represent the executive branch’s interests in the naturalization process because, as noted earlier, the number of naturalization proceedings was very low in the first year after the passage of the Naturalization Act. Moreover, in order to support its new responsibilities, the Department of Justice received an appropriation of $100,000.44 With this new funding source, a number of assistant U.S. attorneys were appointed to work at headquarters in large cities around the country.45 Additionally, in order to relieve these assistant attorneys of the eventual enormous volume of naturalization-related issues, Alford W. Cooley, assistant attorney general, recruited a “considerable number of examiners”—forty to fifty—who were dispatched to the same principal cities as the new attorneys.46 These examiners were authorized to initiate the preliminary naturalization examination, check applications, correct minor errors, turn away individuals who were clearly unable to meet the requirements of the new law, and transmit contested cases to assistant U.S. attorneys.47
Campbell, the primary architect of the Department of Commerce and Labor’s naturalization machinery, viewed with disfavor the development of a new administration within the Department of Justice, under the supervision of Cooley. But in 1907 Campbell’s small new division did not possess sufficient resources to fulfill his goal of managing a uniform and centralized naturalization process without additional help. Soon after the Naturalization Act’s passage, Congress had rebuffed Campbell’s request to form a new team of examiners, choosing to allocate to the Department of Justice responsibility for naturalization attorneys and examiners.48
With the drafting of a uniform application form, responsibility for overseeing denaturalization proceedings was the only real power given to Campbell’s Division of Naturalization. It was not much. But creative use of denaturalization authority would gradually but radically reinforce the new Division’s central role in transforming American citizenship.
As described above, under Section 15 of the new law, U.S. attorneys were obligated to institute proceedings for the cancellation of naturalization certificates upon affidavit showing that a certificate had at any time been illegally or fraudulently procured. Once informed of an instance of illegality or fraud, they could not refuse to act.
In the years just following the passage of 1906 Act, evidence supporting denaturalization typically originated from a few common sources. Interestingly, the majority of denaturalization cases arose when witnesses for new citizens were required to produce their own certificates of naturalization. While ascertaining the competence of these witnesses, examiners and judges would often uncover fraud or illegality in a witness’s naturalization proceeding. Confronted with contradictory information and documents relating to a witness’s declaration of intention or date of arrival in the United States, it might become clear that a witness’s citizenship had been illegally procured.49
The Civil Service Commission was another source of denaturalization proceedings due to legal requirements restricting classified civil service positions to American citizens. The Commission required that foreign-born applicants for these positions submit their naturalization certificates, which it would then check.50 Counterfeit certificates were promptly reported. Similarly, denaturalization cases would even arise when the certificates of naturalized persons applying for licenses to serve as officers of steam vessels, a position reserved for citizens of the United States, were investigated. Of the 415 applicants in 1908 for such positions, 59 became the subjects of cancellation proceedings.51 A number of denaturalization cases were also passed along from the State Department,52 which sometimes discovered illegality or fraud when naturalized citizens submitted passport requests.
One year after it was established by the 1906 Act, the new naturalization system was in crisis. U.S. attorneys were overwhelmed by their responsibility for intervening in open court—the third stage of the naturalization process. But the investment of time and resources in naturalization cases paled in comparison to what was required in denaturalization cases.53 This put a significant strain on the system, because the number of denaturalization cases increased dramatically during the earlier years of the new regime: from 86 in 1907 to 457 in 1908 (see Appendix 3).
Officially, the increase in denaturalization cases was not caused by “the result of a search by government officials for violations of law.” The Division of Naturalization would declare in its 1907 Annual Report, “They were all developed as an incident of administrative work either in this or in some other department or branch of the Government.”54 In truth, however, the Division of Naturalization played a proactive role in encouraging the different agencies to convey information regarding naturalization fraud to U.S. attorneys’ offices. The division was eager to have assistant U.S. attorneys mobilized across the country working on denaturalization proceedings, and it asked them to gather and report information about any naturalization cancellations that occurred within their districts.55
Figure 2. Petition for Naturalization, Form 2204, in use from 1913 to June 30, 1929.
The Department of Justice was crushed under the weight of these obligations. The required tasks were so arduous and numerous for the U.S. attorneys that “in many naturalization petition hearings, it was impossible for the Government to appear, so the applicants received their citizenship without objection.” Despite a surge in the number of applicants for citizenship, Congress appropriated only $150,000 to the Department of Justice for the supervision of naturalization, compared to an estimated need of $325,000 for the 1909 fiscal year. From the perspective of the Department of Justice, this was unfortunate: it thought applicants were best served by having their cases thoroughly investigated prior to their admission to citizenship. Doing so would avoid the need for unpleasant proceedings later to revoke citizenship.56
The Division of Naturalization took advantage of the situation. As early as 1908,57 it pointed to the Department of Justice’s struggles as proof that it should be permitted to recruit field examiners to work on the naturalization proceedings. Eventually, Campbell was successful in convincing Congress to sign off on this plan.
The good news for Campbell and the Division of Naturalization was that Theodore Roosevelt’s Attorney General, Charles Bonaparte, had no desire to retain control over the naturalization examiners.58 In fact, Bonaparte stated in the 1907 Annual Report of the Department of Justice that, in his view, “the naturalization examiners should be transferred to the Department of Commerce