A Quiet Victory for Latino Rights: FDR and the Controversy Over "Whiteness"

7. Efforts to Thwart the Andrade Decision Using the Traditional Approach

125 7 Efforts to Thwart the AndradeDecision Using the Traditional Approach when the ANDRADE case came before the state department, Richard Wilson Flournoy Jr. was an obvious choice to assign to the issue. He was an acknowledged expert on nationality and citizenship , having written several legal articles on the topic.1 Flournoy had been a US delegate to the Conference on Codification of International Law at The Hague in 1930, where he wrote one of the protocols related to dual nationality and military obligations. He was also a professor of international law at National University in Washington, DC.2 Flournoy would be a key figure in the State Department ’s efforts to counter Judge Knight’s ruling. Word of Knight’s decision traveled fast. The story hit the Associated Press (AP) newswire that night, and the morning editions of the New York Times and the Buffalo Courier-Express, among others, carried the story on December 12.3 Mexican newspapers also carried articles detailing the incident, including a copy of the AP story in Mexico City’s Excelsior. Initial Reactions Although Knight’s decision was immediately publicized, State Department officials in Washington were slow to react. On Decem- 126 a quiet victory for latino rights ber 12, American consul Alexander Sloan translated the Excelsior article and sent a copy to Washington from Mexico City, but it did not reach the State Department until December 19.4 It was not until December 13, two days after the ruling, that J. F. Simmons of the Visa Division summarized the New York Times article for Secretary of State Cordell Hull. He also reported that he had made preliminary inquiries with the deputy commissioner of immigration and naturalization.5 Simmons did not make this report to Secretary Hull, however, until he received confirmation from the commissioner’s office that Andrade had indeed been denied citizenship . Seeing the situation from his vantage point in the Visa Division, Simmons was primarily concerned about whether his department would continue to issue visas to those seeking to enter the United States from Mexico. He did not seem to anticipate a foreign relations incident. Mexican officials reacted much more swiftly. The honorary Mexican consul in Buffalo, Leon Lancaster, copied the article from the Buffalo Courier-Express to the consul general in New York City, Enrique Elizondo.6 However, Elizondo already knew of the decision through the New York Times article. Like Lancaster, he had copied that article to his superiors at the Mexican Embassy in Washington , DC, as well as to the Secretario de Relaciones Exteriores (SRE) in Mexico City. Unlike Simmons, Elizondo did see the international relevance of this decision. He knew that this was only the beginning of a significant situation. In his first communiqué he stated, “I communicate this to you so that our government can consider its next steps, since, in accordance with American laws, only people eligible for naturalization may be admitted as immigrants to the United States. If they refuse Mexicans the right of American citizenship, then they also exclude practically our total population the right to immigrate to this country.”7 The Mexican ambassador, Francisco Castillo Nájera, quickly brought the matter to the attention of his superiors in Mexico City. First, he spoke by telephone directly to secretary of foreign relations , Eduardo Hay, on the thirteenth. In this conversation, he requested and received permission to allow the consul general in New York to hire attorneys and to initiate an appeal before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals (Second Judicial Circuit) and, if necessary, Efforts to Thwart the Andrade Decision 127 to the US Supreme Court. Second, Castillo Nájera received permission from Mexico City to release the following to the American press: A press dispatch published yesterday in New York announces that a Federal Court in the State of New York denied the petition of three Mexicans for citizenship because they have a strain of Indian blood. The same reliable dispatch adds that the opinion would make Indian blooded Mexicans ineligible for admission to the United States as immigrants. The Mexican Government has instructed its Consul General in New York [to] protest against the spirit of said decision and to officially appeal against it.8 In his report summarizing the telephone conversation, Castillo Nájera wrote to the secretary, “My original idea certainly was to protest [to the US State Department], but I know that they would tell me to...