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Chapter 3 The Victory of the Federalization of Naturalization, 1926–1940 Nonetheless, in the period between the 1926 amendments to the Naturalization Act and the outbreak of World War II, denaturalization was at its peak. The number of revocations of citizenship averaged about a thousand a year between 1935 and 1941, reflecting three historical phenomena. First, the Bureau of Naturalization continued to be vigilant in ensuring that state courts respected the requirements of federal naturalization laws. Thomas Ellis Isaac, for instance, was naturalized on March 18, 1926, at the Court of Common Pleas for Clarendon County, South Carolina. But the Court of Common Pleas had not been authorized to conduct naturalizations since 1911. As a result, Isaac’s certificate was annulled in 1927 for having been illegally procured.1 The Bureau eventually discovered that the Clarendon court had illegally naturalized six other people as well and decided to pursue the denaturalization of all of them.2 Just as often, however, after the Bureau targeted the courts themselves, it endeavored to protect the interests of the denaturalized. Edla Lund, a Swedish widow and music teacher born in Stockholm in 1867, arrived in the United States at the age of twenty. She had been naturalized on December 5, 1932, not using the appropriate forms. Her naturalization was cancelled on April 9, 1934, but, characteristically, the district director of naturalization was asked to assist Lund in regaining American citizenship. Others were advised to reapply for naturalization after their certificates were cancelled.3 Second, a general toughening in immigration law combined with some liberal provisions aimed at naturalizing World War I foreign combatants and seamen, encouraged fraud. Before 1921, an immigrant entering and residing in the United States illegally, who was also interested in becoming a naturalized Victory of Federalization 45 citizen could follow an easy procedure. He could cross into Mexico or Canada and have his subsequent reentry into the United States officially recorded.4 This would serve as a record of legal entry into the country and would begin the official countdown toward citizenship. After the Immigration Restriction Act was passed on May 19, 1921, however , immigrants to the United States had to be admitted within a national quota, with the exception of immigrants from nations in the Western Hemisphere . This meant that many immigrants could no longer “reset” the record of their arrival through a quick jaunt south of the border. Moreover, many immigrants who had arrived before 1921 could not prove their entry date— some arrived before records of arrival were kept at all ports of entry, while in other cases entry records were lost or destroyed.5 With legal methods for circumventing America’s entry requirements no longer available, some individuals seeking American citizenship used the assistance of dishonest immigration bureaucrats to modify boat records from years past. The new system reinforced the Bureau of Naturalization’s control of the naturalization process. On August 1, 1924, the Bureau requested that the clerks of naturalization courts throughout the United States forward the declarations of intention of applicants for citizenship who had arrived in the United States after June 2, 1921. The Bureau also asked clerks to defer filing these applications with the courts until proof had been furnished that the applicants’ entry into the United States was by a permanent admission: “Large numbers of aliens who had entered the country illegally or who were unlawfully remaining in the United States after having entered the country for temporary periods of residence only were attempting to make declarations of intention.”6 Under the plan adopted by the Bureau, applications from aliens arriving after June 30, 1924, were compared with the immigration visas in the Bureau’s custody in order to defeat “attempts to become citizens by those who entered the United States in defiance of the provisions of the quota and visa restrictions of the immigration law.”7 Illegal naturalization also involved individuals who feigned inclusion in two categories of foreigners whose naturalization had been statutorily facilitated since World War I. On May 9, 1918, Congress had passed an act providing for the immediate naturalization of alien soldiers in the U.S. military, permitting them to become citizens without the typically required certificate of arrival. The same act provided that any alien who had been a member of the armed forces for three or more years could file a petition for naturalization without proof that they had met the five-year residency requirement, 46 The Federalization of Naturalization and that any applicant...

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