(Excerpt from SATURDAY EVENING POST/Kenneth L. Roberts)
February 18, 1922
Until the year 1906 the United States kept no records of any sort concerning aliens who had been granted the honor of citizenship in this country. Nobody knew who was being let in; nobody knew how many were being let in; nobody knew what races were being admitted; nobody knew how they were being admitted. In October of every year the ward politicians in the large cities rounded up the aliens in their wards, penned them up, fed them whisky to keep them reasonably contented, had them made American citizens in wholesale mobs, and then ran them into the voting booths under orders to vote the straight Democratic or Republican ticket.
Old-Fashioned Naturalization Methods
THIS is explained briefly but in more detail in the case of U. S. vs. Janke et al., which can be found in the Federal Reporter in any law library. The judge in this case stated that in the congressional investigations in 1906 it was shown that extensive frauds were committed under the existing laws. In cases arising at St. Louis it appeared that corrupt politicians, in order to forward their corrupt purposes, had gathered together mobs of foreigners and brought them to the courthouse, grouped according to their nationality, Huns, Italians and Armenians. They were collected in the corridors of the courthouse, each band was placed under the leadership of a policeman, and they were then marched in blocks before the judges of one of the high courts of the city and under formal ceremony admitted to citizenship in block.
How We Make 350,000 New Citizens a Year
FROM the first of January, 1907, when the first faint stirrings of common sense led the Government to start keeping tabs on naturalized aliens in a crude, ineffectual manner, up to June 30, 1921, over 2,400,000 aliens became citizens through naturalization processes, and another 260,000 became citizens through serving in the Army or Navy of the United States. At the present time we are admitting aliens to citizenship at the rate of 350,000 a year.These figures will be questioned, as they do not show in the reports of the Commissioner of Naturalization except by computation. They are arrived at in the following manner: In the fiscal years 1918, 1919, 1920 and 1921 there were 727,782 naturalization certificates issued. The Commissioner of Naturalization, however, reports that each person naturalized confers citizenship on 1.125 persons other than himself—wife and minor children born abroad. To get at the average yearly number of actual naturalizations, therefore, one must double the figures for the last four years and divide by four.
This operation, when carried to a successful conclusion, shows that we are admitting aliens to citizenship at the rate of 363,891 a year—or, in round numbers, three hundred and fifty thousand; or a hundred thousand more than a quarter million; or about the total population of Hoboken, N. J., Allentown, Pa., Sioux City, Ia., El Paso, Tex., and San Diego, Calif.And here is the stimulating, elevating, nourishing part of the whole affair: An extremely conservative estimate made by a Department of Labor official who is keenly interested in and sympathetic with Americanization work, more than75 per cent of the aliens naturalized between January 1, 1907, and June 30, 1921—practically 2,000,000 of these citizens of unknown origin and alien outlook—possessed the mental development of children in the fourth grade of the grammar school or worse.
Practically 2,000,000 of these citizens who were poured into our cities in fourteen short years to help elect our officials and to have a hand in the making of our laws and to uphold the ideals of Washington and Lincoln and to perpetuate the Anglo-Saxon race which made America, had no idea whatever of the meaning of citizenship in the United States of America. Practically 2,000,000 of them didn’t know what they were getting. Practically 2,000,000 of them were not fit in any way to become American citizens.
Boneheaded immigration rulings
Jason Remington • May 6, 2026
The naturalization law of 1906 was supposed to do away with the evil of wholesale naturalization which had existed prior to that time. To quote again from the learned judge in the case of U. S. vs. Janke et al., District Court, No. Dakota, Oct. 20, 1910: “The law requires that each applicant and his witnesses shall be separately and individually examined under oath like a witness in the trial of a case. Such an examination, if properly carried out, cannot fail to disclose whether or not the applicant is in fact and in truth entitled to citizenship. There can be no longer admission of foreigners to citizenship in the United States in blocks. . . . I am aware that the administration of this law imposes a heavy burden upon courts; but it may be doubted whether courts can devote their time to any higher service than the protection of the roll of the citizenship of the republic.” Unfortunately, the learned judge had failed, as the saying goes, to call the turn. He lived away out in North Dakota, which is a state not immediately affected by boneheaded immigration laws and careless steamship companies which allow Ellis Island to be jammed with undesirable immigrants. (SATURDAY EVENING POST)
James Madison on Immigration
Jason Remington • May 6, 2026
James Madison, of Virginia, later President of the United States, declared himself as follows: “It is no doubt very desirable that we should hold out as many inducements as possible for the worthy part of mankind to come and settle amongst us, and throw their fortunes into a common lot with ours. But why is this desirable? Not merely to swell the catalogue of people. No, sir, it is to increase the wealth and strength of the community; and those who acquire the rights of citizenship without adding to the strength or wealth of the community are not the people we are in want of.”
If Mr. James Madison could have foreseen that in another one hundred and thirty years the United States would be giving citizenship on a yearly average to 350,000 aliens, a large number of whom are children in mental development, totally unaware of what they are getting and not fit in any way to become American citizens, it is quite within the bounds of possibility that Mr. Madison’s rage and disgust at the depths of this folly would have caused him to burst a blood vessel then and there. (SATURDAY EVENING POST)