this event, the Bureau contracted with state and local governments, schools, and organizations to provide them with civic education resources. By linking itself with a national citizenship education program, the Bureau was able to gain greater public legitimacy while also promoting its goals of standardizing and enforcing the uniform Federal naturalization application process. Congress backed the Bureau and increased its appropriation so that it could better fulfill its new patriotic tasks. And on May 9, 1918, Congress passed a bill giving the Commissioner of the Bureau of Naturalization his long-sought-after concurrent authority with U.S. attorneys to institute proceedings to cancel certificates of citizenship.13
The Bureau of Naturalization had triumphed. Twelve years after the passage of the 1906 Act, “by successive steps full authority commensurate with its responsibility has been conferred upon one administrative officer, under the supervision of one department, to supervise and administer the ‘uniform’ rule of naturalization authorized by our organic law, the Federal Constitution.”14 Back in 1905, the Purdy Commission had proposed to preserve the competence of the courts for naturalization, not because it was the best method for minting new citizens (“experience has shown that they are a very defective machinery for the purpose”),15 but because no preferable alternatives were available. Campbell’s ambition had been to build that missing institution, and he was succeeding.
In addition, since 1906, the courts had endorsed the denaturalization provisions of the 1906 Naturalization Act almost entirely without reservation. The courts cast aside challenges to the Act’s constitutionality that alleged that it operated as retroactive or ex post facto legislation and deprived defendants of their right to a trial by jury.16 In United States v. Mansour in 1908,17 for instance, a federal judge found that denaturalization cases were considered to lie in “equity” rather than to constitute civil or criminal legal proceedings. Therefore, they were not covered by the Constitution’s Sixth and Seventh Amendment guarantees of the availability of jury trials.18
Just four years later, the Supreme Court held, in Johannessen v. United States,19 that Congress could authorize the government to bring a separate suit attacking the validity of a naturalized American’s citizenship. Because naturalization proceedings were, before 1906, “ex parte”—involving only a judge and an individual seeking citizenship—no legal principles prevented the government from bringing an adversarial suit later in order to revoke the original judgment granting citizenship. The Johannessen Court also rejected the argument that the 1906 Naturalization Act was an unconstitutional ex post facto law, finding that the statute “makes nothing fraudulent or unlawful that was honest and lawful when it was done.” A certificate of citizenship, the Court found, should be considered an instrument conferring certain political privileges that could be revoked, like grants of public land, in situations where it was unlawfully or fraudulently obtained.
The Court confirmed the Johannessen ruling in the 1917 case United States v. Ness for naturalizations obtained after 1906.20 In Ness the Court decided that the presence of a U.S. attorney as a party to a naturalization proceeding (under Section 11 of the Naturalization Act) did not prevent the United States from initiating a separate denaturalization proceeding (under Section 15), when an individual’s citizenship was “illegally procured.”21 Justice Louis Brandeis, who delivered the opinion of the Court, asserted that “section 11 and section 15 were designated to afford cumulative protection against fraudulent or illegal naturalization.”22
In 1926, in Tutun v. United States, the Supreme Court finally decided that a naturalization proceeding in a federal court was a case within the meaning of the Constitution, the Judicial Code, and the act establishing the Court of Appeals.23 The Court ruled that the cancellation proceedings authorized by section 15 of the 1906 act were not a denial of the usual method of pursuing appeals in courts. In the matter of contesting naturalization, the United States was given another “cumulative remedy”:24 it could both appeal a naturalization decision and start a suit to attack the same decision for having been “illegally procured.” For the Naturalization Bureau, the separate denaturalization procedure still had some clear advantages: the right to appeal decided in Tutun by the Supreme Court did not concern naturalization by state courts,25 and there was no time limit for denaturalization proceedings.26
In addition, the Supreme Court had interpreted “illegally procured” based on the doctrine of jurisdictional fact.27 To be legally naturalized, an alien had to:
1. fulfill certain procedural requirements such as filing a certificate of arrival, a declaration of intention, or a petition for naturalization; or obtain the decree of naturalization in open court,
2. be “racially” eligible, either black or white;
3. be able to speak English;
4. have established permanent residence in the United States for five years and have waited two years between the day of the declaration of intention and of the application for naturalization;
5. be of “good moral character”;
6. be attached to the “principles of the Constitution” and to organized government in general;
7. take an oath of allegiance to the United States.28
Any decree of naturalization that had not been obtained in full compliance with the letter of the law could be revoked. Under the pressure of an increasingly burdensome number of tasks, courts seemed increasingly agreeable to transfer their power to treat the first stage of the naturalization application. In 1909, naturalization examiners began using a creative interpretation of the 1906 Act as authority to conduct interviews with applicants for citizenship before they appeared in court.29 When a large number of petitions for naturalization began being filed each year, one federal district court decided to formally require that citizenship candidates and witnesses meet with a naturalization examiner in advance of appearing before the clerk of court.30 In other jurisdictions, however, pre-court interviews were used without this formal recognition.31
By 1914, the Division of Naturalization could claim that 50,000 of the 123,000 applicants for citizenship sat through a preexamination interview conducted by a naturalization examiner. It was easier for citizenship applicants to appear before examiners because the Bureau’s district headquarters were located in many of the United States’ largest cities and in close proximity to the courts (sometimes even in the same building). This system saved the clerks time and permitted the examiners to review the greatest number of cases, “all at a far less expense and embarrassment to the applicants for citizenship.”32 The eleven chief examiners running the country’s eleven naturalization districts performed the work, assisted by forty-eight assistant examiners and fourteen clerks.33
In addition, the outbreak of World War I and America’s eventual military involvement drove the creation of a special new procedure permitting aliens who volunteered for the armed forces to be naturalized rapidly without meeting many requirements of the 1906 Act—including the normally required delay of ninety days. Under the wartime measure passed on May 9, 1918, before filing a naturalization petition, aliens who enlisted in the armed forces of the United States could pass a preliminary examination and appear with two witnesses before a representative of the Bureau of Naturalization. In order to operate the new system, which made official the centrality of the Bureau’s role in the naturalization process, new examiners were recruited and trained by more experienced naturalization officers. By the end of June 1918, 63,993 foreigners serving in the military were naturalized.34 One year later, on June 30, 1919, the total number had reached 128,33535 and rose still further to 244,300 by the end of 1920.36 At the same time, the Bureau’s force of examiners increased, and its appropriations doubled from $305,000 in 1918 to $675,000 in 1919.37 The Bureau of Naturalization was able
