should be continued and you should not return to that policy abandoned by your Department a year ago.”60
In 1925 four different sets of naturalization procedures were being used in parallel. In larger cities, the Bureau of Naturalization concluded agreements directly with the courts to have applicants meet with a naturalization examiner immediately before (1) or after (2) registering with the clerk of court. Outside of the cities, state courts staff were subsidized by the federal government to perform the task of filing and checking applications in place of the naturalization examiners (3). Finally, applicants and witnesses were investigated through the postal system (4).
The naturalization examiners needed to be well trained to deal with the complexities of the system: they were required to possess a law degree or to pass, under the supervision of the Civil Service Commission, an examination on the relevant laws.61 They also needed a background in typewriting and stenography, as they had clerical as well as legal responsibilities.62 Despite their expertise, the examiners were often overwhelmed by their various tasks. They worked “overtime constantly,” often on weekends and during vacations.63
For the Bureau of Naturalization, the lack of standardized naturalization practices and the impossibility of appealing judicial decisions conferring citizenship made denaturalization the last chance for creating and maintaining the “uniformity of rule” that Campbell had originally envisioned. A single procedure is “of the utmost practical importance in maintaining the uniformity of the rule of naturalization required by the Constitution,” Campbell noted, “It stops other courts of original jurisdiction from applying a contrary view of law and authoritatively advises the public, the administrative officers and the courts as to what the law is, for their information and guidance, thus making the rule of naturalization uniform in operation, as intended.”64
Yet if, in the early years following the 1918 Act, many more denaturalization cases were directly managed by the Bureau of Naturalization than funneled through the U.S. attorneys, by the middle of the next decade, the situation was reversed. In 1919 the U.S. attorneys received 13 cases, while 135 were handled by the commissioner of naturalization; and in 1921 U.S. attorneys managed 11, and the commissioner of naturalization 65. But in 1923, 640 cases were referred to the U.S. attorneys while only 96 were handled by the Bureau of Naturalization.65
Campbell had fought hard to secure authority to institute denaturalization proceedings, but five years after having obtained it in 1918, he was forced to abandon it. There were several reasons for Campbell’s reversal. First, U.S. attorneys and naturalization examiners weren’t accustomed to working within the new framework. For example, it took more than three years for the Bureau of Naturalization to obtain a decision in the case of Georges Dumas, a native of Canada, naturalized in 1900, who had returned to live permanently in Canada in 1901. In April 1919, a petition to cancel his certificate was filed in the name of the commissioner of naturalization by a naturalization examiner.The case had been originally referred by the Minneapolis U.S. attorney’s office, but the judge refused to receive the petition for denaturalization on the grounds that, apart from the U.S attorney, only the commissioner of naturalization or his deputy possessed concurrent authority in the matter of cancellation. After multiple exchanges of letters, Campbell refiled the petition himself and obtained a court decision on November 13, 1922.66 These troubles were not isolated to the Dumas case. As a result, on February 28, 1923, the solicitor of the Department of Labor reminded naturalization examiners that cases for denaturalization should be submitted first to the Commissioner for him to decide to institute proceedings for cancellation, or to refer the case to the appropriate U.S. attorney.67
Second, the absence of any separation of powers between the handling of naturalization and denaturalization cases encouraged fraud. In San Francisco, for instance, a scandal exploded involving the complicity of a naturalization examiner in the issuing of fraudulent naturalization certificates.68 Ultimately, cases that resulted in twenty-seven denaturalizations and five criminal prosecutions were handled by the Department of Justice. The district director of naturalization who had manifested a “lack of interest” in ordering an investigation, was eventually replaced, but not before he attempted to implicate the commissioner of naturalization in the charges of corruption.69
As a result, between 1922 and 1926, a compromise was negotiated regarding the management of naturalization and denaturalization procedures between the Justice, Labor, and State Departments, the Supreme Court, and finally Congress. The Bureau of Naturalization agreed to accept the Department of Justice’s resumption of its leadership in denaturalization proceedings: denaturalization cases would be handled exclusively by U.S. attorneys. The decision to institute cancellation proceedings would be approved centrally by the Department of Justice before being dispatched to the appropriate U.S. attorney’s office.70 The Department of Justice, in turn, backed the Bureau of Naturalization in its effort to attract into its sphere of competence naturalization responsibilities that had formerly been performed by the courts.
At the request of several judges, and with the strong backing of Supreme Court Chief Justice and former president William Howard Taft, Congress decided to intervene.71 At a series of hearings entitled “Relief of Judges in Naturalization Cases,” Taft pleaded for changes to be made to the naturalization process in order to relieve the federal judiciary of overly burdensome tasks and to preserve the judges from an atmosphere that threatened to soil their dignity. He quoted the complaints of Judge Augustus Hand, a renowned federal trial court judge from the Southern District of New York: “The whole courthouse is swamped with 1,800 persons a week who hang around for the purpose of being naturalized. That is not a good environment for the court. It makes the going to court very burdensome to the litigants who have to be there.” Taft advocated in favor of a new naturalization process “by which these applicants can be disposed of somewhere away from the court, and the intervention of the judges to be limited to a mere office examination of the work of some subordinate . . .who is more familiar . . .with the details of the facts, and relieve our court atmosphere of this great burden.”72
In response, on June 8, 1926, Congress passed amendments to the naturalization laws authorizing federal courts to designate one or more officers of the Bureau of Naturalization to conduct preliminary hearings on petitions for naturalization and to make findings and recommendations to the courts.73 If the examiner found the testimony of the witnesses satisfactory, he was given authority to exempt them from attending a final judicial hearing. Under this procedure, the petitioner was only required to appear before the court to take the oath of allegiance, “thus relieving the court of a large amount of work.”74
The 1926 Act was of great satisfaction to the interested parties. It benefited the Bureau of Naturalization, which was now permitted to hire additional examiners and to involve itself more directly with naturalization cases handled by federal courts.75 At the same time, the federal district courts were freed from a tedious and demanding task, even while they preserved their right under the law to exercise final authority in naturalization cases.76
In considering the original bill, Congress also debated extending the new procedures to the various state courts. Democratic Congressman Adolph Sabath, for instance, advocated strongly for placing the state courts on an equal footing with the federal courts—this would have helped to preserve the economic windfall and the influence conferred by the naturalization business on many state courts. But, in the end, only the federal courts were permitted to partake in the benefits of the new system.77
The passage of 1926 amendments to the Naturalization Act was a key moment in the history of the naturalization authority in the United States. Its impact was immediately measurable. Within six years, 90 percent of the federal judiciary availed itself of the new procedures permitted under the 1926 Act.78 In those areas where state courts were still permitted to confer citizenship, the less demanding procedures available to those applying for citizenship in federal courts—requiring only appearance of witnesses and one examination for applicants,
