SAVANNAH DAILY REPUBLICAN Thursday, October 29,1840 The Naturalization fraud at Philadelphia. The magnitude of the fraud, which is now known and wanted to have been accomplished, at the recent election in Philadelphia city and county, is really calculated to excite astonishment. The Philadelphia Gazette of Wednesday, contains a large mas of names, which are understood to have been fraudulently interpolated in the records of the court, as of persons who had filed their dechration of intention to become citizens two years go-so as to confer on them the priv ilege of voting. And it is stated in the Philadel phia Sentinel, that no less than thirty leaves, containing pretended declarations of aliems, and primed is exact imitation of the genuine, have been interpolated in the Book of Declarations of the Court of Quarter Sessions of that county. The thiry leaves, sixty pages, we presume of counterfat. Declarations all bear date in 1838, so as 10`make them two years prior to the elec tions of the present year. Such a monrous forgery-such a wholesale fraud-upon the rights of the legal foter, is enough to make one shadder especially when it is known that after the forgery in the record is successfully accomplished, the crime of deliberate perjury must be yet added, to make that of forgery available for the object intended pe Egery individual claiming to vote under these forged pipers, comprised in sixty pagem of the record must make oath that he had "declared his intento co years previously, this oath of the party applicant, must be supported by the atter tation of a qualified roter, also under oath, that aided five years in the United States. olesale forgery and perjury, with a opt the ballot box, and to carry an on amst the will of the legal voters, is tru Bach THE SUN. BALTIMORE, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1840 THE PHILADELPHIA NATURALIZATION FRAUDS. By the Philadelphia North American of Thurs- : Jay, we learn that in the Court of Quarter Sessions on the day before, it was decided by Judges King, Randall and Jones, that the "declarations of intentions," the legality of which had been 1 called in question, had been fraudulently inter polated, and that the name of the recording clerk, iu every instance in which it appeared, had been forged. The declarations so interpolated, were by order of the court, vacated. In the report of the Court of General Sessions, we find the following proceeding of the Grand Jury. I appeared that the naturalization papers were before the grand jury, who were sent for. They came in with two bills, three presentments, and a "Report" in regard to the naturalization frauds. After perusing the latter, Judge Barton inquired what the grand jury desired 1 should be done with it. They answered that they wished it read in open court; and Thomas Biddle, Esq., one of their number, proceeded accordingly to read it. It was in substance as follows: That the grand jury had laboriously investigated the subject of the alleged frauds, laid before them by his honor Judge Barton, and submitted several matters for the consideration of the court. They had found great disorders, as they thought, to exist in the practices of the clerks of the Court of General and Quarter Sessions, that no index of the names of those recently naturalized had been made out in either; that when certificates of naturalization were granted, no memorandum was made upon the petition, or elsewhere, to shew that they had been so granted; that the clerks had kept no account of the fees received by them in naturalization cases; that many of the petitions filed were without the signatures of the aliens naturalized, though certificates had been granted on such petatlons, and many of them without what most bore, the initials of the respective judges allowing them. They also found that in the General Sessions, under the direction or permission of Judge Doran, the oaths to be administered, according to the Act of Congress, in open Court, had been during at the last three days, shortly before the late election, on which days a very large number had been naturalized, administered by the clerk, or his deputy, outside of the Court Room, in the vestibule, or hall, or in some of: the adjoining rooms. These different matters they laid before the Court, that such action as seemed proper might be had in regard to them. 4+ 1 OCTOBER 22, 1996 NATIONAL COUNCIL OF LA RAZA (NCLR), Editorial Department, DEAR EDITORS: I read with exasperation the excerpt from Georgie Ann Geyer's forthcoming book in your September 16th issue. It is an account of an interview she had with me and an associate more than a decade ago. While I strongly disagree with much of the article, I do not challenge her right to express her opinions or yours to print them. I do challenge, however, the accuracy of the "facts" she cites, which cast serious doubt on her credibility as a “journalist." Her account, in which she asserts that another NCLR staff member and I indicated that "we don't have members," and that our financial support came from "The Ford Foundation" is both misleading and inaccurate, on several levels. First, she omits entirely the context of the conversation, which took place after NCLR had written the producer of Washington Week in Review to complain about her inaccurate statements on that program. She should recall that we specifically challenged her statements regarding the "tens of millions" of undocumented aliens she then alleged were in the U.S. who would be legalized as a result of the pending Simpson-Mazzoli legislation. As Census Bureau and Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates demonstrated at the time, the actual number of such persons in the U.S. was less than 5 million. Indeed, actual experience with the legalization program resulted in fewer than 3 million persons legalized. I'm sorry to say that Ms. Geyer's reporting is no more accurate today than it was at that time. Second, whether by accident or design, Geyer's article transposed two entirely different parts of the conversation. Indeed I indicated that we do not have individual members, which we do not. She ignores entirely my subsequent explanation regarding our community-based organization membership which consists of over 200 groups that serve over 2.5 million people per year to whom we are fully accountable. Irrespective of what her memory may indicate and I can appreciate how, with the passage of time she might have become confused—I do not understand how she could ignore the written descriptions of the organization which we provided to her at the time and have been and are available upon request since that time. These written materials clearly and unequivocally describe the organization's structure, and should have been reviewed prior to completion of the article. Third, Geyer's description of our conversation regarding the Ford Foundation omits entirely the context of the discussion, which had to do with the founding of the organization in the late 1960s. Indeed, NCLR's predecessor organization, the Southwest Council of La Raza, was founded in part because of the absence of mediating community-based organizations serving Latinos. She has chosen to ignore the simple factual explanation that U.S. Hispanics, unlike many other ethnic groups, lacked their own institutions-churches, schools and colleges, professional societies, and civic groups. The absence of such institutions was particularly significant at the time, since many of the programs and services supported by the War on Poverty and the civil rights laws pre-supposed their existence. It is, after all, tough to run a Head Start program, or to build low-income housing, without a non-profit sponsor. In this context, supporting the development of regional organizations like the Southwest Council or national organizations like NCLR to establish and develop such mediating institutions made sense then and makes sense now. Fourth, Geyer's allegation that NCLR is not accountable "to disparate sources of funding" but only to the Ford Foundation is itself contradicted by the data she herself cites. For 1989, for example, Ford Foundation funding ($590,000) amounted to only about 16% of NCLR's revenues ($3.55 million), according to her own figures. Notable by their omission are some of our other funding sources at that time, including the Coors Brewing Company, AT&T, Coca Cola, and other mainstream companies that support our mission and continue to do today. She notes subsequently that Ford Foundation support to NCLR increased to a "whopping" $1.25 million in 1991, but omits the fact that much of that support was for multi-year projects, and the fact that the organization's total budget that fiscal year had grown to over $6 million. I note parenthetically that Ford and other foundation support for NCLR and other Latino organizations was then and is now far smaller than support to comparable organizations serving African Americans, women, persons with disabilities, and so on, in both absolute and relative terms. Finally, the article recalls in great detail and places a great deal of importance on the "facial expressions, statements, and motivations" on Geyer's meeting with "two young men" from NCLR. Yet I was accompanied in that interview by a female staff member, Marta M. Escutia, then NCLR's Legislative Director. Ms._Escutia, now a highly-respected Assemblywoman for the State of California, confirms my recollection of this meeting. There are some Americans who do not believe our society needs either civil rights laws or civil rights organizations. We do not expect their support. An overwhelming majority of the Hispanic community, the general public, and even corporate America believes otherwise. Given a few careful commissions and storybook flourishes, with a couple of downright inaccuracies thrown in, I suppose that it is entirely possible to paint a persuasive picture of a massive and complex "conspiracy." Once all of the facts are known, it is far simpler and more persuasive to believe that the Ford Foundation and other funders of NCLR-including the 200 affiliates who pay membership dues support the organization because they believe in its stated mission of reducing poverty and discrimination in the Hispanic community. It is an axiom of science that the simplest explanations for unknown phenomena, provided they are based on all of the facts, are invariably the most accurate. Such is the case here. Those who believe that the Trilateral Commission runs America, or that the Holocaust never happened, or that the Apollo moon landing was an elaborate hoax, will surely find much comfort in Geyer's article, as is their right in a free society. Fortunately, the rest of us are also free to dismiss her article for the nonsense it is. Sincerely, CHARLES KAMASAKI, PREPARED STATEMENT OF HARRY P. PACHON, PH.D., KENAN PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL STUDIES, PITZER COLLEGE/CLAREMONT GRADUATE SCHOOL, AND PRESIDENT, TOMÁS RIVERA POLICY INSTITUTE As the U.S. born son of Columbian immigrants, whose father became an American citizen, and whose mother always regretted not being able to pass the naturalization examination, I feel it is a privilege to have the opportunity to submit this testimony on a process that is so key to American democracy and which is so salient to the immigrant community. As members of the Subcommittee know, naturalization is one of the few political processes mentioned both in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. For over 200 years, the requirements for naturalization have remained remarkably steadfast-five years of legal residency, "good" moral character, and knowledge of English/Civics (there are exceptions to the above but the majority of immigrants have to fulfill these requirements before becoming Americans by choice). There is now much talk among certain segments of the political spectrum that U.S. citizenship has become a devalued commodity, and that the process is so simple that one author has even likened it to joining a health club! As a social scientist who has spent the better part of the last decade studying the naturalization process I cannot think of anything further from the truth. Before I go on, let me state my qualifications for addressing this issue. I first began studying U.S. citizenship and its relationship to the Hispanic community back in the 1970's. During the 1980's, I convened the first national conference on U.S. citizenship and the Hispanic community in my capacity as Executive Director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO). This conference was held in Washington, DC, in 1984. Only fifty individuals attended the event. (Conference proceedings are available through the Library of Congress.) At that time I realized that naturalization was a process that was largely a mystery to the immigrant community. While the requirements for naturalization (residency, knowledge of English and civics) were apparently straightforward, the actual process was the subject of anecdote and impressionistic evidence (which to some degree is still true today). Let me cite some examples. What knowledge was required to pass the civics exam? Was it true that some Immigration and Naturalization examiners would ask such questions as "How many Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock?" or "Name the order that the colonies entered the union?" Why was there a perception in the immigrant community that the naturalization process was fraught with difficulty while the INS claimed that only 1% of the applicants ever failed the process? Why were the forms so complex? These and other questions occupied an applied action research project that was funded by major foundations for over two million dollars and which I conducted for over six years to ascertain the answers. My efforts during this time period included: |