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Case No. 3406: Mrs. T. came to this country in 1912 with her husband, who has since died. She can not remember the steamer on which she came to the United States, which is delaying her application for citizenship. This delay may prevent her 17-year-old boy, who has been living in Poland with his aged grandmother (now 90 years old), from getting a nonquota visa before he passes his 18th birthday. This is a cause for particular anxiety, as at 18 the boy will be drafted in the Polish Army.

III. MINOR STEPCHILDREN OF UNITED STATES CITIZENS

The discrimination against stepchildren of citizen fathers, while providing an incentive to citizenship on the part of alien mothers, works against assimilation into one family unit by delaying the arrival of an alien child. Children who could conform to a new family situation at an early age often become trouble makers in adolescence. Delay in uniting the members of the new family sometimes results in indifference on the part of the citizen father or recentment against his wife for claiming support for her children abroad. In many cases the illiteracy and shut-in habits of the foreign-born mother hinder her naturalization, making the separation between mother and child permanent. Case No. 5992: Mrs. L. left her small daughter, born before her marriage to a United States citizen, in her home country in the care of a farmer's family. She knows that the child's mind is being poisoned against her in order to keep her as a worker in the family. The mother has not yet completed her own citizenship here. Final estrangement may be the result.

Case No. 5142: Mrs. F., a widow, remarried in 1918, and since then has been trying to secure the entry of her two children by her former marriage, a son now 20 and a daughter now 18. Meanwhile the stepfather has been naturalized, but both children are now over nonquota age, and must wait their turn in a very small quota.

IV. DECLARANTS SEPARATED FROM THEIR FAMILIES

The quota law threatens many declarants with a prolonged separation from their families. Delays in completing naturalization result from causes not always under the control of the declarants. For instance, the inability of the applicant to remember the name of the ship or the date of his arrival in the United States. In some cases, e. g., when the records of the steamship company suffered seizure during the war, there is no means of supplementing the immigrant's memory.

Case No. 3406: Mrs. T. is a widow who came to the United States with her husband in 1912, leaving their son, a boy of 6, with his grandmother. Two months after their arrival the husband died and the wife went to work. The war years prevented both the return of the mother to her home country and the emigration of the son. In 1921 Mrs. T. sent affidavits, but the quota law erected a new barrier. In the efforts to secure her son's departure before he became of military registration age the mother addressed a petition to the home government for his release and also filed a declaration of intention here. But, unfortunately, the date of her arrival can not be verified because the steamship records were confiscated by an Alien Property Custodian. The son, not understanding the reason for the delay, punishes his mother with silence. He is now 20, and after five years of fruitless effort on his mother's part will probably be conscripted at the age of 21, after all.

Case No. 5576: When Mr. K. came to the United States in 1916 he left his wife and child in Greece. His wife has since died and his little daughter, now aged 9, is alone. Mr. K. has a home all ready for her here, but as he can not recall the name of the ship on which he arrived so long ago naturalization papers have been denied him pending verification of his legal entry.

In certain districts certain racial groups, e. g., Assyrians in Chicago, are refused citizenship.

Case No. 4400: Mr. M., an Assyrian, emigrated to the United States 12 years ago, leaving his wife and 2-year-old son with relatives in Persia. After the

war Mrs. M. and her son went to France in the hope of obtaining a visa. Meanwhile citizenship has been refused to Assyrians.

In other cases entry records are incomplete or untraceable or they are obscured by the official phonetic spelling of unfamiliar foreign names.

Case No. 2245: Mr. G. is a White Russian who emigrated first to Canada, where he worked in a lumber camp. In 1916, together with three other men, he entered the United States at a border station and claims to have paid a tax or to have seen the inspector make an entry in the book. There are three possible spellings of Mr. G.'s name, retaining the correct initial; a phonetic spelling would be, represented by a different initial in English. So far his record of entry can not be located and, without proof of legal entry, he can not complete his naturalization. Meanwhile his motherless little daughter is being deprived of the schooling she would receive and the home life her father would provide since his remarriage in this country.

A denial of citizenship to men whose families are abroad and the refusal of visas to wives or children because their husbands and fathers are not United States citizens is the situation known to all social agencies in touch with foreign born. The result is that the father is refused naturalization because his family is not in this country and they can not enter until they can be admitted in the quota.

Case No. 6366: From the community service in a southern city comes an application for assistance for an Italian janitor at the local high school, who has been refused citizenship for the past two years because his family is not in this country.1

V. CITIZEN WIVES UNABLE TO SECURE ENTRY OF ALIEN HUSBANDS

Example: In one of our large cities a Polish mother is struggling to support several American born children. Although she is about to complete her naturalization, she has no hope under the present law of securing a nonquota visa for her husband, who overstayed his temporary visit in Poland.

VI. RESIDENT-ALIEN WIVES UNABLE TO RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES

It certainly was not in the minds of the framers of the law of 1924 that it would serve naturalized citizens to evade family responsibilities. Yet those sections of the immigration law of 1924, which makes the issuance of an immigration visa to an applicant claiming to be a nonquota immigrant by reason of relationship to a citizen, dependent upon a petition of that relative, have placed would-be deserters in a position of advantage over their wives. Men have been known to disappear to avoid filing a petition for an immigration visa for their wives and children. Women, who have spent years in the United States returning to their home-countries for a bona fide visit prolonged beyond their expectation by new laws and regulations, find themselves deserted by their citizen husbands, without whose affidavit no consul will grant them a visa.

Case No. 5952: Mrs. W. was married in the United States in 1914. In 1924 she returned to her native country on account of ill health. By the time she heard of her husband's infidelity the quota law had gone into effect. Since then Mrs. W.'s visit has been extended beyond her will. She is unable to secure a visa, although she was for 10 years a resident in this country and although her husband is a citizen, because he refuses to file Form No. 633.

VII. CITIZEN ADULT SONS AND DAUGHTERS WITH AGED PARENTS ABROAD

Although parents of citizens over 21 are accorded preferential quota status under the law of 1924, it is exactly the low-quota countries in which the patriarchal tradition has been longest preserved and among whose people filial piety still ranks as a duty where the period of waiting is longer than in the case of high-quota countries with fewer cases.

Case No. 4468: Mr. K. has been in the United States since 1904. In 1919 his mother became a widow, three years after the death of another son in her home country. She is now living with relatives awaiting her turn for a visa. The probabilities are that she will be 70, should she survive, before her son could take her in, as there are 400 names ahead of hers on a list, with only 50 annual preferential quota visas available.

1 This case has just been referred to the International Migration Service and is not yet fully investigated.

89149-266

Case No. 3453: Mr. T. is in training by the Federal Board of Vocational Education; therefore a veteran in the United States Army, receiving a monthly pension from the United States Government. This pension must provide not only for his wife and two children in the United States but for his mother, a woman of 62, abroad. Nonquota status would secure her reunion with her handicapped son without further delay.

Case No. 3203: Mrs. M. is waiting in Cuba alone and without proper care for a preferential visa that will enable her to join her son, a United States veteran and citizen since 1919. Since the quota for her country is very small, years may elapse before she secures a visa.

VIII. FORMER UNITED STATES CITIZENS WHO HAVE FORFEITED THEIR CITIZENSHIP

This group consists of native American women who married aliens before the passage of the Cable Act, thereby acquiring the citizenship of their husband and losing their own.

Case No. 5750: Mrs. V. is a young woman of 26, wife of a declarant of the same age. They have one child, a daughter of 2, born in Czechoslovakia. Mrs. V. was born in the United States, but was taken during her childhood to the old country, where she met and married her husband four months before the law, giving independent citizenship to women, was passed. Since Mr. V. did not arrive in the United States until August, 1923, three years must still elapse before he can complete his citizenship and bring his ex-citizen wife to her native land.

Case No. 4902: Mrs. C. was born in the United States and taken to Italy by her parents where, in 1913, she married and had two children, now 14 and 9. In 1920 Mr. and Mrs. C. decided to emigrate to the United States, leaving their children in the care of relatives. Now they are very desirous of reuniting the family, but Mrs. C. lost her native citizenship through marriage, so they must wait for the father's naturalization or the mother's resumption of native citizenship.

The experience of the International Migration Service demonstrates that many of the hardships involved in the cases examined are not caused by the operation of the law of 1924. There are cases of relatives of citizens afflicted by excludable diseases in an incurable form. The disastrous upheaval of populations during and following the World War and the havoc brought to the health of native peasants in countries unable to ward off incursion of diseased alien refugees has increased the number of these cases. Nothing but the development of a thorough-going public-health policy in the countries concerned can bring relief to this situation. Of such cases noted in our survey, by far the largest numbers of rejections and exclusions have been on account of trachoma. Where conditions are favorable, e. g., where there are medical and financial resources at command, treatment is undertaken and cures frequently obtained. This is especially true of migrants from the Near East held at Marseilles. Poles, residing in villages remote from medical attention are not so fortunate, and sometimes all chances of joining their relatives in the United States are given up by the discouraged victims.

In certain other cases separation is found to be voluntary. Marital differences leading with emigration in the first place have not been overcome across the dividing seas. On the other hand, a weakened sense of family responibility has come through enforced separation during the war, with its aftermath of border warfare and national insurrection in mid-Europe and the Balkans. Many of the families afflicted by this situation are families of citizens.

Sometimes purely personal reasons cause family hardships, e. g., if a man delays applying for naturalization for business reasons; widowers make no attempt to send for children left abroad until they remarry and are able to provide suitable homes. Meanwhile the children have reached the age of 18 and are demoted to preferential status under the law. Here, as elsewhere, we find the usual contrast between the simplicity of the law and the complexity of home situations; the ignorance of law and the lack of foresight which often does not make itself felt until the happiness of the family is jeopardized and family solidarity threatened.

(The committee thereupon entered into discussion off the record and at 3.15 o'clock p. m. adjourned until call of the chair.)

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