The Scandal of Perfunctory Citizenship
A local indictment for fraudulent naturalization practices exposes deeper flaws in the state court's administration of immigration law.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In Walla Walla a man named Schmidl is under indictment for wholesale frauds upon the naturalization laws, and as a result of further investigations into the matter, other cases have been made out against him, and he has been arrested for the second time. It has been discovered that frauds in naturalization cases have been perpetrated on a very large scale. In practice, applicants are often admitted in batches of ten, are gabbled off by the clerk in the most perfunctory manner, and are so framed that each question admits of a monosyllabic answer by the witness. Rejections of applications are so extremely rare that when one does occur it is made a matter of widespread comment.
“In practice, applicants are often admitted in batches of ten, are gabbled off by the clerk in the most perfunctory manner.”
The tension between the administrative processing of immigration and the demand for rigorous 'solemn' judicial review is a century-old struggle, highlighting how local courts have historically struggled to manage the naturalization pipeline.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.