Americanization; Civics; Immigrants -- United States; Naturalization -- United States; Noncitizens -- United States
to make diligent investigation into the conditions and
environment of permanent residents and citizens; to ascertain their
sentiments of loyalty to the United States, their progress in the
knowledge of American institutions, and the use of the English
language; their relations of a social and commercial nature with
their neighbors and fellow citizens, and to promote the betterment
of that loyalty, knowledge, use, and relationship, and afford them
such advice as may be of benefit to them and tend to increase
their regard for our institutions of government, and to do such
other things as may be prudent and wise in laying a foundation
for a strong sense of loyalty and dedication to our institutions
of government on the part of all permanent residents, candidates
for naturalization, and citizens; and to show their progress in
the adoption of the language and customs of the United States in
reports from time to time upon the work of the Bureau to Congress
and the Secretary of Labor, together with recommendations to
Congress for _further legislative measures to enlarge the province
and effectiveness of said Bureau for the Americanization of such
citizens and permanent residents_, and to insure their attachment
to the institutions of the United States.
The bill was not so much to create a new bureau, as to transmute
the Bureau of Naturalization; the Commissioner of Naturalization
was to become a subordinate of the Director of Citizenship, the
entire personnel, machinery, and functions of the present Bureau
of Naturalization being absorbed in the Bureau of Citizenship and
Americanization.
That the scope of this revolutionary creation, with its extension
of jurisdiction over _all_ citizens, their social and commercial
relations with each other, and their personal loyalty, was no
inadvertence of exuberant language, is clear to an examination of
an earlier version of the measure, which specifically confined the
supervision and missionary _espionage_ to “naturalized” citizens,
“including the attitude of such citizens whose native tongue is
foreign ... and their relations of a social and commercial nature
with their neighbors and fellow citizens who are natives of this
country or who have become thoroughly Americanized.” But even so
early the scheme was designed “to the end that there shall be a
thorough assimilation of all who permanently reside within the
jurisdiction of the United States.”[90]
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about this proposal is that it has
the specific approval of the then Secretary of Labor, Mr. William
B. Wilson, in a letter dated September 12, 1918, to Senator King, in
which, over his official signature, it is declared that “the measure
has been carefully considered,” and that the Department approves
“the main objects of the proposed legislation.” That letter refers
directly to the first draft of the bill, last quoted above.[91]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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