In the United States, the rights of the alien include personal protection, protection of property already acquired, and the use of all means of redress and judicial protection enjoyed by citizens.[3] The alien’s plight in this country has been complicated by the peculiar relation subsisting between the Federal government and that of the individual states. For it has frequently happened that the government of the United States has been practically unable to enforce the rights of aliens created by treaty when traversed by state law. On more than one occasion threatening diplomatic situations have been created by the existence of this condition. This ancient feeling toward the alien, and the treatment, legal, extra-legal, and illegal, to which he has been subjected in respect of his person, his family, and his property, undoubtedly have affected substantially his sentiments toward this country. Disillusionment about the atmosphere and ways of the “Land of the Free” is responsible for our loss of the citizenship of many desirable immigrants. The man who will not submit quietly to injustice is of the material of which our best citizens from the beginning have been made. The kind of aliens who can accept without resentment some of the things to which those of foreign birth and speech have been subjected within our borders during very recent times, are not fit to be Americans![4] WHAT IS AN “AMERICAN”? We are concerned just now, however, with the alien, not in his general legal or social relations, but as material for active membership in our community as an American citizen, as a voting participant in the sovereignty held in this country by the people. As such, he comes to a position unique in all the world. It is not yet true--perhaps it will be very long before it can be true--that there is absolutely no bar to any person on account of race; for the law and its interpretations exclude from citizenship Chinese, Japanese, and certain people of India not regarded as “white”--although the blacks of Africa are expressly admitted. Nevertheless it may be said broadly that, regardless of race, the immigrant can come to America and win his way upon his own merits into the fellowship of what all the world calls “Americans.” Now, what is “an American”? What is it that makes a nation of us if not a distinctive race? What is it that the immigrant joins, body and soul, when he becomes “an American”? Every little while somebody arises with ashes upon his head and bemoans the threatened disappearance of what he is pleased to call “the American type.” He never describes it--it is exceedingly difficult to learn what may be meant by the phrase. This is not strange, for there is no such thing if a racial type is meant. There never has been any such thing.