Are we as careless, go as you please, and perfunctory about making aliens into citizens as we are about native sons and daughters growing into citizens? It is not very flattering to America to find that up to the beginning of the war in Europe the greatest incentives to the acquirement of citizenship by aliens were political and commercial. There are many thousands of aliens moved by a general aspiration toward the idealistic privileges and traditions of American citizenship and these make our true patriots. But by far too many of our citizens have entered by way of the political club and at the behest of a self-interested politician; and by way of the job, to earn a living. How and when did citizenship become so cheap and begin to serve the commercial and not the patriotic needs of America? The chief difficulty arose with the willingness of government to place the whole burden upon the alien. We wrote a law on the statute books, setting forth certain technical requirements; then we taxed the prospective citizen enough to pay for the enforcement of the law, providing a number of fat offices and a neat balance in the treasury. Then we sat back in our comfortable office chairs and said to the alien: Now you comply with the law and we will grant you citizenship papers. But in drafting the law, we did another thing. We called it raising the standard. What we really did was to increase the technicalities which cost influence and money to satisfy, but which gave America no better citizens. The naturalization law provides that an alien before becoming a citizen shall have a continuous residence of five years in America, shall comply with certain rules, shall have a knowledge of the English language and of the constitution, and shall renounce all allegiance to foreign governments. He may not do this all at once. It is a long, complicated process, intended to safeguard American citizenship, but failing in its purpose because we failed to establish standards or facilities for compliance. For instance, the prospective citizen must file a declaration of intention at least two years prior to the granting of his final papers--an obsolete requirement, as his five years of continuous residence is now established by the filing of a certificate of arrival with his petition. A second document, the petition for citizenship, must be filed not less than two nor more than seven years after the declaration of intention, verified by the affidavits of two credible citizen witnesses, certifying to the petitioner’s five years’ residence in the United States _and one year’s residence in the state or district in which the application is made_. This latter requirement creates almost insuperable difficulties for migratory laborers who go from state to state, following the call of casual or seasonal labor. After the petition is filed, the applicant must wait at least ninety days before his appearance in court.