Evening star., 1939-08-20
Prosecutions Abroad Speeding
Aliens Into i. S. Citizenship
Applications Pouring In at Rate of 900 Daily,
Ellis Island Filing Clerks Are
Year Behind Schedule
By John Lear,
Associated Press staff Writer.

into military service in the land of their
birth.
GO Under appropriation bills passed
by Congress in 1887 and 1888, employees
of the Federal Government-Army and
Navy and w. P. A. as we'll as the regular
departments-must be citizens, and
when the bills we're passed many of
them were not.
Cd Only citizens are eligible for So
cial security benefits.
t8) More and more occupations are
being restricted to citizens. These
range from employees of airplane plants
restricted after recent spy scares-to
master plumbers. Lawyers, physicians.
taXlcab drivers, masseurs and optom-
etrlsts are included in various parts of
the country. One of the most recent
additions was dentists in the State of
Massachusetts.
go Membership in at least some
labor unions is restricted to those who
have declared their intention to become
citizens, or who become citizens after
a stated time.
Unprecedented Situation.
Added together, these influences have
created an unprecedented situation
which Naturalization Bureau workers
say may last for year or may last
four years. 1t depends on how many
of the 100000 to 100000 aliens still
left in this country want to become
citizens, and how many more pros
poets come in.
Right now there is no sign of
let-up. In New York City alone. which
shares with Boston the major part of
citizenship in 1888 were one-third more
than in 1887, and for the first five
months of 1889 they were one-third
more than that.
To break this jam, the Naturaliza-
ton Service-part of the United States
Labor Department - asked the 1899
Congress to appropriate more money for
citizenship making. Twenty-six new
jobs were proposed at a committee
hearing. They would have cost s25 22O
a year, an amount heads of the service
said was mot beginning of what We
need"
This money was refused by the COM
mittee, some of whose members were
openly unsympathetic, rejecting Con-
gress' general division of opinion on
whether aliens should be encouraged to
become citizens to receive relief and
social security benefits or whether those
in need Of relief should be deported as
undesirable wards of the state.
No alien may enter the country now
for permanent residence unless he can
prove he will not become an economic
dependent.
Question Dependence.
The question of dependence is an
acute one in current discussion of the
alien problem because of widespread un-
employment among our native popula-
ton. California felt so strongly about it
that the Legislature passed a bill BAN
ming aliens from relief rolls in that State.
Gov. Culbert Olson vetoed the measure.
In California, as in Congress (where
some proposals would have gone so far
as to suspend immigration altogether:
and where the House actually passed
bills to deport aliens who express a de-
sire for any change in our Government,
and to put others in detention camps
the argument is that there are only SO
many jobs to be had and those that the
aliens get are taken away from Ameri-
cans.
A corollary of this contention is that
aliens get many jobs in competition with
American-born workers chiefly because
they will work for less money, being ac-
customed to lower wages abroad.
This reasoning is challenged in an ex-
haustive study of refugees recently COM
pleted by the American Academy of Po-
htical and Social Sciences.
History" the study says. has proved
in every instance that new settlers defln-
itely add to the prosperity of the coun-
try"
The study offered the 20-year period,
1890 to 1870 as an example. This period
just preceded the application of restric-
tions to immigration into this country.
In those years were admitted the largest
number of immigrants G2.5OO,OOo) in
history.
Increase in Employed.
Instead of being period of unem-
ployment," the study observed, "the Pc
riod showed an increase in the number
of gainfully employed by 15,0O000O (from
23,3O0 900 to 38,2000O0).
while population increased as per
cent from 100000 to 100000 the
number of gainfully employed increased
So per cent.
1T is not intended to imply here that
this advance in industrial activity - .
was altogether the consequence of heavy
immigration '-' (buD =" the figures
at least show that immigration did not
decrease the number of jobs or make for
unemployment"
Anticipating a rebuttal that this ex-
panding prosperity might have been due
to an expanding country, the study
points out that at the beginning of the
20 years in question the West was set
tied and Americas last frontier was
closed
In answer to the contention that aliens
accept lower wages, the study observes:
Highest wages are today being paid
in those industries that have had a
heavy influx of immigrants.
Take the bituminous coal industry
Roughly, two large regions produce this