Why Are Children and Grandchildren of Immigrants So Eager to Keep Immigrants Out?
By: Megan Smolenyak
Tags: Genealogy, Politics, Goodlatte, History, Immigration

Arrival record of C. Wilhelm Mentzendorff as seen on Ancestry.com

For those who might be surprised by this, it bears mentioning that “chain migration” used to be broader and more flexible than family reunification. Immigrants could join not only family members, but friends and acquaintances, which makes it somewhat disingenuous that Goodlatte’s proposed act aims to restrict family reunification to spouses and minor children. By this standard, his own grandfather would have been turned away (as would Trump’s Scottish mother and German grandfather, both of whom were going to siblings who were already here, and the immigrant ancestors of so many other high profile, anti-immigrant individuals).

Six weeks later, his “friend,” Mrs. Burford, would become his mother-in-law when he married her daughter, but one wonders whether they had thought through the ramifications.

Grandma Loses Her Citizenship

As soon as I realized that Carl married Kentucky-born Marguerite in 1914, my memory bank sent out a flare. Wasn’t this that time period when …? Yes, it was. By marrying a foreigner, Marguerite had lost her American citizenship.

Carl and Marguerite, daughter of father Stonewall Jackson Burford (name misspelled above) married in 1914 (26 Feb 1914, Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY, Newspapers.com)

Thanks to bad timing, Goodlatte’s grandparents had fallen into one of the pitfalls of the Expatriation Act of 1907. A mostly forgotten piece of legislation intended to clarify citizenship situations for Americans with foreign connections, it included a provision that stripped American women of their citizenship should they marry a foreigner. As explained by Kristen Anderson:

“Marriage to foreign men was perceived as a great threat to American society during the early 20th century, as anti-immigrant sentiment swelled in response to increases in both the number and diversity of immigrants. Thus it seems likely that this act was partially intended to deter American women from marrying foreign men and to punish those who did so. As Congressman N. E. Kendall would put it in a 1912 hearing on the Expatriation Act: “We do not want our girls to marry foreigners.””¹

This poorly thought out law was in effect for 15 years — from 1907 to 1922 — and created a world of hurt for those it ensnared, including Goodlatte’s grandmother. But wait, there’s more.

What about Goodlatte’s mother, I wondered. Was she American? Iffy. Born in Kentucky in 1916 to a mother who had been born there in 1891 to parents who were also native-born, Doris’s paper trail nevertheless indicates that she was considered a Swiss national. It’s unclear whether this was for strictly legal reasons, differing perspectives of the American and Swiss governments, her father’s preference, or a combination of these factors, but the root of the confusion stems from politicians’ overzealous efforts to hold immigration at bay.

World War I draft registration for Carl Wm Mentzendorff (Ancestry)

Presumably then, Carl would have wanted to get naturalized as soon as possible, not only for his own sake, but for that of his family. The first chance came, oddly enough, with World War I. As described by USCIS:

“During World War I, nearly one-fifth of the American armed forces were foreign-born. To encourage immigrant enlistments and to naturalize servicemen before they shipped out, Congress passed laws to expedite military naturalizations. These naturalization laws exempted soldiers from having five years of U.S. residency, filing a declaration (or “first papers”), speaking English, and taking history and civics exams. Soldiers could go to any court in the nation to naturalize and, under the expedited system, could become a citizen in just one day. Eventually, more than 300,000 soldiers and veterans of WWI became U.S. citizens under these laws.”

Carl could have availed himself of this expedited citizenship, but instead claimed an exemption due to his family. While World War I raged across the continent where his parents and other family members lived, he ran the Mentzendorff Baby Shop in Louisville.

The family also dodged a metaphorical bullet. Before coming to America, Carl had swapped his Russian nationality for Swiss, but could have just as easily selected German since his family was living in Dresden, Germany at the time of his departure. Had he done so, the Mentzendorff family could have been declared enemy aliens during World War I, a designation which would have jeopardized Carl and Marguerite’s business and even resulted in internment.

Lying Under Oath (and Otherwise)

Shortly after the war ended in November 1918, Carl, along with his wife and children, went to Europe. We know this from documents recording their return to the U.S. in August of 1919.