Speech #540103273

Mr. President. I am offering that amendment in perfect good faith. because I believe that that is the only point in which we can touch the question of immigration with any real value to the United States. A number of the States of this Union. including my own. exercising that sovereign right which they have of regulating the suffrage. prescribing the conditions of suffrage. admit men to vote who have come into the United States and filed a declaration of their intention to become citizens of this country. The only restriction that is put upon that by the different States is a certain time of residence within the State. The immigrant may come here and the next day he may declare his intention before a court to become a citizen of the United States and renounce his allegiance to all foreign potentates and powers. Thereupon. under the law as it is now. I believe he is required to reside here three years before he can be admitted to full citizenship by naturalization. which must also be done by the action of a court. These State constitutions which admit men to this right of suffrage. which is exclusively a State right. are all predicated upon an act of Congress. The act of Congress definesand it is only that law which can definethe persons who have applied for citizenship in the United States who declare their intention to become citizens. So these constitutional declarations in the different States. and all of the State laws predicated upon those constitutional provisions. hinge and hang upon the provisions in our law that a man may file his declaration of his intention to become a citizen on the day after or the day of his arrival in the United States if he chooses to do so. Therefore. a man who has no interest in this country. who can withdraw at pleasure his application to become a naturalized citizen. or ignore it. can go to Alabama and can vote in the elections there equally with the nativeborn citizen. That inducement held out by the different States is working a very serious injury upon the whole population of the country. It is admitting unqualified and unprepared men into the exercise of that suffrage about which we have so many complaints made at so many different times.