Speech #570085917

Mr. Chairman. of citizenship has been one of the troublesome phases about this entire Philippine question. Our Constitution provides that all "persons born or naturalized within the United States shall be citizens of the United States. Now. evidently. these people in the Philippine Islands were not born within the United States. and hence are not citizens -under that clause of the Constitution. But that other clause. that says that all persons naturalized within the United States shall be citizens of the United States. makes this a very troublesome question with which the American people have to deal. The question of naturalization arises. Are the Filipinos citizens of the United States by naturalization? This is not only an intensely interesting but to us a vitally important inquiry. and one that must be answered in the near future. This leads naturally to the inquiry as to what naturalization is and how it may be effected. The authorities touching these points are so thoroughly in accord that there is but little if anything to be gained by comment. Hence I shall be content with reading a few extracts. Vattel. on the Law of Nations. page 101. says: A nation or the sovereign who represents it may grant to a foreigner the quality of citizen by admitting him into the body of the political society. This is called naturalization. Cooley. in his Principles of Constitutional Law. on page 79. states: Naturalization is the act by which the rights. privileges. and immunities of citizenship are conferred upon a person born alien. It is also sald by Mr. Rawle: Naturalization is but a mode of acuiring the right subject to the duties of a citizen. it is the factitious substitution of legal form for actual birth. etc. (Rawle. on the Constitution. 91.) The next point in the orderly investigation of the matter is to ascertain how this change from alien to citizen may be accomplished. While it is true that there is a general uniform mode of naturalization provided in the statute of the United States. this system was manifestly enacted with reference to individual and not collective naturalization. It could not in the nature of things be held applicable to the incorporation into our citizenship of large bodies of aliens residing in territory acquired by conquest or treaty. It has without doubt been the general practice in negotiating treaties of cession with other nations for this Government to permit some definite provision in the articles for the adoption into the family of this nation the inhabitants of the country ceded by the treaty. but there can be no grave doubt but that such custom has been indulged as a courtesy with a view to quieting the apprehension of the masses of such population with respect to the legal effect of a transfer of sovereignty rather than for any substantial purpose to be accomplished by it.