Speech #590060744

You say your judges are upright. your courts are pure. your laws are enforced. and life and property are safe. If this be true. why did Mr. Vandusen. who was appointed by the Department of Justice to investigate the innumerable frauds growing out of the naturalization of foreigners use this language in his report made last July: After a study of all the contributing causes of naturalization frauds and giving each due weight. I am fully convinced that the largest con. tributing factor is to be found in the judges of the courts dealing with naturalization matters. And. referring to New York. lie said: The Federal courts still maintained the same loose methods as previously followed in such cases and in some cases permitted. If they did not actually instigate. professional promoters of naturalization to openly solicit naturalization business for such courts. many of these promoters actually sending out circular letters and postal cards to aliens in which their headquarters were given as the Federal building in which the court was located. The Federal building. and in some cases the clerks office. were overrun with these " agents " who would almost come to blows over the possession of the alien applicant. Schools of instruction for aliens were openly held in the Federal building by these agents. who read the stereotyped questions put to aliens in the clerks office. and the answers thereto were dinned into the memory of the alien until. parrotlike. he could give the correct answers if the questions were pat in the stereoty ed order. but was hopelessly lost If the continuity of the questions wyll vared. Conditions of this nature grew into a public scandal in New York and Brooklyn in 1808 and 1899. and led the State election authorities to interfere because of the patent frauds being perpetrated. In New York City during October. 1891. about 7.000 naturalization certificates were isssned. mostly by one judge. who examined each applicant and his witnesses and signed his orders at the rate of two a minute. In one of the district courts of the United States the clerk was in the habit of swearing a lot of applicants and Issuing certificates to them. no judge at all being present. and in another of the New York courts thousands of Italians were naturalized through an interpreter. On the trial of a clerk of a New York court it was proven that he sold naturalization certificates made out in blank. with forged signatures. at from $5 to $10. It has been recently established that there are 50.000 fraudulent naturalization papers held in New York City alone. that agencies exist for the disposition of them. fhat a recent investigation has disclosed that one of these has sold 4.000 and another 2.000 in 2903. The State superintendent of elections in New York stated in 1.904 that probably $600.000 was made in the preceding year in the sale of fraudulent naturalization certificates. and that 100.000 had been sold in that State. It is also charged that onefourth of the Italians employed in the streetcleaning department obtained their positions by means of fraudulent naturalization papers. I am informed that under the municipal regulations of New York City preference is given to the citizen laborer in all public works. which is largely the cause why some of the aliens are willing to secure citizenship at any cost and by any kind of means. The deputy superintendent of elections of the State recently said that from 10 to 30 per cent of all the naturalization papers held by Italians in the State were fraudulent. Mr. Chairman. these are but some of the reasons why I said to the gentleman from New York that if. as lie said. the Italian was an average of the citizenship of his city.