Mr. Hay to Mr. Choate.
Washington, February 5, 1901.
Sir: The Department has received your No. 484, of the 14th instant, concerning the proof required of those applicants for passports whose parents were naturalized during their minority. You suggest that hardship often arises from the requirement that they produce the father’s naturalization certificate.
It is freely admitted that this requirement is often difficult to comply with, but the passport bureau of the Department has frequent evidence that many people come to the United States in infancy or youth, duly qualify as voters when they reach their majority, exercise all the rights of citizenship, and yet have no positive knowledge of their parents’ naturalization, and have fallen into the error of supposing that prolonged residence and unquestioned performance of a citizen’s functions [Page 208] have in fact made them citizens. A person in this category is apt to express surprise and even indignation at being called upon to produce his father’s naturalization papers, but not infrequently investigation shows that his father never had any such papers, and that he has himself been performing the functions of citizenship without legal right to do so.
The production of the naturalization certificate is not, however, always necessary. Paragraph 154 of the Instructions to the Diplomatic Officers of the United States authorizes the acceptance by a diplomatic agent abroad of a passport issued by this Department as evidence of the citizenship of the person in whose favor it was issued, if presented before its expiration. In the case instanced in your dispatch—that of Charles Muchnic, who recently applied for a passport from you and produced a passport issued by this Department—there was thus no reason for refusing to issue him a new passport without demanding the production of his father’s naturalization certificate, unless his passport had expired. An amendment to this paragraph has been submitted to the President, and, if it be approved, it will be permissible to accept an old passport as prima facie evidence that the applicant’s citizenship was established properly when the old passport was issued.
The statement that the Department does not exact the certificate of naturalization is incorrect. The rule prescribed by the President requires that it be produced, and in Mr. Muchnic’s case the records show that he was granted a passport December 21, 1898, No. 1508, upon an application duly supported by his father’s naturalization certificate issued November 9, 1898, by the court of common pleas at Philadelphia.
It is not intended that secondary proof may not on rare occasions be accepted in lieu of the naturalization certificate. The question is fully discussed in the Department’s publication, The American Passport, page 155 et seq. In Mr. Bayard’s instruction to Mr. Vignaud, June 13, 1888, quoted on page 161, the general nature of the secondary proof acceptable is set forth. In a few words, it must establish that the father was actually naturalized before the son reached his majority.
It may be added that the existing requirement of production of the naturalization certificate has prevailed since 1873; and experience has shown it to be necessary in order to prevent the Department or its agents from granting passports to those who are not legally citizens of the United States.
I am, etc.,