Expatriation Act of 1907
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The Expatriation Act of 1907 (59th Congress, 2nd session, chapter 2534, enacted March 2, 1907) was an act of the 59th United States Congress concerning the issuance of alien passports and the retention and relinquishment of United States nationality by Americans living abroad, married women, and children born outside the United States.
Background
editThis act was an attempt by Congress to resolve issues related to the status of citizenship, including those Americans living outside the United States. married women, and children born to citizens outside the country.[1]
A particular concern during the last half of the nineteenth century was that of dual citizenship. During this period, several countries had established laws which gave their nationality to alien wives of male citizens. The question arose whether this, in effect, gave dual citizenship to American women married to men from these countries.[1]
A prominent case involved the daughter of President Ulysses Grant. In 1874, Nellie Grant married Algernon Charles Frederick Sartoris, an Englishman, in a White House ceremony. Following the wedding, the couple took up residence in Great Britain. British laws stated that an alien woman became an English subject when she married a citizen of Great Britain. The act of 1868 stated that, by establishing residency outside the country, she had relinquished her American citizenship and did not have dual citizenship. The issue of those who continued to reside within the United States had not been addressed. When Nellie Grant Sartoris returned to the United States, the State Department practice, at the time, held that by returning, she automatically regained U.S. citizenship, although there was no law to enforce this. After the death of her husband in 1896, she petitioned Congress to reinstate her American citizenship. In a Special Act of 1898, she regained an unconditional resumption of her American citizenship.[2]
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Married women[edit]
editSection 3 provided for the loss of citizenship by American women who married aliens and established the conditions under which she would be able to regain her American citizenship. The act states that an American woman who marries an alien would lose her American citizenship and take on her husband's nationality. In actuality, whether she could take on her husband's nationality was dependent on the laws of the country to which he belonged. If there was no similar law giving derivative citizenship to a married woman, she could then become stateless. [3]As she now forfeited her constitutional rights, she could be subject to deportation and, after she left the United States for any reason, she could be denied reentry. It also restricted her opportunities for employment (for example, any kind of government work, and, in some states, she would now be ineligible to teach in a public school). At the outset of WWI, any woman married to a German or Italian national was required to register as an enemy alien and was subject to having property confiscated by the U. S. government through the Office of Alien Property Custodian. [1] [4]
The act also gave conditions under which a woman could regain her American citizenship. While still married to an alien, under the terms of Section 4 of this act, she would become a naturalized citizen only if her husband applied for, was accepted, and completed, his naturalization. After the marriage was terminated, whether by divorce, annulment, or death, there were three ways she could repatriate. A woman who had resided in the United States during her marriage, by remaining in this country, would automatically repatriate. Those women who had resided outside the country during marriage could return to the U.S. and establish residency. If she chose to remain outside the country, she had to register as an American citizen at an American consul, within one year of the end of the marriage.
An act of Congress in 1855 had granted automatic citizenship to alien wives of men who were American citizens, native born or naturalized.[5] This act had not addressed the status of these women following the termination of their marriage. Section 4 of the act of 1907 provided for the retention of citizenship in these cases. Those women who had resided in the United States would retain citizenship, if they continued to live in the country and did not renounce their American citizenship. Those women residing abroad at the end of their marriage, were required to register as an American citizen at a US consulate, within one year, in order to retain their citizenship.
It was not until American born wives of aliens attempted to register to vote, in those states that had granted the vote to women prior to 1919, that the implications of these two sections of the Act were fully understood. Among leading suffragists this act affected were Harriot Stanton Blatch, Inez Milholland, and Crystal Eastman, who were fighting for the passage of an amendment that would grant women the right to vote. These three women, all born in the United States, had married men who were not American citizens and, as a result of the Act of 1907, had all lost their American citizenship.[6] In the case of Harriot Stanton Blatch, she regained her citizenship following her husband's death in 1915, prior to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.
In 1917, Jeannette Rankin, Montana representative, introduced a bill to amend Section 3 of the 1907 Act. However, with the outbreak of WWI, focus on American wives of alien husbands questioned their patriotic loyalty and it was not passed.[1]
Following the passage and ratification of the Nineteenth amendment, significant protests by members of the women's suffrage movement began, focused on the reversal of both the acts of 1855 and 1907, which established derivative citizenship for married women. They campaigned for independent naturalization which would require alien women to be qualified to naturalize and take an oath of allegiance to the United States.[1][7] Two years after women gained the vote, the acts were repealed by the Cable Act of 1922. However, the Cable Act itself continued to provide for the loss of citizenship by American women who married "aliens ineligible to citizenship." Besides excluding those women married to Asians, this exception applied to men who had deserted the U.S. military, those who had left the country to avoid the draft, and any who had withdrawn their Declaration of Intent to Naturalize, in order to avoid the military service.[3]. The Cable Act, itself, was amended in 1930, 1931, and 1934.[8]
In 2013, Daniel Swalm, the grandson of a Minnesota woman who had lost U.S. citizenship under Section 3 of the Expatriation Act of 1907 for marrying a Swedish immigrant and died without regaining her citizenship, began lobbying Congress to posthumously restore citizenship to women like his grandmother. He contacted his senator Al Franken, who in 2014 sponsored a resolution (S.Res. 402) expressing regret for the passage of the 1907 Act. The resolution passed the Senate on May 14.
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info to be used in editing:
Resources:
That Time American Women Lost Their citizenship Because They Married Foreigners
When Saying "I Do" Meant Giving Up Your U.S. Citizenship
https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2014/spring/citizenship.pdf
Expatriation Act ==World History
https://www.worldhistory.biz/modern-history/82386-expatriation-act-1907.html
Justice and Injustice in Law and Legal Theory
The Expatriation Act of 1907: How American Women Lost Their Citizenship Through Marriage in the Twentieth Century
https://blog.consource.org/post/78215541661/the-expatriation-act-of-1907-how-american-women
Text of Sections 3 and 4: (External link: https://www.historycentral.com/documents/Expatriation.html )
SEC. 3. That any American woman who marries a foreigner shall take the nationality of her husband. At the termination of the marital relation she may resume her American citizenship, if abroad, by registering as an American citizen within one year with a consul of the United States, or by returning to reside in the United States, or, if residing in the United States at the termination of the marital relation, by continuing to reside therein
SEC. 4. That any foreign woman who acquires American citizenship by marriage to an American shall be assumed to retain the same after the termination of the marital relation if she continue to reside in the United States, unless she makes formal renunciation thereof before a court having jurisdiction to naturalize aliens, or if she resides abroad she may retain her citizenship by registering as such before a United States consul within one year after the termination of such marital relation.
Office of Alien Property https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/131.html
NARA, Record Group 131:
131.2 Records of the Office of Alien Property Custodian and its
Successors Relating to Activities Arising from World War I
1898-1946
History: Office of Alien Property Custodian established by EO 2729-A, October 12, 1917, under authority of the Trading with the Enemy Act (40 Stat. 411), October 6, 1917, to assume control and dispose of enemy-owned property in the United States and its possessions. Abolished by EO 6694, May 1, 1934, with functions and records transferred to Alien Property Bureau (APB), newly established in Claims Division of Justice Department. APB superseded, December 9, 1941, by Alien Property Division (APD), established in Justice Department to administer enemy property seized upon U.S. entry into World War II. APD abolished by EO 9142, April 21, 1942, with functions, personnel, and property transferred to Office of Alien Property Custodian, Office for Emergency Management. See 131.2.
Smithsonian article:
The historian Adam Hodges found that even women who were American citizens, if married to German and Austro-Hungarian immigrants, were classified as enemy aliens—and they alone lost a combined $25 million in property to the government.
Journal of UNLV
https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1028&context=psi_sigma_siren
Sources
edit- ^ a b c d e Bredbenner, Candace Lewis. "A Nationality of Her Own". publishing.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2018-11-19.
- ^ "American Citizenship Rights of Women (hearing March 1933)" (PDF). 2018-11-25.
- ^ a b Roche, John P. (1950). "The Loss of American Nationality. The Development of Statutory Expatriation". University of Pennsylvania Law Review. 99 (1): 25–71. doi:10.2307/3309397. ISSN 0041-9907. JSTOR 3309397.
- ^ "The Expatriation Act of 1907: How American Women Lost Their Citizenship Through Marriage in the Twentieth Century". ConSource. Retrieved 2018-11-19.
- ^ Commons, John R. (1925). "Law and Economics". The Yale Law Journal. 34 (4): 371–382. doi:10.2307/788562. ISSN 0044-0094. JSTOR 788562.
- ^ Sarat, Austin; Kearns, Thomas, eds. (1996). Justice and Injustice in Law and Legal Theory. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 9780472096251.
- ^ Flournoy, Richard W. (1923). "The New Married Women's Citizenship Law". The Yale Law Journal. 33 (2): 159–170. doi:10.2307/789418. JSTOR 789418. Retrieved 2018-12-09.
- ^ Cott, Nancy F. (1998). "Marriage and Women's Citizenship in the United States, 1830-1934". The American Historical Review. 103 (5): 1440–1474. doi:10.2307/2649963. JSTOR 2649963. Retrieved 2018-12-09.