Expatriation Act of 1907

Section 1 provided for the issuance of non-renewable alien's passports of six months' validity to non-citizens who had lived in the United States for three years and had made a declaration of intention to become U.S. citizens. This provision was repealed by the Act of June 4, 1920 (41 Stat. 751, An Act Making appropriations for the Diplomatic and Consular Service for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1921).[8]

Section 2 contained three grounds for loss of United States citizenship: naturalization in a foreign state, taking an oath of allegiance to a foreign state, or specifically for a naturalized citizen residing for two years in one's foreign state of origin or five years in any other foreign state; it also provided that citizenship could be lost only in peacetime.[1] It was repealed by Section 504 of the Nationality Act of 1940; however, a saving clause in the 1940 Act provided that nothing in that Act would affect the status of those who had already lost citizenship prior to its passage.[4][9]

The background of this section goes back to a 1906 recommendation by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that the State Department form a commission of inquiry on the subject of nationality laws and their relation to US citizens living abroad. Acting Secretary of State Robert Bacon named international law expert James Brown Scott, Minister to the Netherlands David Jayne Hill, and Passports Bureau chief Gaillard Hunt to the commission.[10] Their report was published later that year.[11]

In addition to the provisions which actually ended up in the Act, the commission had also recommended that persons wishing to re-acquire US citizenship "be required to comply with the laws applicable to the naturalization of aliens". However, this was not adopted by Congress.[12] Another difference between the law and the previous practice of the State Department was that any oath to a foreign state became grounds for loss of US citizenship even if no foreign nationality was acquired by that oath.[13] Congress and the State Department were in agreement that loss of citizenship in wartime should not be permitted; this had been a long-standing principle in US law going all the way back to Talbot v. Janson in 1795, and Secretary of State Hamilton Fish had stated in the 1870s that permitting loss of citizenship in wartime "would be to afford a cover to desertion and treasonable aid to the public enemy."[14]

Section 3 provided for loss of citizenship by American women who married aliens.[1] The Act states that an American woman who marries an alien would lose her citizenship and take on her husband’s nationality. In actuality, whether or not she could do this was dependent on the laws of the country to which her husband belonged. If there was no similar law granting derivative citizenship to a married woman, she would then become stateless.[15][16]

As a result of her loss of citizenship, she forfeited her constitutional rights and could be subject to deportation and denial of reentry to the United States. Her opportunities for employment would be restricted — for example ineligible for any kind of government work and, in some states, for teaching in a public school. During WWI, any woman married to a German 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.[17][18]

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 could become a naturalized citizen only if her husband applied for, was accepted, and completed this naturalization. After the marriage was terminated, by annulment, divorce, or death, there were three ways for her to repatriate. If she had resided in the United States during her marriage, by remaining in this country, she would automatically regain citizenship. Those women who lived abroad during the marriage could return to the U.S. and establish residency, for automatic repatriation. 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.[19][15]

An act of Congress in 1855 had granted automatic citizenship to alien wives of men who were American citizens, native born or naturalized. 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.[7]

Petition of naturalization for Harriot Stanton Blatch submitted in 1911 in order to regain her American 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. These three women, all born in the United States and fighting for the right of American women to gain the vote, had married men who were not American citizens and, as a result of the Act of 1907, had lost their American citizenship.[20] Harriot Stanton Blatch attempted to regain her citizenship by filing a petition of naturalization in 1911. However, her husband was still living and had not applied for citizenship himself, so she was ineligible for reinstatement. Following his death, in 1915, she was repatriated following the terms of this act.

In 1917, Jeannette Rankin, Montana representative, introduced a bill to amend Section 3 of the 1907 Act. However, with the outbreak of WWI, the focus on American wives of alien husbands turned toward questions concerning their patriotic loyalty and the bill was not passed.[21]

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.[21][22] Two years after women gained the franchise, they were repealed by the Cable Act of 1922.[7][23] However, the Cable Act itself continued to provide for the loss of citizenship by American women who married "aliens ineligible to citizenship," namely Asians.[24] Besides excluding those women married to Asians, this exception also 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.[15] The Cable Act was amended in 1930, 1931, and 1934.[16]

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.[25] He contacted his senator Al Franken, who in 2014 sponsored a resolution (S.Res. 402) expressing regret for the passage of the 1907 Act.[26][27] The resolution passed the Senate on May 14, 2014.[28]

Section 5 provided that child born abroad to alien parents could acquire U.S. citizenship upon the naturalization of their parents during their minority, once the minor child him or herself began to reside permanently in the U.S. Section 6 provided that children born abroad to U.S. citizen parents would be required to swear an oath of allegiance before a U.S. consul upon reaching the age of majority if they wished to retain U.S. citizenship.[7] Both sections were repealed by Section 504 of the Nationality Act of 1940.[4]