Chapter XVI: Section 11: of the law of May 9, 1918, devoted entirely to the subject (2)

When the expense of becoming a citizen is taken into consideration, the bearing of income on acquiring citizenship is important. Add to that the obvious fact that wages and general economic and social status tend to improve in the individual case with length of residence, and the situation becomes not only clear but just what common sense would suggest as probable. It ought not to require elaborate argument to substantiate the assertion that the immigrant in his early years in America is too busy getting a job and an economic footing, acquiring a working knowledge of the language, overcoming the general prejudice against him as a foreigner, and so on, to pay much attention to the question of becoming a citizen; besides which he must, in any event, live here five years before he can do anything effective in the matter.

VOTING ON “FIRST PAPERS”

The present state of public opinion in the United States on the subject of the foreign born is very different from what it was in the earlier years of our development; this is largely, though not entirely, due to the emotions and disclosures connected with the war. When we were opening up the vast domain west of the Alleghanies, and there was great need of human labor to clear forests, break virgin land, and help in the beginnings of our industries, the immigrant was a welcome helper, and every inducement was offered to entice him to come and settle on even terms with the native born. One of these inducements was citizenship, for all intents and purposes, on very easy terms.

Prior to 1910 there were ten states in which aliens were permitted to vote on their mere declaration of intention to become citizens--subject, however, to the same conditions of length of residence in state, county, and election district as citizens. These were Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, and Texas.[112]

That this easy acquisition of the suffrage would act as a deterrent to the completion of citizenship was to be expected, and that it has indeed so acted appears in a comparison of the proportions of foreign-born males of voting age holding “first papers” only, in the alien-suffrage states, with those in states requiring full citizenship as a prerequisite to voting.

TABLE XII

PER CENT OF FOREIGN BORN OF VOTING AGE HAVING FIRST PAPERS, AND
ALSO THE PER CENT IN STATES PERMITTING ALIENS TO VOTE ON FIRST
PAPERS, COMPARED WITH CERTAIN STATES NOT PERMITTING ALIENS TO VOTE
ON FIRST PAPERS, FOR 1900 AND 1910{1}

=======================================================================
| | | | PER CENT
| NUMBER OF | | | HAVING
| FOREIGN BORN |PER CENT| PER CENT | FIRST
| OF VOTING AGE |INCREASE|NATURALIZED| PAPERS
| | | | ONLY
STATE |---------------------+--------/-----------/----------
| 1900 | 1910 |1900 to| 1900| 1910| 1900| 1910
| | | 1910 | | | |
-----------------+----------+----------+-------+-----+-----+-----+-----
United States | 4,904,270| 6,646,817| 35.5 | 58.0| 45.6| 8.4| 8.6
Alien-suffrage | | | | | | |
states (total) | 716,975| 857,681| 19.6 | 59.4| 52.3| 12.3| 9.7
Nonalien-suffrage| | | | | | |
states (total) | 1,275,162| 1,645,291| 29.0 | 67.8| 53.0| 6.5| 7.4
=======================================================================

[note 1: _United States Census_, 1910, vol. i, p. 1071.]

In 1900 the ratio of those holding declarations only was about 12 to 6 in favor Of the alien-suffrage states. By 1910 this difference had diminished to about 12 to 9. If aliens of any race were interested in voting as soon as they had a chance, this interest certainly would have manifested itself in the states permitting them to vote on the “first papers” which they could get, if they chose, an hour after landing.

WHAT BECOMES OF THE DECLARATIONS?

To what extent does the declarant follow up his declaration of intention to apply for citizenship? The reports of the Commissioner of Naturalization give each year, by states, the number of declarations of intention (“first papers”) and the number of petitions for final naturalization. The most striking fact apparent in these statistics is that the number of declarations is far in excess of the number of petitions--to say nothing of what may happen to the latter by way of denials when they reach the naturalizing judge.

Now, it must be remembered that these totals are not directly comparable. In no event can the final petition follow the declaration by less than two years, and the law now permits a lapse of seven years before the declaration must expire. If the number of declarations and petitions were fairly uniform from year to year, or bore any constant relation to each other, something might be inferred from a comparison of totals for a seven-year period. Since, however, the number of petitions, as well as the number of declarations, increased rapidly from 1908 to 1918, no sound conclusion can be reached without taking such variations into account.

For example, none of the 136,698 declarations of intention filed in 1908 could become the basis for petitions until 1910, and all would be valid until 1915. In 1910 the number of petitions filed was only 56,038, and seven years later it was 123,855. There is no way of knowing how the petitions which actually consummated the declarations filed in 1908 were distributed among the years 1910-14; but it would seem to be sufficiently dependable to take the average of those years, which would be 88,670. Instead, therefore, of comparing the 43,864 petitions of 1908 with the 136,698 declarations of that year, it is proper to compare the 136,698 with the average of 88,670 which gives a ratio of 64.9.

The ratio of about 65 petitions to each 100 declarations is in fact corroborated by other calculations, as will appear below. Take, for instance, the figures[113] for the period of five years 1908-12, inclusive:

TABLE XIII

NUMBER OF DECLARATIONS FILED EACH YEAR, 1908-12, WITH AVERAGE
NUMBER AND RATIO OF PETITIONS CONSUMMATING IN FIVE-YEAR PERIOD
ENDING EACH YEAR

===========================================================
| | AVERAGE |
| NUMBER OF | NUMBER OF |
YEAR IN WHICH | DECLARATIONS | PETITIONS IN | RATIO OF
DECLARATIONS | FILED IN | FIVE-YEAR | PETITIONS TO
WERE FILED | EACH YEAR | PERIOD ENDING | DECLARATIONS
| | EACH YEAR |
--------------+--------------+---------------+-------------
1908 | 136,698 | 88,670 | 64.9
1909 | 143,212 | 98,926 | 69.1
1910 | 167,226 | 105,799 | 63.3
1911 | 186,157 | 113,137 | 60.8
1912 | 169,142 | 116,183 | 68.7
| | |
Average | 160,487 | 104,543 | 65.1
===========================================================

Take it another way, remembering that each declaration of intention has a valid lifetime of seven years--five after the two which must elapse before it can be made the basis of a final petition. Assuming that the petitions consummating the declarations of any given year are distributed approximately evenly over the five-year period during which they are valid for that purpose, then one-twenty-fifth of the declarations of 1908-18 covered by Table XIII eventuated in petitions in 1910, two-twenty-fifths in 1911, and so on, reaching five-twenty-fifths in 1914, and falling again to one-twenty-fifth in 1918. The following diagrammatic table, tracing out on this basis the probable distribution of the declarations consummated by the petitions filed from 1908 to 1918, inclusive, shows graphically the weight which should be given to the petitions of each year, in calculating the ratio of declarations to petitions. It fully substantiates the showing of Table XIII, and justifies the assertion that 35 out of every 100 declarants fail to file petitions within the period now fixed by the law.

TABLE XIV

SHOWING NUMBER OF DECLARATIONS FILED IN EACH YEAR DURING THE PERIOD
1908-1912, AND THE NUMBER OF FINAL PETITIONS FOR NATURALIZATION
ASSUMED TO HAVE BEEN BASED UPON THOSE DECLARATIONS IN EACH YEAR
DURING WHICH, RESPECTIVELY, THE DECLARATIONS WERE VALID

======================================================================
DECLARATIONS PETITIONS
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NUMBER | DATE DATE | WT. | ASSUMED
| | | NUMBER
--------+--------------------------------------------+-----+----------
| 1910 | 1 | 55,038
| 1911 | 2 | 147,288
136,698 | 1908 1912 | 3 | 286,881
143,212 | 1909 1913 | 4 | 380,744
167,226 | 1910 1914 | 5 | 619,275
186,157 | 1911 1915 | 4 | 425,268
169,142 | 1912 1916 | 3 | 324,027
| 1917 | 2 | 264,640
| 1918 | 1 | 110,416
| | +----------
TOTAL 802,435 | 25 | 2,613,577
AVERAGE 160,487 | | 104,543
PERCENTAGE 160,487 into 104,543 | | 65.1
======================================================================

The chances of error in this calculation lie in the facts (1) that until September, 1913, declarations made under the law as it existed prior to 1906 (the so-called “old-law declarations”) were held to be valid, no matter how old their date; (2) that the decision of the United States District Court,[114] applying the seven-year limit to all outstanding declarations, undoubtedly hastened many petitions in 1913-14, and (3) that the effects of the war in Europe probably were in some cases to expedite and in others to delay or to prevent the filing of petitions. Undoubtedly some of the petitions of 1910, 1911, 1912, and 1913 are attributable to declarations more than seven years old, and some which in normal conditions would have been filed during the period 1914-18 were not filed.

It may be assumed, however, that these factors to a great extent offset each other, and that in any case their effect is negligible. And if it should appear that a substantial number of “old-law declarations,” originating prior to 1908, were accepted up to 1918 by those courts which did not promptly accept the seven-year decision, it would mean only that the percentage of 65.1 is too high; that _more_ than 35 declarations out of 100 do not eventuate in petitions.

Right here it must be emphasized that the figure 65.1 applies not to naturalization, but to petitions for naturalization, which is a very different thing indeed. We shall elsewhere learn[115] that 11.5 per cent of all petitions are denied--more than half of the denials being for reasons of a technical character.

The average of 35.1 of “sterile” declarations is that for the United States as a whole; but the figure is by no means constant or uniform. In some states the proportion of petitions to declarations is very much lower than that; in some it is very much higher.

In Indiana, for example, the figures show a fruition in petitions of only 26.4, or a little more than 1 in 4, while in Wisconsin the petitions exceed the declarations by 15.7 per cent. As the above table shows, in four states the proportion of petitions exceeded 80 per cent, while 14 scaled down from 80 to 70 per cent. Twenty-six states show percentages below the 65.1 of the United States as a whole.

TABLE XV

SHOWING RATIO OF DECLARATIONS OF INTENTION TO PETITIONS FOR
NATURALIZATION, BY STATES, BASED ON YEARLY AVERAGE NUMBER OF
DECLARATIONS, 1908 TO 1912, AND YEARLY AVERAGE (WEIGHTED){1}

=====================================================
STATE | RATIO || STATE | RATIO
---------------------+-------++---------------+------
United States | 65.1 || Illinois | 64.4
Wisconsin | 115.7 || Colorado | 64.3
Arizona | 94.2 || Nebraska | 64.0
North Carolina | 93.1 || New York | 64.0
Mississippi | 86.7 || North Dakota | 63.7
Ohio | 78.8 || Oregon | 63.7
Kentucky | 77.5 || Kansas | 62.9
New Jersey | 76.5 || Tennessee | 62.8
Maine | 76.1 || Minnesota | 62.7
Vermont | 75.6 || Iowa | 60.9
South Carolina | 75.3 || Texas | 59.5
Georgia | 74.3 || Delaware | 58.4
Montana | 73.9 || Oklahoma | 58.3
Alabama | 73.0 || Louisiana | 56.4
Maryland | 72.2 || West Virginia | 55.6
Arkansas | 72.0 || Massachusetts | 53.7
Michigan | 71.9 || Alaska | 53.0
California | 71.2 || Florida | 52.5
Pennsylvania | 70.9 || Nevada | 52.4
Connecticut | 69.6 || Utah | 50.5
Rhode Island | 69.6 || Washington | 50.3
Virginia | 69.3 || Idaho | 48.6
Wyoming | 68.1 || Missouri | 45.2
New Mexico | 67.0 || South Dakota | 44.1
District of Columbia | 66.8 || Hawaii | 39.9
New Hampshire | 66.5 || Indiana | 26.4
=====================================================

[note 1: The averages are weighted as per the table above, p. 221.]

The most important question raised by the results of this calculation is whether it is reasonable to expect that more than one out of every three declarations of intention should thus fail of fruition--that thirty-five out of every hundred aliens who declare their intention to apply for citizenship should fail to do so. The answer to this question, and the reasons for the failure, are not discoverable in the figures themselves, nor in any documents to be found anywhere. The reasons are human reasons, hidden in the bosoms and written in the personal experience, of men and women who started out after the privileges of American citizenship, and changed their minds.

We have some illuminating data, first-hand, from some twenty-six thousand aliens who did follow up their declarations, and afford in the process a good deal of extraordinarily interesting and enlightening information, the study of which is set forth in the succeeding chapter of this volume.

VIII

LATER STATISTICS--IN WHICH SOME TWENTY-SIX THOUSAND PETITIONERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES

When, early in the progress of the Americanization Study, it became apparent that almost no adequate statistical data were available in regard to naturalized citizens, or the really significant aspects of the naturalization process, it was decided to tap the mine of information existing in the original documents lying neglected in the files of the Naturalization Bureau at Washington, and to collate and analyze the significant facts for the latest year of reasonably normal conditions antedating the war. Obviously, that latest year would be that between July 1, 1913, and June 30, 1914.

The consent of the Bureau was readily obtained, with the offer of all possible co-operation. It should be stated once for all, indeed, that at every stage of the Study the Naturalization Bureau, in both its headquarters and field service, has withheld nothing in the way of information and assistance--save only to the extent to which practically all of its official correspondence is characteristically tardy by reason of the short-handed and overworked condition of its clerical force.

It was discovered immediately, however, that the conditions of the files at Washington were such as to prohibit the segregation of the documents for any single year without an inordinate, and in the circumstances impracticable, expenditure of labor and time. The only recourse, then, was to the local courts, where are kept on file, in more available shape and in chronological order, duplicates of the petitions for naturalization and record of the court’s action upon each. But, since this required the examination of the documents in the country-wide offices of the clerks of the courts themselves, it was impracticable to make the inspection complete, as would have been the case had the documents been suitably arranged and available all in one place.

MORE THAN A FIFTH OF ALL PETITIONERS

Twenty-eight courts, with a total of 26,284 naturalization petitions filed during the fiscal year 1913-14, were visited during 1919, with the cordial co-operation of the clerks in charge. And inasmuch as this total number of petitions examined constituted more than one in five (21.2 per cent) of the whole number of petitions for naturalization (123,855) filed in that fiscal year in the whole United States, it would seem to represent a large enough number and a sufficient variety of local, racial, and other conditions to warrant a fair degree of confidence in the representative character of the results.

FROM TWENTY-EIGHT REPRESENTATIVE COURTS

The courts studied included two Federal and three state courts in New York City, having the great bulk of naturalization business; a number of courts in industrial districts, and some smaller ones taking in the business from outlying rural regions. Following is a list of the courts from which the information was derived:

State court, Auburn, Maine
State court, Worcester, Massachusetts
State court, Bridgeport, Connecticut
State court, Middletown, Connecticut
State court, Norwich, Connecticut
Federal courts, New York City
State courts, New York City
State court, White Plains, New York
State court, Mineola, Long Island, New York
State court, Troy, New York
State court, Ithaca, New York
State court, Rochester, New York
State court, Elmira, New York
State court, Paterson, New Jersey
State court, New Brunswick, New Jersey
State court, Easton, Pennsylvania
Federal court, Cleveland, Ohio
State court, Cleveland, Ohio
State court, Akron, Ohio
Federal court, Cincinnati, Ohio
State court, Galesburg, Illinois
State court, Iowa City, Iowa
State court, Portland, Oregon
Federal court, Seattle, Washington
State court, Seattle, Washington

And it is apparent that the courts from which the data were derived are widely scattered through the East, Middle West, and Far West, and are of a varied character as regards nature of racial and other characteristics which might affect the human factors in the matter. It is to be regretted that there are none from the South and Southwest; but there seems no reason to suppose that they would show materially different results.

IN A REASONABLY NORMAL YEAR

Doubtless any particular year selected for the study would present certain special conditions calling for discount of the results. This is true of the year 1913-14. That year chanced to mark the end of the validity of the “old-law declarations”;--that is to say that in that year the seven-year limit upon the life of a declaration of intention to become a citizen, established for the first time by the Naturalization Act of 1906, was declared by the United States Court, 1914,[116] to apply to declarations made prior to the enactment of that statute. Undoubtedly anticipation of this tended on the whole to increase, perhaps materially, the number of petitions consummating those old declarations. On the other hand, there were doubtless many declarants of long ago who were discouraged by the decision from filing petitions at all. We shall observe later the extent to which that decision has been a factor in the rejection of the petitions of a large number of persons otherwise presumably eligible--excluded for that reason alone.

Obviously it was desirable to select a year as recent as possible and at the same time to avoid any period affected by the complications introduced by the existence of the war in Europe. It is felt that the year 1913-14 is sufficiently typical for all practical purposes, and that the applicants for citizenship analyzed herein are sufficiently representative generally of the foreign born who seek to join us; whatever may be said of the great number who were swept into citizenship helter-skelter during and since the war by naturalization of soldiers and sailors on the sole ground of military service.[117]

THE RACIAL GROUPS ARE TYPICAL

Some of the important conclusions supported by these statistics naturally raise the question whether the petitions studied are, in respect of country of origin, really typical of the whole foreign-born population of the country. This question seems to be disposed of by a compilation showing the racial distribution of the petitioners studied, compared with the racial distribution of _all_ unnaturalized foreign-born white aliens 21 years of age or older in the country as a whole, and in the nine large cities covered by this investigation.

TABLE XVI

COMPARISON BY RACES OF (1) A NATURALIZATION PETITIONERS STUDIED,
(2) UNNATURALIZED MALES TWENTY-ONE YEARS OR OVER IN NINE CITIES{1}
WHERE PETITIONS WERE FILED, AND IN THE COUNTRY AS A WHOLE, IN
1910{2}

========================================================================
| | UNNATURALIZED{3}| UNNATURALIZED
| | FOREIGN-BORN | FOREIGN-BORN
| | WHITE MALES | WHITE MALES
COUNTRY | PETITIONERS | TWENTY-ONE | TWENTY-ONE
OF BIRTH | STUDIED | YEARS OF AGE | YEARS OF AGE
| 1913-14 | AND OVER IN | AND OVER IN
| | NINE CITIES, | THE UNITED STATES
| | IN 1910 | IN 1910
-----------------+--------+-------+---------+-------+-----------+-------
| Number | Per | Number | Per | Number | Per
| | Cent | | Cent | | Cent
-----------------+--------+-------+---------+-------+-----------+-------
All countries | 26,284 | 100.0 | 437,517 | 100.0 | 2,837,307 | 100.0
Russia | 7,864 | 29.9 | 107,393 | 24.5 | 481,532 | 17.0
Austria | 3,875 | 14.7 | 59,252 | 13.5 | 407,977 | 14.4
Italy | 3,591 | 13.7 | 98,595 | 22.5 | 523,964 | 18.5
Hungary | 2,443 | 9.3 | 31,194 | 7.1 | 200,274 | 7.1
Germany | 2,305 | 8.8 | 35,425 | 8.1 | 219,133 | 7.7
Ireland | 1,773 | 6.7 | 16,453 | 3.8 | 116,613 | 4.1
England | 831 | 3.2 | 14,807 | 3.4 | 112,317 | 4.0
Sweden | 616 | 2.3 | 8,675 | 2.0 | 92,289 | 3.3
Rumania | 569 | 2.2 | 5,778 | 1.3 | 17,498 | 0.6
Norway | 389 | 1.5 | 4,084 | 0.9 | 66,802 | 2.4
Canada | 385 | 1.5 | 9,229 | 2.1 | 176,868 | 6.2
Scotland | 288 | 1.1 | 5,299 | 1.2 | 38,940 | 1.4
Denmark | 200 | 0.8 | 1,881 | 0.4 | 27,045 | 1.0
Switzerland | 197 | 0.8 | 4,039 | 0.9 | 16,942 | 1.6
Finland | 144 | 0.6 | 2,395 | 0.5 | 43,737 | 1.5
Turkey in Asia | 142 | 0.5 | 1,883 | 0.4 | 22,776 | 0.8
Holland | 139 | 0.5 | 930 | 0.2 | 18,116 | 0.6
Turkey in Europe | 92 | 0.3 | 1,650 | 0.4 | 19,546 | 0.7
Greece | 90 | 0.3 | 5,393 | 1.2 | 62,758 | 2.2
France | 86 | 0.3 | 4,116 | 0.9 | 21,457 | 0.8
Wales | 32 | 0.1 | 294 | 0.1 | 6,424 | 0.2
Spain | 23 | 0.1 | 932 | 0.2 | 10,037 | 0.4
Portugal | 8 | .... | 92 | .... | 19,557 | 0.7
No information | 23 | .... | .... | .... | .... | ....
Other | 179 | 0.8 | 17,728 | 4.1 | 114,705 | 4.0
========================================================================

[note 1: Cleveland, New York (Boroughs of Manhattan, Bronx, and
Queens); Bridgeport, Connecticut; Cincinnati; Paterson, New Jersey;
Portland, Oregon; Rochester, New York; Seattle, Washington;
Worcester, Massachusetts.]

[note 2: _United States Census_, 1910, vol. 1, chap. xi.]

[note 3: Includes aliens and those holding first papers.]

Considerable variations will be observed between the racial distribution of petitioners studied and that of the unnaturalized but potentially naturalizable males in the whole country in 1910. For instance, while 18.5 per cent of the unnaturalized persons in the United States were born in Italy, only 13.7 per cent of the petitioners studied were Italians; on the other hand, while 29.9 per cent of the petitioners studied were from Russia, only 17 per cent of the unnaturalized males in the United States in 1910 were Russians.

These discrepancies do not prove, however, that even in such cases the groups of petitioners studied are not representative of the foreign-born population, because racial distribution varies considerably from state to state. Fortunately, moreover, it is possible to compile from the census figures to show by country of origin the distribution of unnaturalized white males in the cities covered by the study, and these figures, also included in the last column of the table, show conclusively that the racial distribution in those cities is fairly typical. The percentages do not exactly agree, nor is that to be expected. In the first place, there is a difference of three years between the times represented respectively in the two sets of figures--years during which there was a heavy immigration. The figures given for the unnaturalized are not complete, inasmuch as for those cities the citizenship status of 9.8 per cent of the foreign-born males 21 years of age and over was not reported by the 1910 census. Furthermore, the petitions studied were not all from these nine cities, although nearly nine out of ten (86.8 per cent) of them were. On the whole, the nativity distribution in those nine cities of the petitioners studied coincides remarkably with that of the unnaturalized but naturalizable males.

RELATIVE “CIVIC AND POLITICAL INTEREST”

In Table X, page 211, the relative numbers and percentages are arranged in the _order of magnitude_, and this arrangement is illuminating in its display of what the Immigration Commission and the writers who have taken their cue therefrom have interpreted as “civic and political interest” exhibited in relative desire for citizenship. With the exception of Italy the races from the sources of largest recent immigration show a higher proportion naturalized than the proportion they represented in the population. It can fairly be said that the desire to become citizens is as evident among these immigrants of the new races as among those of the earlier, entirely leaving out of consideration the length of residence which operates in favor of the older immigrants.

HOW DID THESE PETITIONERS FARE?

How did these applicants for citizenship fare? However much they may have desired citizenship, these of the “new immigration” and the “old”--did they get it? Did they pass the examinations? And as regards the reasons for denial of those who were rejected, how did the “recent” races account for themselves in respect of those matters which really go to the questions of moral and intellectual fitness?

Well, to begin with, the percentage of all denials (3,033) among these more than 26,000 petitioners was 11.5--almost exactly that (11.2) of the whole United States during the entire period of eleven years, 1908-18, as shown by the reports of the Commissioner of Naturalization. Here appears a compilation analyzing _all_ the denials during the period 1908-18.

TABLE XVII

COMPARISON OF CAUSES OF DENIAL FOR THE YEARS 1908-18 AND 1913-19
FROM COMMISSIONER OF NATURALIZATION REPORTS, AND DENIALS OF 26,284
PETITIONERS STUDIED

======================================================================
| DENIALS
+---------------------------------+--------------
| Naturalization Reports | Cases Studied
+----------------+----------------+ 1913-14
CAUSES | 1908-18 | 1913-14 |
+---------+------+---------+------+--------+-----
| Number | Per | Number | Per | Number | Per
| | Cent | | Cent | | Cent
---------------------+---------+------+---------+------+--------+-----
Want of prosecution | 33,493 | 31.2 | 3,856 | 29.4 | 689 | 22.7
Incompetent Witnesses| 28,262 | 26.3 | 3,982 | 30.2 | 422 | 13.9
Declaration invalid | 9,187 | 8.5 | 1,148 | 8.7 | 1,296 | 42.7
Ignorance | 11,109 | 10.3 | 1,147 | 8.7 | 220 | 7.2
Miscellaneous | 6,098 | 5.7 | 553 | 4.2 | 147 | 4.8
Immoral character | 4,269 | 4.0 | 588 | 4.5 | 59 | 1.9
Insufficient | | | | | |
residence | 3,625 | 3.3 | 389 | 3.0 | 68 | 2.2
Petitioner’s motion | 2,824 | 2.6 | 381 | 2.9 | 51 | 1.7
No jurisdiction | 2,934 | 2.7 | 291 | 2.2 | 12 | 0.4
Deceased | 1,123 | 1.0 | 174 | 1.3 | 11 | 0.4
Unable to produce | | | | | |
witnesses or | | | | | |
deposition | 1,090 | 1.0 | 196 | 1.5 | 12 | 0.4
Already a citizen | 1,200 | 1.1 | 150 | 1.1 | 9 | 0.3
No certificate of | | | | | |
arrival | 1,197 | 1.1 | 179 | 1.4 | 14 | 0.5
Premature petition | 979 | 0.9 | 96 | 0.7 | 17 | 0.2