An Easy Path to Citizenship

I'm with writer Greg Pak, who said on BlueSky yesterday,

The more of these fascist atrocities I see, the more I become an immigration maximalist. Let everyone in, give everyone work permits/green cards. Make it possible to get citizenship within a few months. Make it as easy as getting a driver's license.

saralovesyou, a Twin Cities genealogist and education researcher, wrote in response:

Prior to ~1917, there was no test of any sort you needed to take (they instituted a literacy test — in any language — to decrease immigrants like my family.)

There’s barely any info on pre-1906ish documents (in Minnesota at least). People would go together to the courthouse and be each other’s witnesses.

My great-grandfather Ilija was detained as a “likely public charge” but they let him in. He saved enough money to get his family over (my grandfather, his sister, and their mom). 

Not sure they’d have passed any literacy test at the time.

As a different example, my 2nd great-grandfather took his oath after being in the country for like 40 years. So much info. So detailed.

Now why—you may ask—did he decide to become a citizen after living here for 40ish years at the age of 71?

Look at 1896 in this timeline. My Irish immigrant great-grandfather naturalized in 1897. Probably for the same reason. The two needed to be citizens to vote at that point. 

But even the form Sara shares in her thread for the second great grandfather is nothing compared to the process a person goes through now to become a citizen.

My own most recent ancestors — an Irish great grandmother who arrived in the U.S. as a child in the late 19th century and Bavarian great-great grandparents who came in the 1870s — would have faced no barrier at all.

As is well known to anyone who pays attention, but was reiterated by The Other Ones by Lee comic today, all of the barriers started with exclusion of Asian immigrants. The Chinese Exclusion Act was signed in 1882, which began our sordid history of narrowing who can be a citizen and how people are allowed — or not — into this country.