In re Sigelman

• Citation: 268 F. 217
• Decision Date: 10 November 1920
• Docket Number: 8876.
• Parties: In re SIGELMAN.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Missouri

268 F. 217

In re SIGELMAN.

No. 8876.

United States District Court, E.D. Missouri, Eastern Division.

November 10, 1920

M. R Bevington, Chief Naturalization Examiner, of St. Louis, Mo and E. W. Tobin, Asst. Naturalization Examiner.

FARIS District Judge.

After due consideration of the facts in the case of Sigelman, I am of opinion that this applicant ought not to be admitted to citizenship. Foreigners who come to the United States are not granted citizenship as a privilege which they may demand, but as an act of grace for which they should humbly sue. In the exercise of this grace the government of the United States may fix such conditions as it sees fit. Among the conditions now fixed by law are the requirements that the applicant must be law-abiding and a person of good moral character.

Since the status of citizenship involves reciprocal obligations as between state and citizen, it ought in fairness and in compensation for such obligations to be beneficial as well to the state as to the person who by naturalization seeks citizenship. To this end, the proofs exacted from the applicant, and the status and condition of the applicant, which these proofs disclose ought to be considered in the light of what such status and conditions promise to the government for the future, and with only negligible regard for the past. Luria v. United States, 231 U.S. 23, 34 Sup.Ct. 10, 58 L.Ed. 101. While the antecedent character of the applicant and his reputation and acts in the past are persuasive, as aiding the assumption of continuance upon a good course, yet the government is entitled, before it receives him, and before it assumes the obligation to protect him as a citizen, to consider whether the burdens entailed will not be so far greater than the benefits accruing to it as to make the naturalization of the applicant a bad or dangerous bargain, and a bargain utterly unfair to it s other millions of citizens.

Sigelman the applicant herein, left his wife and family in the province of Minsk in Russia in the year 1913, wherein, for aught that appears to the contrary, they now are. He desires citizenship now mainly for the purpose, as the case discloses, of procuring a passport and returning to Russia under the protection of the flag of the United States, which would follow his citizenship, in order that he may get his family and bring them to this country. Such a situation possesses appealing phases from a...