I just unexpectedly saw, for the first time in my life, my grandfather's Declaration of Intention form to become a citizen of the United States. It dates from Jan. 6, 1923. In light of today’s immigration controversies, the form is noteworthy in a number of ways.
The form says that his previous country of residence was Turkey, and that he emigrated from Piraeus, Greece, reaching the port of New York on April 24, 1916. He was 20 years old.
My grandfather began this long journey in a town in Asia Minor known as Krini, which the Turks today call Cesme. The dying Ottoman state forced the family to leave Krini after it declined the invitation to convert to Islam. A Turkish soldier, full of casual menace, lounged against a wall nearby and watched them leave. When he saw my great-grandfather turn back to their now near-empty house, apparently to retrieve some forgotten item, the soldier, thinking he was going back to get some hidden gold, murdered him.
The rest of the family made it out, however. I have a photograph of them taken around this time hanging prominently in my office. They made their way to Crete, and ultimately boarded the Greek passenger steamship King Constantine, bound for the United States.
Nearly seven years later, on this Declaration of Intention form, my grandfather renounces allegiance to "Mohammed VI, Sultan of Turkey." While “F. H. Muller, special clerk” fills out most of this form in his handwriting, the name of the sultan is typed in; apparently there were so many people fleeing the Turks in those days that a number of forms were prepared for the exiles seeking U.S. citizenship.
By the time my grandfather got his form, however, it was already out of date. The nascent Turkish nationalist government had abolished the sultanate on Nov. 1, 1922, two months before my grandfather signed his form. Sultan Mehmed VI, or Mohammed VI, as the form has it, joined the many people he had sent into exile just over two weeks later, and died in Italy in 1926.
On the form, my grandfather states his "intention in good faith to become a citizen of the United States of America." So he was in the U.S. nearly seven years before becoming a citizen. It’s an interesting comparison with the practices that the Democrats have forced upon us in our own age. Self-serving politicians didn't fast-track my grandfather to gain a vote. He had to wait a good while to become a citizen.
He was working that whole time. His occupation is listed as a chef. He did not go on welfare, such as it was in those days, and he did not agitate against the U.S. government. The form says: "I am not an anarchist; I am not a polygamist nor a believer in the practice of polygamy." He was, in fact, a Greek Orthodox Christian, although that isn't listed on this particular form.
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It's striking that anarchy and polygamy are the two things that apparently every new citizen had to abjure. Regarding the latter, no one was agitating in favor of the practice on the grounds of freedom of religion. Does the naturalization form rule out anarchy and polygamy now? It does not. Today’s Declaration of Intention form is (of course) much longer than the 1923 form, clocking in at eight pages, but it never gets around to asking the people who are declaring their intention to become citizens of the United States anything about their allegiances.
If it did, we might have kept out, or have grounds to deport, a large number of jihadis. If we still had the part about rejecting polygamy, a lot of Sharia-adherent Muslims would not be admitted to the United States, or be subject to deportation if they lied on the form. Since Islamic jihadis are virtually all Sharia-adherent Muslims who are carrying out Allah’s command to “kill them wherever you find them” (Qur’an 2:191, 4:89, 4:91, cf. 9:5), we could keep out a few Islamic jihadis simply by screening for polygamists.
But such were the solutions of a simpler time. Today we are more sophisticated, and know enough to guard against “Islamophobia.” Nevertheless, my grandfather’s Declaration of Intention form made me wonder: What would our nation be like today if active efforts were still made to ensure that new citizens would adopt American values?
