President Roosevelt today received for signature a bill to extend for one year the time given to naturalized American citizens to return to the United States under the Nationality Act of 1940 which became effective today.
The measure, which affected several thousand naturalized American Jews now in Palestine, provided that naturalized citizens would lose their American citizenship unless they returned to the United States by October 14. Lacking transportation facilities, the American Jews in Palestine were in danger of being deprived of their citizenship, since the majority of them have been living in Palestine for more than the two years provided by the Nationality Act for countries where one can become a local citizen after a continuous two-year residence.
The Bill now before the President was passed yesterday in the Senate in time to beat the deadline when the provisions of the Nationality Act went into effect. The Immigration Committee of the Senate rushed the bill to the floor where it was approved by a voice vote, after a brief explanation by Senator Francis T. Maloney, Democrat, of Connecticut. The State Department has been gravely concerned for some time regarding the fate of the stranded naturalized Americans, fearing that they would be exposed to all sorts of perils in warring countries or occupied territories once deprived of their nationality.
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