A bill to permit aliens serving in the armed forces to obtain American citizenship without showing that they were legally admitted to the United States was introduced yesterday by Representative Dickstein of New York, chairman of the Immigration and Naturalization Committee.
Under present law, Mr. Dickstein explained, aliens are not permitted to volunteer for the armed forces, and although between 60,000 and 70,000 have been drafted they are not eligible for citizenship unless they can show that they were legally admitted. His bill would strike out this requirement and substitute a provision permitting any alien who was in the United States when it entered the war to be naturalized if he had been accepted by the military forces.
Owing to changes of names by aliens and congestion in the Federal courts, Mr. Dickstein said, more than 30,000 of the aliens now in uniform cannot prove their legal admission to this country and are therefore without any citizenship. Should one of them be captured by the enemy he would be liable to punishment as a spy.
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