The Alien Registration Act, popularly known as the Smith Act, 76th United States Congress, 3rd session, ch. 439, , is a United States federal statute that was enacted on June 28, 1940. It set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government by force or violence, and required all foreigners over the age of 14 to register with the federal government.
Approximately 215 people were indicted under the legislation, including alleged communists and socialists. Prosecutions under the Smith Act continued until a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 1957 reversed a number of convictions under the Act as being unconstitutional. The law has been amended several times.
Legislative history The U.S. government has attempted on several occasions to regulate speech in wartime, beginning with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. During and following World War I, a series of statutes addressed a complex of concerns that included enemy espionage and disruption, anti-war activism, and the radical ideologies of anarchism and Bolshevism, all identified with immigrant communities. Congressional investigations of 'extremist' organizations in 1935 resulted in calls for the renewal of those statutes. The Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 addressed a particular concern but not the general problem.Steele, Richard W., Free Speech in the Good War (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), pp.39-42. As U.S. involvement in World War II seemed ever more likely, the possibility of betrayal from within gained currency. The Spanish Civil War had given this possibility a name, a "fifth column", and the popular press in the U.S. blamed internal subversion for the fall of France to the Nazis in just six weeks in May and June 1940.Steele, Free Speech, pp.74-5. Patriotic organizations and the popular press raised alarms and provided examples. In July 1940, Time magazine called fifth-column talk a "national phenomenon".Steele, Free Speech, pp.75-6.
In the late 1930s, several legislative proposals tried to address sedition itself and the underlying concern with the presence of large numbers of foreigners, including citizens of countries with which the U.S. might soon be at war. An omnibus bill that included several measures died in 1939, but the Senate Judiciary Committee revived it in May 1940. It drew some of its language from statutes recently passed at the state level, and combined anti-alien and anti-sedition sections with language crafted specifically to help the government in its attempts to deport Australian-born union leader Harry Bridges. With little debate, the House of Representatives approved it by a vote of 382 to 4, with 45 not voting, on June 22, 1940, the day the French signed an armistice with Germany. The Senate did not take a recorded vote.Steele, Free Speech, p.81. It was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 28, 1940. The Act is referred to by the name of its principal author, Rep. Howard W. Smith (Democrat-Virginia), a leader of the anti-labor bloc in Congress.Grantham, Dewey. The South in Modern America: A Region at Odds (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2001), p.18.
A few weeks later, the New York Times discussed the context in which the alien registration provisions were included and the Act passed:The New York Times: Delbert Clark, "Aliens to Begin Registering Tuesday", August 25, 1940, accessed June 27, 2012
Also in June, the President transferred the Immigration and Naturalization Service from the Department of Labor to the Department of Justice (DOJ), demonstrating that the federal government viewed its alien population as a security concern as war grew more likely.
In mid-August, officials of the DOJ held a two-day conference with state officials they called "Law Enforcement Problems of National Defense". Attorney General Jackson and FBI Director Hoover delineated the proper roles for federal and state authorities with respect to seditious activities. They successfully forestalled state regulation of aliens and found state officials receptive to their arguments that states needed to prevent vigilantism and protect aliens, while trusting federal authorities to use the Smith Act to deal with espionage and "fifth column" activities.Steele, Free Speech, pp.80-3; the New York Times: Frederick R. Barkley, "Crime Parley Puts Spy Issue up to FBI", August 7, 1940, accessed July 7, 2012
On October 13, 1941, the 77th United States Congress amended the Smith Act, authorizing a criminal offense for the unlawful reproduction of alien registration receipt cards.
Provisions Title I. Subversive activities. The Smith Act set federal criminal penalties that included fines or imprisonment for as long as twenty years, and denied all employment by the federal government for five years following a conviction for anyone who:
The Smith Act's prohibition of proselytizing on behalf of revolution repeated language found in previous statutes. It went beyond earlier legislation in outlawing action to "organize any society, group, or assembly" that works toward that end and then extended that prohibition to "membership" or "affiliation"—a term it did not define—with such a group.
Title II. Deportation. Because the Supreme Court in Kessler v. Strecker (1939) held that the Immigration Act of 1918 allowed the deportation of an alien only if his membership in a group advocating the violent overthrow of the government had not ceased,Steele, Free Speech, 102–03 the Smith Act allowed for the deportation of any alien who "at the time of entering the United States, or ... at any time thereafter" was a member of or affiliated with such an organization.Section 23
The Smith Act expanded the grounds for deporting aliens to include weapons violations and abetting illegal immigration. It added heroin to the category of drug violations.
Title III. Alien registration. The Smith Act required aliens applying for visas to register and be fingerprinted. Every other alien resident of the United States:
Registration would be under oath and include:
Guardians had to register minors, who had to register in person and be fingerprinted within 30 days of their fourteenth birthday. Post offices were designated as the location for registering and fingerprinting. Aliens were to notify the government if their residence changed, and to confirm their residence every three months. Penalties included fines up to $1000 and up to six months imprisonment.
Alien registration Registrations began on August 27, 1940, and the newly created Alien Registration Division of the Immigration and Naturalization Service planned to register between three and three and a half million people at 45,000 post offices by December 26, after which those not registered became subject to the Smith Act's penalties. The Division held the view that registration benefited the alien, who "is now safeguarded from bigoted persecution." The alien was to bring a completed form to a post office and be fingerprinted. Registration cards would be delivered by mail and would serve "in the nature of protection of the alien later runs afoul of the police" . The details required for registration had been expanded since the passage of the Act to include race, employer's name and address, relatives in the U.S., organization memberships, application for citizenship, and military service record for the U.S. or any other country. Solicitor General Francis Biddle had responsibility for the Division, which was headed by Earl G. Harrison during its first six months."Resigns Alien Registry Post". New York Times. January 22, 1941. Accessed June 27, 2012. In a radio address meant to reassure aliens, Biddle said: "It was not the intention of Congress to start a witch hunt or a program of persecution." Calling it a "patriotic duty," he said:"Alien Registration Lauded by Lehman". New York Times. August 25, 1940. Accessed June 27, 2012. As registration began, New York's liberal Gov. Herbert Lehman said the process was "designed to protect the loyal aliens" and urged cooperation. Others like New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia explained that fingerprinting, though associated with criminal prosecutions, implied no "stigma". He issued a proclamation that said: "Fingerprinting is not degrading or humiliating. It is the most modern and scientific means of accurate identification." He and his staff had there fingerprints taken on the first day of registration.
Government efforts to encourage registration asked citizens to participate:"Alien Registration Required". American Journal of Nursing 40(9). September 1940. p 985.
The number registered passed 4.7 million by January 1941."Alien Total So Far Put at 4,741,971". New York Times. January 13, 1941. Accessed June 27, 2012.
After the U.S. declared war in 1941, federal authorities used data gathered from alien registrations to identify citizens of enemy nations and take 2,971 of them into custody by the end of the year.Robert F. Whitney (January 4, 1942). "Only 2,971 Enemy Aliens are Held". New York Times. Accessed June 27, 2012. A different set of requirements was imposed during the war on enemy aliens, citizens of nations with which the U.S. was at war,"Biddle Warns Aliens to Register by Today". New York Times. February 28, 1942. Accessed June 29, 2012. by presidential proclamations of January 14, 1942,"Brief Overview of the World War II Enemy Alien Control Program". National Archives. Accessed July 7, 2012. Each of three proclamations named a different enemy nation. without reference to the Smith Act.
In December 1950, following an Immigration and Naturalization Service hearing, Claudia Jones, a citizen of Trinidad, was ordered deported from the U.S. for violating the McCarran Act as an alien (non-U.S. citizen) who had joined the Communist Party (CPUSA). The evidence of her party membership included information she provided when completing her Alien Registration form on December 24, 1940."Ouster Ordered of Claudia Jones". New York Times. December 22, 1950. Accessed June 27, 2012.
Legal proceedings Harry Bridges