Smith Act - Alien Registration

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 Biddle had responsibility for the Division, which was headed by Earl G. Harrison during its first six months. 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:

Many people still feel that there is a stigma attached to being fingerprinted. I have been fingerprinted, as have millions of others who served in the armed forces of the United States. All Federal civil service employees are fingerprinted. Even postal savings depositors are fingerprinted. I assure you that there is no stigma attached to being fingerprinted in this day and age.

Government efforts to encourage registration asked citizens to participate:

The Immigration and Naturalization Service asks for the cooperation of all citizens in carrying out the Alien Registration program in a friendly manner so that our large foreign population is not antagonized. Citizens may be of great help to their non-citizen neighbors or relatives by explaining to those who do not speak English well what the registration is, where aliens go to register, and what information they must give.

The number registered passed 4.7 million by January 1941.

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 them into custody by the end of the year. A different set of requirements was imposed during the war on enemy aliens, citizens of nations with which the U.S. was at war by presidential proclamations of January 14, 1942, 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.