The Acting Secretary of State to Minister Graves.
Washington, June 4, 1906.
Sir: The department has received your No. 61, May 15 last, reporting that many Americans of Swedish origin who return to Sweden are arrested by the military authorities for not having performed military service, but that they are always released after their nationality has been established. The minister for foreign affairs has accordingly suggested that as the arrests are nearly always due to [Page 1361] ignorance of English on the part of the local authorities, or on the part of those arrested, of the wording of the naturalization convention between this Government and Sweden, they would be avoided if each passport issued by your legation were accompanied by a translation thereof and of certain extracts from the convention.
You submit for this department’s approval a slip containing such a translation, which you attach to each passport issued by your legation to an American citizen of Swedish origin.
As you are doubtless aware, every American citizen of Swedish origin who obtains a passport from this department receives with his passport a “notice to American citizens formerly subjects of Sweden who contemplate returning to that country” (a copy of which is inclosed), which sets forth briefly the provisions of Swedish law which might apply to him upon his return to Sweden. This notice was prepared after correspondence with the legation at Stockholm, and the department is not informed of any changes in the laws of Sweden requiring amendment of the notice. When the department adopted it, in February, 1901, an instruction was sent to the legation at Stockholm, inclosing a copy of the noticea and saying: “It is sent to you merely for your information, and you are instructed that it is not intended to mean that there has been any abatement on the part of this Government in its policy of protecting equally naturalized and native-born Americans during their travels or sojourn abroad as the law requires, nor does the notice foreshadow any mitigation of such dissent as this Government may have expressed to the law or regulations of Sweden and Norway which may deny equality of treatment to all law-abiding American citizens, regardless of their place of birth.”
A large proportion of American citizens of Swedish origin who go abroad provide themselves before going with passports from this department, and only a small proportion, having neglected this precaution, apply to your legation for passports. The translation you propose to affix to your passports would therefore be useful only to this small proportion. The extract from the convention and the extracts from the accompanying protocol which you embody in the slip which you submit might, it is thought, if taken by themselves without reference to the full text of the convention and protocol, be susceptible of a meaning not entirely comporting with this Government’s understanding. This is especially true of the sentence in the protocol relating to the intent to return to the United States. It is true that the intent not to return may be held to exist when a person of Swedish origin should have resided for more than two years in Sweden; but it is also true that the intent to remain may be held to exist within a period of less than two years or not to exist after a greater period than two years, being a matter to be determined by the circumstances surrounding the sojourn or residence. While the department does not object to your furnishing a translation into Swedish of any passport which you may issue or which may be presented to you, nor to your explaining to the holder of a passport the provisions of the convention and protocol, it is of opinion that it is not wise to attach to each passport which you issue to a former subject of Sweden the slip you submit. At best it could accomplish a [Page 1362] useful purpose toward only a few Americans of Swedish origin, and it would, moreover, constitute a precedent which might prove embarrassing to this Government in the future.
As the minister for foreign affairs has informed you that the improper arrests of Americans is due to ignorance on the part of local authorities of the English language, it is suggested that instructions could be given to the local authorities which would enable them to recognize the passports of this Government and to treat them as prima facie proof that the holders are American citizens and entitled to the privileges which attach to them under the terms of the convention between the two Governments.
I am, etc.,
- Printed in Foreign Relations, 1901, p. 486.↩