IMMIGRATION: Good Man

The question before the court was whether Adolf Schmidt, a German-language instructor who came to the U.S. in 1939, was a man of “good moral character.” Applying for U.S. citizenship, Schmidt admitted casually that he had had sexual intercourse with unmarried women “now & then.” Schmidt said he saw nothing wrong with that: he was a bachelor, 44 years old, the women were unmarried, and nobody seemed to mind. But the examiner was shocked. Application denied.

Last week in Manhattan the case of Adolf Schmidt was ruled on by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Schmidt’s lawyer argued that moral character is not something determined by an immigration examiner but something “that measures up as good among the people of the community in which the party lives.”

The court agreed. In a chatty decision written by 77-year-old Judge Learned Hand, the court gently deplored Schmidt’s “moment of what may have been unnecessary frankness.” But “recent investigations . . . have disclosed—what few people would have doubted in any event—that his practice is far from uncommon.” It was necessary to consider “what people generally feel.”

“Even though we could take a poll,” the court mused, “… a majority of the votes of those in prisons and brothels, for instance, ought scarcely to outweigh the votes of accredited churchgoers.” Besides, there were precedents: aliens living in common-law marriage had been admitted. “We have now to say whether it makes a critical difference that the alien’s lapses are casual, concupiscent and promiscuous, but not adulterous.” In fact, concluded Judge Hand, he and his two colleagues did not see any such difference, and ruled that Schmidt should be made a U.S. citizen.

Schmidt, who had been unable to get a job while the law debated his morals, was grateful, but detached, about the whole thing. “I understand the Anglo-American behavior pattern of saving face,” he said cheerfully. “Very wise decision, we calls it,” said the non-moralistic New York Daily News. “If U.S. citizenship were to be conferred only on alien married people and virgins of both sexes—well, we ask you.” The Immigration Service sulked. It announced sturdily that it would continue to apply its “normal Christian standards.” Snapped an official: “There is no use to subject the rest of the country, to the moral standards, if any, in New York.”