William Wesner was a man with a problem. While he desperately wanted to obtain citizenship in the United States, he couldn’t prove his current citizenship status.

Born in 1885 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Swiss parents, he considered himself a Swiss citizen. Documenting that, however, was a problem. His birth wasn’t registered with Argentine authorities, his  mother was actually Scottish, and his beloved parents’ marital situation was fuzzy. If they weren’t legally married or didn’t marry when he was older, this eliminated the opportunity for his father to claim him as his child. If his parents were legally married, then his birth was not registered properly in the Swiss Bürgerbücher of his father’s ancestral hometown, Gams, Switzerland, which meant William could not claim Swiss citizenship. If he couldn’t claim citizenship through his father, he was obligated to claim citizenship through his mother. His birth was not registered in Scotland, nor did he ever live there, nor did he know anyone there.

His wife, Katherine “Katie” Garcia was born in 1897 in the Kingdom of Hawaii to Azorean parents. When Hawaii became a territory of the United States, its citizens were granted citizenship in the United States. Her situation seemed solid, except that it wasn’t. The Expatriation Act of 1907 stripped the citizenship of any American woman who married a foreign man.

William Wesner filed two Declarations of Intent for citizenship in the United States but never followed through with them. In both, he identified his birthplace as Buenos Aires, Argentina, his parents as Swiss, and his current citizenship in the Swiss Confederation. He soon discovered he had a problem: He couldn’t confirm his citizenship in any country. His marriage to Katie pushed the couple into a legal limbo, without a country they could call home.

A family built on shifting ground

William stood at the intersection of multiple jurisdictions—Swiss, Argentine, Scottish, and American—without a clean legal anchor in any of them. He had:

• No secure proof of birth registration abroad
• No clear, documented transmission of Swiss citizenship
• No completed U.S. naturalization

Ten years before their marriage, the Expatriation Act of 1907 came into law. Under this act, any American woman who married a foreign man automatically took his nationality and lost her own. If the husband’s nationality was unclear or unprovable, rendering him effectively stateless, the woman would become stateless as well.

When she married William around 1916–1917:

• She lost her U.S. citizenship by operation of law
• She legally became “whatever he was”

Since her husband could not prove any nationality, Katherine was left in a legal void along with him.

Their three children were born in the United States. Under the 14th Amendment, they were U.S. citizens at birth, regardless of their parents’ citizenship status. While their children’s citizenship may have made them feel more secure, it was not a guarantee that they would never be deported.

Two declarations of intent never finalized

William’s two Declarations of Intent can be read as moments of hope—attempts to step out of the shadows and establish his status as an American citizen. But the naturalization system of the early 20th century was not designed for men like him.

To move from declaration of intent to full naturalization, he needed to:

• Prove his identity
• Prove his date and place of birth
• Prove his nationality or prior allegiance
• Provide consistent, credible documentation and witnesses

Each step risked exposing the central problem: he could not easily prove that any country claimed him. This sounds ridiculous because, obviously, he was born somewhere. It was the failure of his parents to appropriately document his birth with any country that caused the problem.

In a legal culture increasingly focused on documentation, standardization, and suspicion of “undesirable” aliens, that was dangerous. Deportation proceedings could have been initiated if officials concluded that:

• He had entered the United States improperly
• He had misrepresented himself
• He had no legal right to remain in the United States

In retrospect, stopping the process—twice—looks less like indecision and more like self‑protection. Naturalization required him to walk straight into the arms of the very state that might decide he did not belong.

Why his wife didn’t formally regain her citizenship

The Cable Act of 1922 partially reversed the Expatriation Act of 1907 and allowed many women who lost their United States citizenship by marrying foreign men to regain it. But the law came with conditions:

• A woman could repatriate only if her husband was eligible for citizenship.
• Women married to men “ineligible for citizenship” or otherwise barred remained tethered to their husbands’ citizenship status.
• Repatriation required formal legal action—appearing in court, filing papers, and, crucially, exposing the husband’s citizenship situation.

For William’s wife, this meant that to reclaim her citizenship, she had to step into the same legal spotlight William was trying to avoid. She was required to disclose her husband’s nationality, her husband’s immigration history, and her husband’s legal status. Any inconsistency, gap, or ambiguity in his story could have triggered additional scrutiny of them both.

In theory, the Cable Act offered Katherine a path back to being a citizen. In practice, for a woman married to a man with no clear nationality, it was a high‑risk move.

Remaining legally invisible—accepting her loss of citizenship and not pushing the issue—may have felt safer than inviting the state to examine their marriage and his origins.

Their American children

Their three U.S.-born children were full citizens. This mattered because:

• Socially, it rooted the family in the United States. Children in school, in church, in the community made them look like any other American family.
• Emotionally, it gave William and his wife a powerful reason to stay, no matter how precarious their own status was.
• Practically, it sometimes made authorities more hesitant to break up families, especially in the absence of a clear receiving country.

But crucially, the children’s citizenship did not automatically prevent their parents from being deported or facing legal action. The law did not say, “If your children are citizens, you are safe.” It said, “Your children are citizens; you are whatever your paperwork says you are.”

Ergo, the children provided them with a moral shield, but not a legal one. William and his wife knew that drawing attention to themselves could still end in separation.

Lying on the United States census

By 1930, the U.S. had imposed strict immigration quotas, intensified deportations, and cultivated a climate of suspicion toward foreigners. The census asked about birthplace and citizenship. For a man like William, answering honestly meant:

• Admitting foreign birth
• Admitting foreign-born parents
• Admitting non-citizen status
• Potentially contradicting earlier or later claims

Claiming U.S. birth for himself and his parents simplified everything:

• It erased the awkward questions.
• It aligned his story with his children’s reality—they were American, so he presented himself as American too.
• It reduced the risk that some clerk, someday, would flag the family as “alien” and worthy of investigation.

In that light, the false census entries are not random lies; they are part of a coherent survival strategy to minimize paper trails that highlight foreignness and maximize appearances of belonging.

Why they didn’t correct the problem

From a modern vantage point, it’s tempting to ask, “Why didn’t William just finish the naturalization process? Why didn’t Katherine reclaim her citizenship?” Within their historical context, the answer is clear:

• Every attempt to fix things required exposure.
• Exposure meant inviting a skeptical, increasingly hostile state to examine a man with no provable nationality and a woman who had already lost hers.
• The worst‑case scenario was not bureaucratic inconvenience—it was deportation, family separation, and being sent to a country that might not even recognize them.

Instead, they chose:

• Incomplete naturalization over a failed one
• Silence over repatriation petitions
• Inconsistent census answers over dangerous honesty
• Day‑to‑day stability over legal clarity

This was not ignorance. It was calculated caution.

Disappearing into the fabric of American life

William and Katherine lived in a legal and emotional no‑man’s‑land created by early 20th‑century nationality laws. In a climate of rising xenophobia and deportation, his origins were unprovable and her loss of citizenship through marriage left them both precariously situated. The safest choice was not to regularize their status, but to disappear into the fabric of American life—anchored by their U.S.-born children, protected by silence, and occasionally defended by small, strategic lies.

Sources

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