In re Bautista

• Decision Date: 05 November 1917
• Citation: 245 F. 765
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of California
• Parties: In re BAUTISTA.

245 F. 765

In re BAUTISTA.

United States District Court, N.D. California, Southern Division.

November 5, 1917

John W Preston, U.S. Atty., and George A. Crutchfield, Chief Naturalization Examiner, both of San Francisco, Cal.

MORROW Circuit Judge.

The petitioner is a Mestizo. He was born in the Province of Bulacan on the Island of Luzon in the Philippine Islands, on the 14th of March, 1888. The Islands at that time were under Spanish rule, and the petitioner, with respect to the United States, was born an alien.

The islands were ceded to the United States by the treaty between the United States and Spain signed at Paris on December 10 1898 (30 Stat. 1754). By article 19 of the treaty it was provided that:

'The civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants of the territories hereby ceded to the United States shall be determined by the Congress.'

By the act of Congress of July 1, 1902, temporarily providing 'for the administration of the affairs of civil government in the Philippine Islands, and for other purposes' (chapter 1369, 32 Stat. 691, 692), it was declared in section 4 that:

'All inhabitants of the Philippine Islands continuing to reside therein who were Spanish subjects on the 11th day of April, 1899, and then resided in said islands, and their children born subsequent thereto, shall be deemed and held to be citizens of the Philippine Islands, and as such entitled to the protection of the United States, except such as shall have elected to preserve their allegiance to the Crown of Spain in accordance with the provisions of the treaty of peace between the United States and Spain signed at Paris December tenth, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight.'

No provision has been made by Congress for conferring the rights of American citizenship upon the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands except such as is contained in section 30 of the Naturalization Act of June 29, 1906 (34 Stat. 596, 606). It is there provided that:

'All the applicable provisions of the naturalization laws of the United States shall apply to and be held to authorize the admission to citizenship of all persons not citizens who owe permanent allegiance to the United States, and who may become residents of any state or organized territory of the United States, with the following modifications: The applicant shall not be required to renounce allegiance to any foreign sovereignty; he shall make his declaration of intention to become a citizen of the United States at least two years prior to his admission; and residence within the jurisdiction of the United States, owing such permanent allegiance, shall be regarded as residence within the United States within the meaning of the five-year residence clause of the existing law.'

The petitioner has not made his declaration of intention to become a citizen of the United States, as required by this statute, but he claims the right to make his application for citizenship without such declaration, under the Act of June 30, 1914, 'making appropriations for the naval service for the fiscal year ending June 15, 1915, and for other purposes' (chapter 130, 38 Stat. 392, 395 (Comp. St. 1916, Sec. 4356)), which provides as follows:

'Any alien of the age of twenty-one years and upward who may, under existing law, become a citizen of the United States, who has served or may hereafter serve for one enlistment of not less than four years in the United States Navy, * * * and who has received therefrom an honorable discharge * * * with recommendation for re-enlistment, * * * shall be admitted to become a citizen of the United States upon his petition without any previous declaration of his intention to become such, and without proof of residence on shore, and the court admitting such alien shall, in addition to proof of good moral character, be satisfied by competent proof from naval * * * sources of such service: Provided, that an honorable discharge from the Navy, * * * with recommendation for re-enlistment, shall be accepted as proof of good moral character: Provided further, that any court which now has or may hereafter be given jurisdiction to naturalize aliens as citizens of the United States may immediately naturalize any alien applying under and furnishing the proof prescribed by the foregoing provisions.'

The petitioner enlisted in the United States Navy on December 24, 1908. At the end of his enlistment, on December 23, 1912, he received an honorable discharge, and on March 17, 1913, he re-enlisted. At the end of this second enlistment he received a second honorable discharge, and on the next day he again re-enlisted. His discharges have always been accompanied by recommendations for re-enlistment. He is now serving his third term of enlistment of four years each, and comes to court with proof of good moral character from his superior officers. He came to the United States from Manila in 1909, on the United States steamship Logan. He has resided continuously in the United States for more than eight years immediately preceding the date of this petition, and upon examination we find him intelligent, familiar with our form of government, and attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States.

The petitioner claims the right as a Filipino owing permanent allegiance to the United States to be admitted as a citizen under section 30 of the Act of June 29, 1906, and upon his service in the Navy, and the other qualifications possessed by him he asserts the present right to be naturalized without a previous declaration of an intention to become a citizen.

The first objection urged by the government is that under section 2169 of the Revised Statutes he cannot be admitted to citizenship in the United States. That section provides:

'The provisions of this title (Naturalization) shall apply to aliens (being free white persons, and to aliens) of African nativity, and to persons of African descent.'

The Revised Statutes were approved June 22, 1874, and section 2169 was amended by the Act of February 18, 1875 (chapter 80, 18 Stat. 318), by inserting the words last above printed in brackets. The petitioner belongs to the brown or Malay race. He is therefore not an alien of the white race, nor is he an alien of African nativity or of African descent. It is therefore contended that he cannot be admitted to citizenship.

But for what purpose did Congress provide, in section 30 of the Naturalization Act of June 29, 1906, that all the applicable provisions of the naturalization laws of the United States should 'apply to and be held to authorize the admission to citizenship of all persons not citizens who owe permanent allegiance to the United States and who may become residents of any state or organized territory of the United States'?

Mr. Justice Gray, speaking for a majority of the court, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 653, 18 Sup.Ct. 456, 458 (42 L.Ed. 890), began that remarkably able decision upon the subject of citizenship with the statement of the fundamental rule of construction applicable to such an inquiry, as follows:

'In construing any act of legislation, whether a statute enacted by the Legislature, or a Constitution established by the people as the supreme law of the land, regard is to be had, not only to all parts of the act itself, and of any former act of the same lawmaking power, of which the act in question is an amendment; but also to the condition, and to the history, of the law as previously existing, and in the light of which the new act must be read and interpreted.'

In the late Tap Line Cases, 234 U.S. 1, 27, 34 Sup.Ct. 741, 58 L.Ed. 1185, the court declared that the debates in Congress may be resorted to for the purpose of ascertaining the situation which prompted the legislation.

Following that rule, we find that section 30 of the Act of June 29, 1906, was framed pursuant to the provision of article 9 of the Treaty of Paris, and for the declared benefit of the inhabitants of Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands, and that such was clearly the understanding of Congress when it enacted the section into law. The act in which this section is found originated in the House of Representatives in February, 1906. In the Senate an amendment was offered by Sen. Foraker on June 27, 1906, which he explained to the Senate in the following language:

'I offer an amendment to the bill, to be attached to it as an additional section, which has special reference to Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands. It is a provision that passed the Senate by a unanimous vote-- that is, it passed without any opposition, it is perhaps more proper to state-- in the Fifty-Eighth Congress. I send it to the desk and ask that it may be read.'

It was read, and after some discussion was adopted. It was disagreed to in the House, but was afterwards adopted by both houses upon a conference report, and is the section now under consideration. Cong. Record, vol. 40, pt. 10, 59th Cong., 1st Sess. pp. 9359, 9407, 9505, 9576, 9691.

It appears that in the Fifty-Eighth Congress referred to by Sen. Foraker the amendment offered by him and adopted in the Fifty-Ninth Congress was the first section of a Senate bill introduced by the Senator in the Fifty-Eighth Congress, making 'applicable the provisions of the naturalization laws of the United States to Porto Rico, and for other purposes. ' In the report of the committee and in the course of the debate it was stated that the bill was also applicable to the Philippine Islands. Sen. Foraker said:

'I do not know why it should not apply to a citizen of the Philippines living there, an inhabitant there, and owing allegiance to us, owing permanent allegiance to us as a people. That expression was furnished us by the State

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