United States v. Cantini

• Decision Date: 21 April 1914
• Docket Number: 1806.
• Citation: 212 F. 925
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. CANTINI.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

212 F. 925

UNITED STATES v. CANTINI.

No. 1806.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

April 21, 1914

E Lowry Humes, of Meadville, Pa., for the United States.

Before GRAY, BUFFINGTON, and McPHERSON, Circuit Judges.

J. B McPHERSON, Circuit Judge.

This appeal is from an order dismissing a petition in which the government sought to cancel a certificate of naturalization on the ground that it had been illegally obtained.

The facts are set out so fully in the opinion of the District Court, which will be found in 199 F. 857, that we need not repeat them. The brief for the government concedes that the question for decision is whether Cantini 'resided continuously' within the United States for at least five years before the date of his application. To quote from the argument:

'Does that phrase require an applicant for naturalization to live and have his abode within the United States for the entire period of five years immediately preceding his application? Or may the applicant during a considerable part of such period maintain a constructive residence within the United States, by the mere intent on his part to return thereto while actually living outside its limits? If an actual physical existence within the United States is necessary then the court below was undoubtedly in error in dismissing the bill of the United States, because it was admitted that the respondent had spent almost two years of the five years immediately preceding his application in his native land, and therefore he had been illegally admitted to citizenship. On the other hand, it is admitted that the respondent, although he married and lived in his native land for two years of said period of five years, intended ultimately to return to the United States and make his home there; and, if such intent is sufficient to establish the continuous residence mentioned in the statute, then the action of the court in refusing to cancel his certificate of citizenship was proper.' The case is not free from difficulty. It is scarcely to be doubted, we think, that the phrase 'resided continuously' would be unreasonably restricted if it should be confined to the precise and literal meaning of the words. The continuous character of an alien's residence would thus be fatally interrupted by the briefest visit of pleasure, or friendship, or business, beyond the boundaries of the United States; and the rules of construction admonish us that we are not to suppose that Congress intends any statute to produce an unreasonable result, unless the language used be such as to leave no fair doubt that such a result was the object of the law. In the act of 1906 (Act June 29, c. 3592, Sec. 4, par. 4, 34 Stat. 596 (U.S. Comp. St. Supp. 1911, p. 531)), the phrase in its common and ordinary use appears to have an elastic meaning, so elastic in fact that we may easily imagine two sets of circumstances in each of which the intention of the alien would be the same, although the conclusion

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