United States v. Charnowola, 11469.

• Decision Date: 22 January 1953
• Docket Number: No. 11469.,11469.
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. CHARNOWOLA.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Michigan

109 F. Supp. 810

UNITED STATES v. CHARNOWOLA.

No. 11469.

United States District Court E. D. Michigan, S. D.

January 22, 1953.

Kenneth Smith, Asst. U. S. Dist. Atty., Detroit, Mich., for plaintiff.

Goodman, Crockett, Eden & Robb, Detroit, Mich., for defendant.

PICARD, District Judge.

The United States of America presents its complaint under and pursuant to Section 338(a) of the Nationality Act of 1940, 54 Stat. 1158, Sec. 738(a), U.S.C.A. Title 8, to vacate an order conferring citizenship upon George Charnowola, defendant, and to cancel his certificate obtained January 28, 1946.

It is claimed that defendant procured his naturalization illegally and fraudulently by falsely stating to the examiners under oath following the filing of his petition for citizenship, March 29, 1945, that he had never been a member of the Communist Party prior to the filing thereof.

At that time the Nationality Code of 1940 provided:

"No person shall hereafter be naturalized as a citizen of the United States —* * *

"(b) * * * who is a member of or affiliated with any organization, association, society, or group that believes in, advises, advocates, or teaches—

"(1) the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States * * *

"The provisions of this section shall be applicable to any applicant for naturalization who at any time within a period of ten years immediately preceding the filing of the petition for naturalization is, or has been, found to be within any of the clauses enumerated in this section, notwithstanding that at the time petition is filed he may not be included in such classes." 8 U.S. C.A. § 705.

It must be remembered that defendant is not charged here with being a Communist either now or during the ten year period previous to March 29, 1945 but the gist of the action is the alleged false information which he gave the examiners under oath; to wit, claiming that he had never been a Communist when in fact he had been.

In this connection it is plaintiff's position that if, during those examinations, defendant had admitted his previous Communist membership back in 1925, and then claimed that he had abandoned such affiliation more than ten years previous to the time of the filing of his petition that he would not necessarily have been denied citizenship. This, plaintiff explains, is true because it is the recognized practice of the Naturalization Department to present such "border-line" cases to the district court for individual determination. Therefore all former Communists were not automatically barred from citizenship under the 1940 Act but all who had been Communists within the ten-year period previous to the filing of their petition were denied citizenship by the above section. (The McCarran-Walter Act, June 27, 1952, Public Laws 414, 66 Stat. 163, 8 U.S.C.A. § 1101 et seq., has not been interpreted by our courts.)

But interpretation of the 1940 law applicable may be found in any number of cases and two citations will serve.

In Orth v. United States, 4 Cir., 142 F.2d 969, 970 the court said:

"American citizenship is a priceless possession, and one who seeks it by naturalization must do so in entire good faith, without any mental reservation whatever, and with the complete intention of yielding his absolute loyalty and allegiance to the country of his adoption. If he does not, he is guilty of fraud in obtaining his certificate of citizenship."

And in United States v. Ginsberg, 243 U.S. 472, 475, 37 S.Ct. 422, 425, 61 L.Ed. 853, where our Supreme Court said:

"No alien has the slightest right to naturalization unless all statutory requirements are complied with; and every certificate of citizenship must be treated as granted upon condition that the government may challenge it as provided in § 15 and demand its cancelation unless issued in accordance with such requirements."

In other words, every applicant for citizenship in this country must come in with clean hands. There can be no fraud in the securing of that citizenship, whether that fraud be failure to disclose what it is obvious must be material or be an outspoken misrepresentation. Under some circumstances silence may be as reprehensible as a false statement. But while the courts, through their decisions, lay down rigid compliance with the law for obtaining citizenship, on the other hand, once citizenship is obtained, the courts as jealously guard the revoking thereof, for it has been held in many cases that evidence to revoke must be "clear, unequivocal, and convincing". See Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U.S. 118, 63 S.Ct. 1333, 1341, 87 L.Ed. 1796, and Knauer v. United States, 328 U.S. 654, 66 S.Ct. 1304, 90 L.Ed. 1500.

This was the burden of the government in this case, to accomplish which it produced three witnesses, self-acknowledged former Communists, who claimed to have been comrades of defendant while he was a...