Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-13-55290/USCOURTS-ca9-13-55290-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Olufemi Solomon Collins
Appellant
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services
Appellee

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

OLUFEMI SOLOMON COLLINS,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

UNITED STATES CITIZENSHIP AND

IMMIGRATION SERVICES,

Respondent-Appellee.

No. 13-55290

D.C. No.

2:11-cv-09909-

JFW-SS

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

John F. Walter, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

February 8, 2016—Pasadena, California

Filed May 4, 2016

Before: Andrew J. Kleinfeld, M. Margaret McKeown,

and Sandra S. Ikuta, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge McKeown

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2 COLLINS V. USCIS

SUMMARY*

Immigration

The panel reversed the district court’s dismissal for lack

of subject matter jurisdiction of Olufemi Collins’s petition

to require the United States Citizenship and Immigration

Service to amend his date of birth on his court-issued

naturalization certificate.

The panel held that the federal courts have jurisdiction to

modify naturalization certificates issued by the courts before

the Immigration Act of 1990 went into effect on October 1,

1991. The panel concluded that Congress preserved federal

subject matter jurisdiction over such naturalization

certificates through the uncodified savings clause of the

Immigration Act of 1990, and that the federal courts have

jurisdiction to consider motions to amend them pursuant to

former 8 U.S.C. § 1451(i) (1988). 

The panel noted the distinction between two categories of

certificates: those issued by courts prior to 1991 and those

issued by the Attorney General after the Immigration Act of

1990 took effect. The panel wrote that its opinion in this case

addressed the former category, and that its separate opinion

filed concurrently in Teng v. District Director, 14-55558, 

__F.3d__ (9th Cir. 2016), addressed the latter.

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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COLLINS V. USCIS 3

COUNSEL

Laura M. Burson (argued) Sheppard, Mullin, Richter &

Hampton, Los Angeles, California; Michael Murphy and

Kayla Page, Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, San

Diego, California, for Petitioner-Appellant.

J. Max Weintraub (argued), Senior Litigation Counsel,

Benjamin C. Mizer, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney

General, Civil Division, William C. Peachey, Director,

Jeffrey S. Robins, Assistant Director, Colin A. Kisor, Deputy

Director, United States Department of Justice, Office of

Immigration Litigation, Washington, D.C., for RespondentAppellee.

OPINION

McKEOWN, Circuit Judge:

There is no official record of Olufemi Collins’s birth. 

When he was born in Nigeria, the country had no birth

register. For most of his life, Collins relied on his mother’s

memory to establish his birth date. When he emigrated to the

United States on a student visa in 1973, his Nigerian passport

listed the birth date confirmed by his mother—July 17, 1952. 

Collins supplied this birth date—validated by his mother and

memorialized on his Nigerian passport—when he was

naturalized in 1987.

Collins first learned that he had been mistaken about his

true birthday when he returned to Nigeria in 1991 for his

father’s funeral. Upon finding a handwritten record of family

birth dates in his father’s Bible, Collins discovered that he

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4 COLLINS V. USCIS

had been born on July 17, 1948, not on July 17, 1952, as he

had long believed.

Two decades after discovering his father’s Bible, a

penniless and blind Collins asked the United States

Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) to correct

the birth date listed on his certificate of naturalization. The

agency refused. Collins turned to the district court, but his

request to modify his birth date and ensure the consistency

and accuracy of his identification documents was again

denied.

This appeal requires us to address a question that has

remained unanswered since Congress divested the courts of

jurisdiction over the naturalization process in the Immigration

Act of 1990: whether the federal courts have jurisdiction to

modify naturalization certificates issued by the courts prior to

October 1, 1991.1 We conclude that Congress preserved

federal subject matter jurisdiction over such certificates

through the uncodified savings clause of the Immigration Act

of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101-649 § 408, 104 Stat. 4978, 5047,

and that the federal courts have jurisdiction to consider

motions to amend such certificates in accordance with former

8 U.S.C. § 1451(i) (1988).

1 We emphasize the distinction between two categories of certificates:

those issued by courts prior to 1991 and those issued by the Attorney

General after the Immigration Act of 1990 went into effect on October 1,

1991. We address here only the former. In a separate opinion, we

conclude that the federal courts lack subject matter jurisdiction over the

latter category. Teng v. District Director, ___ F.3d ___ (9th Cir. 2016).

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COLLINS V. USCIS 5

BACKGROUND

Collins was born in Nguru, Nigeria, before the country

adopted an official birth registry. Without a standardized

system for recording births, Nigeria determined birth dates

based on the best knowledge of the parents. So when Collins

emigrated to the United States in 1973, his mother supplied

the birth date listed on his Nigerian passport—July 17,

1952—and this is the date that appears on his naturalization

certificate.

Although in 1991 Collins discovered family records that

showed he was born in 1948, he made no effort to change the

birth date recorded on his certificate of naturalization over the

course of the next twenty years. By September 2010, Collins

had lost his job and his savings. His home was in foreclosure,

and severe glaucoma rendered him legally blind. Hoping to

qualify for Social Security benefits, he filed a Form N-565,

Application for Replacement Naturalization/Citizenship

Document, with USCIS, seeking to change the date on his

certificate of naturalization. USCIS denied his request.

Collins appealed to the Administrative Appeals Office,

which dismissed his application on two grounds: (1) the

incorrect 1952 birth date was not the result of clerical error,

but had been approved by Collins himself; and (2) only a

federal court with jurisdiction over Collins’s original

naturalization proceedings would have the authority to order

the amendment of Collins’s naturalization certificate.

Collins then filed a pro se petition in federal district court

in 2011, seeking an order requiring USCIS to amend his

certificate of naturalization. USCIS filed a motion to dismiss

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6 COLLINS V. USCIS

for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under Federal Rule of

Civil Procedure 12(b)(1).

The district court sua sponte construed Collins’s petition

as a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60 motion to amend his

court-issued naturalization certificate. The district court

concluded that, even so construed, Collins’s petition should

be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. Without

providing Collins notice or an opportunity to offer evidence

to explain his two-decade delay in seeking to correct his

naturalization certificate, the district court determined that the

inaccurate birth date was not attributable to clerical error and

that Collins could neither satisfy the rule’s timeliness

requirements nor show extraordinary circumstances to justify

his delay. Accordingly, the district court granted USCIS’s

motion and dismissed Collins’s petition without leave to

amend.2

ANALYSIS

The sole question before us is whether the federal courts

have jurisdiction to correct, reopen, modify, or vacate

naturalization certificates that, like Collins’s, were issued by

a federal court before the passage of the Immigration Act of

1990. Collins urges that we do. Although the government

did not address jurisdiction in its briefing, at oral argument,

it agreed with Collins that the federal courts have jurisdiction

2 Collins represents that, in 2013, the Social Security Administration

amended its records to reflect the July 17, 1948 date and granted his

request for benefits. We grant Collins’s motion to supplement the record

on appeal with respect to this change in circumstance as it highlights that

Collins now has different birth dates listed on his naturalization certificate

and on file with the Social Security Administration.

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COLLINS V. USCIS 7

to modify certificates issued by the courts before the

Immigration Act of 1990 came into effect. Despite this

mutual agreement by the parties, we “have an independent

obligation to determine whether subject matter jurisdiction

exists.” Arbaugh v. Y&H Corp., 546 U.S. 500, 514 (2006).

For two centuries, Congress vested the federal courts with

“[e]xclusive jurisdiction to naturalize persons as citizens of

the United States.” 8 U.S.C. § 1421(a) (1988). Those

admitted to citizenship by a court were entitled “to receive

from the clerk of [the] court a certificate of naturalization.” 

Id. § 1449. Consistent with their broad mandate to welcome

new citizens, the federal courts were empowered to “correct,

reopen, alter, modify, or vacate [their] judgment or decree

naturalizing . . . person[s], during the term of such court or

within the time prescribed by the rules of procedure or

statutes governing the jurisdiction of the court to take such

action.” Id. § 1451(i).

Through sweeping reforms codified in the Immigration

Act of 1990 in an effort to streamline and simplify the path to

U.S. citizenship, Congress transferred “the sole authority to

naturalize persons as citizens . . . [to] the Attorney General.”3

8 U.S.C. § 1421(a). See H.R. Rep. No. 101-187, at 8 (1989);

135 Cong. Rec. H4539-02, H4543 (1989) (statement of Rep.

Smith). Under the revised statute, new citizens are entitled

“to receive from the Attorney General a certificate of

naturalization,” 8 U.S.C. § 1449, and the power to “correct,

3

 Under the revised legislation, courts retain limited authority to assert

jurisdiction over a naturalization petition if the Attorney General fails to

act on an application within 120 days of the applicant’s interview with the

executive. See 8 U.S.C. § 1447(b); United States v. Hovsepian, 359 F.3d

1144, 1159-61 (9th Cir. 2004) (en banc).

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8 COLLINS V. USCIS

reopen, alter, modify, or vacate an order naturalizing the

person” rests with the Attorney General. Id. § 1451(h).

Absent a savings clause, the Act’s stripping of federal

court jurisdiction over naturalization proceedings would be a

repeal of the jurisdiction to modify naturalization certificates

conferred by the pre-1990 Immigration Act, 8 U.S.C.

§ 1451(i) (1988). See Assessors v. Osbornes, 76 U.S.

(9 Wall.) 567, 575 (1870) (Where jurisdiction “was

conferred by an act of Congress, and when that act of

Congress was repealed the power to exercise jurisdiction was

withdrawn, and inasmuch as the repealing act contained no

saving clause, all pending actions fell, as the jurisdiction

depended entirely upon the act of Congress.”).

Here, however, the impact of the Immigration Act of

1990 on the jurisdictional provisions of the pre-1990

Immigration Act must be “considered in light of the broad

and comprehensive savings clause embodied in the [1990]

Act.” Yanish v. Barber, 211 F.2d 467, 470 (9th Cir. 1954). 

The uncodified savings clause, 104 Stat. at 5047, reads:

(1) Nothing contained in this title, unless

otherwise specifically provided, shall be

construed to affect the validity of any

declaration of intention, petition for

naturalization, certificate of naturalization,

certification of citizenship, or other document

or proceeding which is valid as of the

effective date; or to affect any prosecution,

suit, action, or proceedings, civil or criminal,

brought, or any status, condition, right in

process of acquisition, act, thing, liability,

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COLLINS V. USCIS 9

obligation, or matter, civil or criminal, done

or existing, as of the effective date.

(2) As to all such prosecutions, suits, actions,

proceedings, statutes, conditions, rights, acts,

things, liabilities, obligations, or matters, the

provisions of law repealed by this title are,

unless otherwise specificallyprovided, hereby

continued in force and effect.

The language of this broad savings clause reflects that

Congress, “as a measure of policy or precaution, intended to

preserve the effectiveness of all subsisting proceedings,

orders, or judgments fixing or determining individual

statuses, obligations, liabilities, or rights; and for this purpose

to have continued in force the statutes or parts thereof under

which such status, obligation, liability or right became fixed

or determined.” Yanish, 211 F.2d at 470. Accordingly,

Collins’s previouslyexisting right to petition for modification

is governed by the provisions of the pre-1990 Immigration

Act, and, by virtue of the savings clause, the federal courts

may appropriately exercise jurisdiction over his petition to

modify his court-issued certificate of naturalization under

8 U.S.C. § 1451(i) (1988).4

REVERSED AND REMANDED.

4 The district court conflated the question of subject matter jurisdiction

over a court-issued certificate of naturalization and the merits of a Rule

60(b)(6) motion to amend such a certificate. Now that jurisdiction has

been resolved, the district court can consider the merits of Collins’s

petition. We do not take a position on the merits of the petition, although

we note that it was previously resolved without the benefit of argument or

briefing on the applicability of Rule 60(b)(6).

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