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2 

MASLENJAK v. UNITED STATES 

Syllabus 

§1015(a)  and  procured  naturalization,  then  she  also  violated 
§1425(a). 

Held: 

1. The text of §1425(a) makes clear that, to secure a conviction, the 
Government must establish that  the defendant’s illegal act  played  a
role in her acquisition of citizenship.  To “procure . . . naturalization” 
means to obtain it.  And the adverbial phrase “contrary to law” speci-
fies  how  a  person  must  procure  naturalization  so  as  to  run  afoul  of
the  statute:  illegally.    Thus,  someone  “procure[s],  contrary  to  law,
naturalization”  when  she  obtains  citizenship  illegally.   As  ordinary
usage  demonstrates,  the  most  natural  understanding  of  that  phrase
is that the illegal act must have somehow contributed to the obtain-
ing  of  citizenship.    To  get  citizenship  unlawfully  is  to  get  it  through 
an unlawful means—and that is just to say that an illegality played
some role in its acquisition. 

The Government’s contrary view—that §1425(a) requires only a vi-
olation in the course of procuring naturalization—falters on the way
language naturally works.  Suppose that an applicant for citizenship 
fills  out  the  paperwork  in  a  government  office  with  a  knife  tucked 
away in her handbag.  She has violated the law against possessing a
weapon  in  a  federal  building,  and  she  has  done  so  in  the  course  of 
procuring citizenship, but nobody would say she has “procure[d]” her 
citizenship “contrary to law.”  That is because the violation of law and 
the acquisition of citizenship in that example are merely coincidental: 
The  one  has  no  causal  relation  to  the  other.    Although  the  Govern-
ment attempts to define such examples out of the statute, that effort
falls  short  for  multiple  reasons.    Most  important,  the  Government’s
attempted  carve-out  does  nothing  to  alter the  linguistic understand-
ing  that  gives  force  to  the  examples  the  Government would  exclude.
Under  ordinary  rules  of  language  usage, §1425(a)  demands  a  causal 
or  means-end  connection  between  a  legal  violation  and  naturaliza-
tion. 

The  broader  statutory  context  reinforces  the  point,  because  the
Government’s  reading  would  create  a  profound  mismatch  between 
the  requirements  for  naturalization  and  those  for  denaturalization: 
Some  legal  violations  that  do  not  justify  denying  citizenship  would 
nonetheless  justify  revoking  it  later.  For  example,  lies  told  out  of
“embarrassment,  fear,  or  a  desire  for  privacy”  (rather  than  “for  the 
purpose  of  obtaining  [immigration]  benefits”)  are  not  generally  dis-
qualifying  under  the  statutory  requirement  of  “good  moral  charac-
ter.”    Kungys  v.  United  States,  485  U. S.  759,  780;  8  U. S. C. 
§1101(f)(6).  But under the Government’s reading of §1425(a), any lie
told in the naturalization process would provide a basis for rescinding
citizenship.  The Government could thus take away on one day what