Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/287/341.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 17:28:48+00:00

Document:
[287 U.S. 341, 342] Mr. William H. Lewis, of Washington, D.C., for petitioner.
The Attorney General and Mr. Whitney North Seymour, of Washington, D. C., for respondent.
A claim of violation of constitutional rights made in the court below has been abandoned. The Circuit Court of Appeals properly negatived the asserted absence of any evidence to support the action of the Secretary of Labor, [287 U.S. 341, 343] and therefore refused, as we do, to review that officer's findings. Low Wash Suey v. Backus, 225 U.S. 460, 468 , 32 S.Ct. 734; Zakonaite v. Wolf, 226 U.S. 272, 275 , 33 S.Ct. 31; Tisi v. Tod, 264 U.S. 131, 133 , 44 S.Ct. 260; Vajtauer v. Commr. of Immigration, 273 U.S. 103, 106 , 47 S.Ct. 302.
The dispute is as to whether the qualifying phrase of the first clause, 'within five years after entry,' is to be carried over from the clause in which it appears and is to be read into each following subject clause, including that applicable to the petitioner, or is to be limited in effect to its own clause. The petitioner urges that the grammatical structure of the sentence and the punctuation require the adoption of the first alternative, while in support of the second the government appeals to the evident mean- [287 U.S. 341, 344] ing of the entire section, the legislative history, and settled departmental interpretation.
It is to be noted that, of the eleven clauses following the first, three contain references to periods of time after entry within which the described aliens may be deported. Thus, with reference to the classes which may be shortly defined as 'anarchists' and 'convicts,' the phrase used is 'at any time after entry'; concerning those who have entered without inspection, the limitation is 'at any time within three years after entry.' Respecting the remaining seven categories contained in as many separate clauses (including that applicable to this case, 'any alien who manages ... any house of prostitution ...;') no words of time are employed. Certainly, then, the five-year limitation of the first clause does not apply to all the subsequent ones; and, since the phrase has a proper office in qualification of the class specified in the clause in which it appears, its effect should be limited to that class and not carried over to the others.
It has often been said that punctuation is not decisive of the construction of a statute. Hammock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 105 U.S. 77 ; Ford v. Delta & P. Land Co., 164 U.S. 662 , 17 S.Ct. 230; Barrett v. Van Pelt, 268 U.S. 85 , 45 S.Ct. 437; United States v. Shereveport Grain & Elevator Company, 287 U.S. 77 , 53 S. Ct. 42. Upon like principle we should not apply the rules of syntax to defeat the evident legislative intent.
There is nothing upon which this proviso may operate if such of the preceding clauses as contain no time limitation are qualified by the words of the first fixing the limitation at five years; not so, however, if each clause [287 U.S. 341, 345] containing a time limitation is read separately as an exception to the general rule declared by the proviso. We must look to the whole of the section, in order not to give undue effect to particular words or clauses ( Brown v. Duchesne, 19 How. 183, 194; Pollard v. Bailey, 20 Wall. 520, 525), and when so read, the proviso precludes a construction which would carry into all subsequent clauses the five-year limitation contained in the first.
[ Footnote 1 ] Chapter 29, 39 Stat. 874, 889 (8 USCA 155).
[ Footnote 2 ] Act of March 26, 1910, c. 128, 2, 36 Stat. 263; Senate Report No. 352, to accompany H.R. 10384 (64th Cong., 1st Sess.).
[ Footnote 3 ] Rules of Bureau of Immigration, May 1, 1917 (1st Ed., May, 1917), rule 22; 2d Ed., November, 1917; 3d Ed., March, 1919; 4th Ed., February, 1920; 5th Ed., December, 1920; 6th Ed., September, 1921; 4th Ed., August, 1922. See, also, Rules of the Bureau of Immigration, February 1, 1924, p. 31, and of July 1, 1925, p. 63.

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