Source: http://openjurist.org/374/us/469
Timestamp: 2015-08-04 07:56:38
Document Index: 268054970

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 241', '§ 1251', '§ 241', '§ 22', '§ 241', '§ 241']

374 US 469 Gastelum-Quinones v. F Kennedy | OpenJurist
374 U.S. 469 - Gastelum-Quinones v. F Kennedy Home
374 US 469 Gastelum-Quinones v. F Kennedy 374 U.S. 469
83 S.Ct. 1819
10 L.Ed.2d 1013
Jose Maria GASTELUM-QUINONES, Petitioner,v.Robert F. KENNEDY, Attorney General of the United States (two cases).
David Rein, Washington, D.C., for petitioner.
This case, stripped of its procedural complexities, raises the question whether an alien long resident in this country is deportable because, for a period during 1949 and 1950, he paid dues to and attended several meetings of a club of the Communist Party in Los Angeles. The Immigration and Naturalization Service sought and obtained an order for petitioner's deportation on the ground that these facts established petitioner's membership in the Communist Party of the United States within the meaning of § 241(a)(6)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 66 Stat. 163, 204—205, 8 U.S.C. § 1251(a)(6)(C).1 Whether membership was so established turns on the application of two decisions of this Court which construed the immediate predecessor of § 241(a) (6)(c,), § 22 of the Internal Security Act of 1950, 64 Stat. 987, 1006, 1008. In Galvan v. Press, 347 U.S. 522, 528, 74 S.Ct. 737, 741, 98 L.Ed. 911, it was held that deportability on the ground of Communist Party membership turns on whether the alien was 'aware that he was joining an organization known as the Communist Party which operates as a distinct and active political organization * * *,' and in Rowoldt v. Perfetto, 355 U.S. 115, 120, 78 S.Ct. 180, 183, 2 L.Ed.2d 140, it was held, in elaboration of Galvan, that the alien must have had a 'meaningful association' with the Communist Party in order to be deportable. The evidence in the record, to which the standards set sorth in these decisions must be applied, was all elicited at hearings before the Service's special inquiry officer in 1956. This evidence consists solely of the testimony of two government witnesses, petitioner having chosen to introduce no evidence.
Petitioner read the Court of Appeals' opinion as suggesting that § 241(a)(6) (C) would not have applied to him if he had introduced evidence that he had not personally advocated the forcible overthrow of the Government.2 He therefore moved before the Board of Immigration Appeals that the deportation hearing be reopened to permit him to introduce evidence that he did not personally advocate the violent overthrow of the Government. The Board of Immigration Appeals heard oral argument on the motion and, on August 1, 1961, denied it.
In determining whether, on the record before us, the Government has fulfilled its burden of proving that petitioner was a 'member' of the Communist Party of the United States within the meaning of § 241(a)(6)(C), we must recognize at the outset what the history of the times amply demonstrates,3 that some Americans have joined the Communist Party without understanding its nature as a distinct political entity. The Rowoldt decision, as well as other decisions of this Court, reflects that there is a great practical and legal difference between those who firmly attach themselves to the Communist Party being aware of all of the aims and purposes attributed to it, and those who temporarily join the Party, knowing nothing of its international relationships and believing it to be a group solely trying to remedy unsatisfactory social or economic conditions, carry out trade-union objectives, eliminate racial discrimination, combat unemployment, or alleviate distress and poverty.4 Although the Court specifically recognized in Galvan, supra, 347 U.S. at 528, 74 S.Ct. at 741 that 'support, or even demonstrated knowledge, of the Communist Party's advocacy of violence was not intended to be a prerequisite to deportation,' it did condition deportability on the alien's awareness of the 'distinct and active political' nature of the Communist Party, ibid. This, together with the requirement of 'meaningful association' enunciated in Rowoldt, supra, 355 U.S. at 120, 78 S.Ct. at 183 led the Court to declare later that in Galvan and Rowoldt it had 'had no difficulty in interpreting 'membership' * * * as meaning more than the mere voluntary listing of a person's name on Party rolls.' Scales v. United States, 367 U.S. 203, 222, 81 S.Ct. 1469, 1483, 6 L.Ed.2d 782.
Scarletto was next assigned, some time in early 1949, to the Mexican Concentration Club, which, he testified, was also a unit of the Communist Party of the United States. Petitioner, he said, was put int