Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/99868/kimm-vs-rosenberg
Timestamp: 2017-12-14 19:24:42
Document Index: 92975921

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 155', '§19', '§ 19', '§ 19', '§ 151', '§ 19', '§ 19', '§ 1', '§ 22', '§ 19', '§ 1', '§ 19', '§ 22', '§ 291', '§ 1361']

Kimm Vs Rosenberg - Citation 99868 - Court Judgment | LegalCrystal
Kimm Vs. Rosenberg - Court Judgment
LegalCrystal Citation legalcrystal.com/99868
Case Number 363 U.S. 405
Appellant Kimm
Respondent Rosenberg
.....one to whom subsection (d) of this section is applicable) who is deportable under any law of the united states and who has proved good moral character for the preceding five years, the attorney general may . . . (2) suspend deportation of such alien if he is not ineligible for naturalization . . . if he finds . . . (b) that such alien has resided continuously in the united states for seven years or more and is residing in the united states upon the effective date of this act. . . ." 8 u.s.c. (1946 ed., supp. ii) § 155(c). [ footnote 2 ] section 19(d), as amended: "the provisions of subsection (c) shall not be applicable in the case of any alien who is deportable under (1) the act of october 16, 1918 (40 stat. 1008; u.s.c., title 8, sec. 137), entitled 'an act to.....
Kimm v. Rosenberg - 363 U.S. 405 (1960)
U.S. Supreme Court Kimm v. Rosenberg, 363 U.S. 405 (1960)
Held: denial of his application is sustained, since §19(d) and the Internal Security Act of 1950 make Communists ineligible for suspension of deportation, and the burden was on petitioner to show that he was eligible for such suspension. Pp. 363 U. S. 405 -408.
Petitioner contends that he presented "clear affirmative evidence" as to eligibility which stands uncontradicted, and that the burden was on the Government to show his affiliations, if any, with the Party. He contends that the disqualifying factor of Communist Party membership is an exception to § 19(c) which the Government must prove. We think not. Rather than a proviso, it is an absolute disqualification, since that class of aliens is carved out of the section at its very beginning by the words "other than one to whom subsection (d) of this section is applicable." [ Footnote 1 ] Subsection (d)2 referred to aliens
deportable under the Act of October 16, 1918. Section 2 [ Footnote 2 ] of the Internal Security Act of 1950 amended the 1918 Act to include Communists, [ Footnote 3 ] and thus terminated the discretionary authority under § 19(c) as to any alien who was deportable because of membership in the Communist Party. Petitioner offered no evidence on this point, although the regulations place on him the burden of proof as to "the statutory requirements precedent to the exercise of discretionary relief." 8 CFR, 1949 ed., § 151.3(e), as amended, 15 Fed.Reg. 7638. This regulation is completely
It follows that an applicant for suspension, "a matter of discretion and of administrative grace," Hintopoulos v. Shaughnessy, 353 U. S. 72 , 353 U. S. 77 (1957), must, upon the request of the Attorney General, supply such information that is within his knowledge and has a direct bearing on his eligibility under the statute. The Attorney General may, of course, exercise his authority of grace through duly delegated agents. Jay v. Boyd, 351 U. S. 345 (1956). Perhaps the petitioner was justified in his personal refusal to answer -- a question we do not pass upon -- but this did not relieve him under the statute of the burden of establishing the authority of the Attorney General to exercise his discretion in the first place.
It has become much the fashion to impute wrongdoing to or do impose punishment on a person for invoking his constitutional rights. [ Footnote 2/1 ] Lloyd Barenblatt has served a jail sentence for invoking his First Amendment rights. See Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U. S. 109 . As this is written, Dr. Willard Uphaus, as a consequence of our
decision in Uphaus v. Wyman, 360 U. S. 72 , is in jail in New Hampshire for invoking rights guaranteed to him by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. So is the mathematician, Horace Chandler Davis, who invoked the First Amendment against the House Un-American Activities Committee. Davis v. United States, 269 F.2d 357 (C.A. 6th Cir.). Today we allow invocation of the Fifth Amendment to serve, in effect, though not in terms, as proof that an alien lacks the "good moral character" which he must have under § 19(c) of the Immigration Act in order to become eligible for the dispensing powers entrusted to the Attorney General.
The import of what we do is underlined by the fact that there is not a shred of evidence of bad character in the record against this alien. The alien has fully satisfied the requirements of § 19(c), as shown by the record. He entered as a student in 1928, and pursued his studies until 1938. He planned to return to Korea, but the outbreak of hostilities between China and Japan in 1937 changed his mind. Since 1938, he has been continuously employed in gainful occupations. That is the sole basis of his deportability. [ Footnote 2/2 ] The record shows no criminal convictions, nothing that could bring stigma to the man. His employment since 1938 has been as manager of a produce company, as chemist, as foundry worker, and as a member of O.S.S. during the latter part of World War II. He also was self-employed in the printing business, publishing a paper "Korean Independence." No one came forward to testify that he was a Communist. There is not a word of evidence that he had been a member of the Communist Party at any time. The only thing that stands in his way of being eligible for suspension of deportation
Imputation of guilt for invoking the protection of the Fifth Amendment carries us back some centuries to the hated oath ex officio used both by the Star Chamber and the High Commission. Refusal to answer was contempt. [ Footnote 2/3 ] Thus was started in the English-speaking world the great rebellion against oaths that either violated the conscience of the witness or were used to obtain evidence against
him. See Ullmann v. United States, 350 U. S. 422 , 350 U. S. 445 -449 (dissenting opinion).
I had assumed that invocation of the privilege is a neutral act, as consistent with innocence as with guilt. We pointed out in Slochower v. Board of Education, 350 U. S. 551 , 350 U. S. 557 -558: "The privilege serves to protect the innocent who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances." We re-emphasized that view in Grunewald v. United States, 353 U. S. 391 , 353 U. S. 421 :
We went further in Konigsberg v. State Bar, 353 U. S. 252 , 353 U. S. 267 , and in Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, 353 U. S. 232 , 353 U. S. 246 , and held that even past membership in the Communist Party was not, by itself, evidence that the person was of bad moral character.
Suspension of deportation may be "a matter of discretion and of administrative grace," United States ex rel. Hintopoulos v. Shaughnessy, 353 U. S. 72 , 353 U. S. 77 , but eligibility
for suspension, for the exercise of that discretion, is very much a matter of law. McGrath v. Kristensen, 340 U. S. 162 , 340 U. S. 169 . The decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals was that petitioner was not, under the governing statute, eligible for suspension; and, on that basis, its order must stand or fall in court. Securities & Exchange Comm. v. Chenery Corp., 318 U. S. 80 , 318 U. S. 87 .
The only basis of the Appeals Board's determination of ineligibility that the Government seriously defends here is the Board's finding that the petitioner had not shown he was not deportable under §§ 1 and 4 of the Act of October 16, 1918, 40 Stat. 1012, as amended by § 22 of the Internal Security Act of 1950, 64 Stat. 1006, 1008. Those provisions retroactively made deportable an alien who had been a Communist Party member at any time since his entry into the United States; and § 19 of the 1917 Immigration Act, 39 Stat. 889, as later amended, [ Footnote 3/1 ] under which petitioner's eligibility for suspension was determined, made those aliens who were deportable on that basis ineligible for suspension of deportation.
It has not been, and scarcely could be, controverted that the Government must, in general, bear the burden of demonstrating, in administrative proceedings, the deportability of an alien; whatever the exceptions to this rule may be, [ Footnote 3/2 ] it was established by the time relevant here that,
If the basis on which it was sought to deport petitioner in the first place was that he was deportable as a Communist or ex-Communist under §§ 1 and 4 of the 1918 Act, as amended, it could hardly be contended that this would be evidence, let alone sufficient evidence, that he was or had been a Communist, on which to base a finding of deportability. Cf. Slochower v. Board of Higher Education, 350 U. S. 551 . The provision in § 19 of the 1917 Immigration Act, as amended, which is relied on disqualifies from suspension an alien who is "deportable" under the other Act, and one would think the burden of
I would think it perfectly plain that such a regulation as applied in this case would be contrary to the statutory scheme, properly and responsibly construed. [ Footnote 3/3 ] In the first place, as I have noted, it turns around the ordinary rules as to the burden of proof as to which party shall show "deportability." It requires the alien to prove a negative -- that he never was a Communist since he entered the country -- when no one has said or intimated that he was. Such proof would necessarily lead to petitioner's bearing the laboring oar in showing that all his political or economic expressions in this country were independent of any covert connection with the Communist Party. The effect of imposing such a burden of exculpation on the exercise, for example, of non-Communist political action on behalf of causes which Communists might also happen to favor
is obvious. In fact, on this very basis, we not so long ago struck down a state statute which placed on an individual desiring a tax exemption the burden of proof to show that his political activities were not of a proscribed nature -- of a nature, moreover, which we assumed the State had the power directly to proscribe. Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S. 513 , 357 U. S. 520 . We have this Term reaffirmed the central principle of that case, its inhibition on procedural devices which, though designed to reach legitimate ends, impose burdens on the exercise of the freedom of speech, in a subsequent decision, by striking down another state enactment. Smith v. California, 361 U. S. 147 . On such a basis, we declared the enactments of sovereign States unconstitutional; I think we should hardly be less willing to apply the same doctrine to set aside, as not statutorily warranted, a federal administrative regulation which anomalously turns about the ordinary state of the burden of proof as to "deportability" and in fact so far dispenses with the ordinary requirement of evidence of "deportability" that the alien must shoulder the burden of negating it even where the Government has introduced no evidence at all on the issue.
We are, apart from construction of the Constitution, responsible for the proper construction of Acts of Congress, and for determining the validity of challenged administrative regulations and procedures under them. Here we are called upon only to put a rational construction upon a federal statute, and the allocation of the burden of proof under it, that will promote the statute's internal consistency and minimize its frictions with the First Amendment. One of the relevant enactments, § 22 of the 1950 Internal Security Act, is a harsh one whose constitutionality was upheld here only on historical grounds. See Galvan v. Press, 347 U. S. 522 , 347 U. S. 530 -532. By subscribing to the anomalous allocation of the burden of proof here, we increase the statute's harshness, promote the procedural
Section 23 of the 1924 Immigration Act, 43 Stat. 165, placed the burden on the alien in a deportation proceeding to show that he had been lawfully admitted to the country. The current Act is to the same effect. § 291, 66 Stat. 234, 8 U.S.C. § 1361. The courts in the cases cited in text drew a sharp distinction between this issue and the matter of deportability owing to post-admission conduct. The failure of Congress to specify other issues on which the alien has the burden is confirmation of the correctness of these decisions. See United States ex rel. Bilokumsky v. Tod, 263 U. S. 149 , 263 U. S. 153 .