Court Opinion

ID: 9495120
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:54:49.925318+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:49.334187
License: Public Domain

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Petitioner had the burden of showing that his father had established residence in the United States for 10 years before petitioner’s birth. 8 U.S.C. § 601(g) (1940). The Supreme Court has held that “residence” nieans “place of general abode” or “principal* dwelling place.” Savorgnan v. United States, 338 U.S. 491, 505-06, 70 S.Ct. 292, 94 L.Ed. 287 (1950). The question is whether petitioner has presented sufficient evidence that near the beginning of the 9 years in question — 1943 to 1952— the father had moved his principal dwelling place from Mexico to the United States.1
The evidence supporting petitioner’s claim is highly inconclusive. Petitioner’s mother testified that during the years in question, her husband came to the United States during the cotton-growing season “to harvest cotton.” Tr. at 28. The mother did not know the location of her husband’s employment or the name of the employer. Nor did petitioner’s mother testify that the father had an established job *1159that was held open for his return from year to year. Petitioner offered no income tax records, no utility bills, no letters addressed to his father in the United States and no other evidence identifying the actual place where his father worked and lived. Nor did petitioner offer any other evidence that his father had switched his principal place of abode from Mexico to the United States. All we have supporting this inference is the father’s physical presence somewhere within Texas for several months during a number of consecutive years.
At the same time, the evidence undermining the claim of residence in the United States is quite strong. Most significantly, the father left his family, consisting of a wife and minor children, in Mexico, and returned to them at the end of the growing season every year. They did not visit him in the United States nor, apparently, did they even know where he lived. Tr. at 32, 35-36. There is no evidence that petitioner’s father retained a home in the United States during his returns to Mexico, nor that he left any of his personal possessions in the United States. An expert on the Mexiean-U.S. migration testified that the father’s migration patterns were typical of the “annual shuttle migrants” — young Mexican men who, in order to support their families, regularly left Mexico to work in “seasonal agriculture in Texas, California, or the Pacific Northwest.” They worked usually on a cash basis, and often illegally. They also remained strongly connected to Mexico, sending money home throughout the year and returning to their families in Mexico in the fall. Statement of Professor L. Manuel García y Griego, at 3-5; see also Manuel García y Griego, The Importation of Mexican Contract Laborers to the United States, in Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigrants in the United States 45, 52-53 (David G. Gutiérrez ed., 1996). In an affidavit of support, provided to the INS in 1963 and admitted into the record in these proceedings, the father himself claimed residence in the United States only for the two years as a child and then commencing in 1956, after petitioner’s birth.
As the majority correctly points out, we determine residence based on objective facts, not intent. Maj. Op. at 1157. In analyzing the evidence presented, we must start with the established fact that, some time before 1943, petitioner’s father had a principal residence in Mexico, where he lived with petitioner’s mother and siblings. We must then decide whether petitioner satisfied his burden of showing that the father changed his principal residence from Mexico to the United States. To satisfy this requirement, petitioner must point to a place where the residence was established: a street address, a farm, a hotel, even a locality. See, e.g., Savorgnan, 338 U.S. at 505-06, 70 S.Ct. 292 (the petitioner had a residence in Rome because she lived there with her husband and his family); Garlasco v. Dulles, 243 F.2d 679, 680-82 (2d Cir.1957) (the plaintiff established residence in the United States by staying in a hotel in New York City); Matter of M — , 7 I. & N. Dec. 643, 645 (BIA 1958) (the applicant's father proved residence in the United States by showing that he was a graduate student at Yale University); Matter of V— V— 7 I. & N. Dec. 122, 123 (BIA 1956) (the appellant was a United States resident because he attended a specific boarding school in the United States). Here, petitioner has shown only that his father was somewhere in Texas — an area of 267 thousand square miles. This is a location much too indeterminate to support a finding of residence.
Even if petitioner had identified where his father lived during the growing season, he would also have to show that this location became his father’s “general place of abode” or “principal dwelling place.” See *1160Savorgnan, 338 U.S. at 506, 70 S.Ct. 292. The fact that his wife and children remained in Mexico, that he returned there every year, that he never stayed in Texas past the growing season — including the one year when the season was short, see Maj. Op. at 1156 — and that he himself did not consider his residence to be in the United States until 1956 all undermine petitioner’s claim that the father had abandoned his principal residence in Mexico in favor of one in the United States.
The majority cites Acheson v. Yee King Gee, 184 F.2d 382 (9th Cir.1950), for the proposition that, once residence is established, temporary absences do not interrupt it. Maj. Op. at 1158. Yee King Gee is, of course, relevant, but the majority stands that case on its head. Yee King Gee started with the proposition that petitioner had an established residence in the United States and considered the nature of his visit abroad to determine whether the departure from the United States had the effect of changing his residence. Yee King Gee, 184 F.2d at 383-84. We must do the same here, starting with the established fact that petitioner’s father resided in Mexico prior to 1943. Pursuant to Yee King Gee, we must then inquire whether his departure to the United States to work as a seasonal agricultural laborer had the effect of changing his principal dwelling place. Clearly it did not. As our cases hold, residence is not broken by a temporary visit to another country, even for a long period; there must be some objective evidence that the individual abandoned his existing general place of abode. See Yee King Gee, 184 F.2d at 383-84; see also Toy Teung Kwong v. Acheson, 97 F.Supp. 745, 747 (N.D. Cal. 1951) (an individual’s trip to China “merely for the purpose of attending his mother in her illness” did not interrupt the continuity of his United States residence); Wong Gan Chee v. Acheson, 95 F.Supp. 816, 817 (N.D.Cal. 1951) (an individual who went to China to visit his mother and was detained there by the Second World War did not lose his status as a U.S. resident).
In determining whether petitioner’s father abandoned his residence in Mexico, we must focus on the years 1943 and 1944.2 Did anything happen these years to indicate that petitioner’s father meant to abandon his principal residence in Mexico and take up residence in the United States? At the end of 1944, petitioner’s father had traveled to the United States twice to work during the growing season, and returned to Mexico once in between those seasons. Because we cannot consider intent, we cannot consider whether he intended to come back to the United States again and again over the succeeding several years, and two visits to the United States are surely not enough evidence to support a finding that the father abandoned his principal residence in Mexico and established a principal residence in the United States. According to the father himself, he did not believe he had changed his residence until 1956. The father, of course, was far more familiar with the circumstances of his living situation than we, and if he claims to have resumed residency in the United States in 1956 and not earlier, there is every reason to take his word for it.

. While the statute requires 10 years of residence before petitioner's birth, there was undisputed testimony, accepted by the IJ, that petitioner's father had lived in the United States for two years from 1920 to 1922. Thus, he needed' only about 8 years of residence during the period in issue. Maj. Op. at 1157. He would have that if he established residence in 1943 or 1944, but not later.

. If petitioner’s father established residence in the United States in 1945 or later, this would give petitioner less than the 8 years he needs in order to meet the statutory require-menl of having one of his parents reside in the U.S. for at least 10 years prior to his birth in 1952. See note 1 supra.