Court Opinion

ID: 9450056
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:33:49.166943+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:07.902589
License: Public Domain

SCHNACKENBERG, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
In my opinion the conferring of American citizenship upon appellant in this case should not depend upon unexplained delays in the administrative processes which accompanied a final administrative decision thereon. It should be controlled by the overriding importance of the inquiry as to where appellant stood in his professed loyalty to the United States of America. When faced by a question which required him to state under oath whether he would take up arms and defend the United States if it were attacked from sources originating in Australia and controlled by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), he gave several evasive answers. When he was pressed to answer a simple question categorically he gave an equivocal answer, as pointed out in the majority opinion.
However, I do not believe that appellant’s equivocal answer to a question which this court considers farfetched can be justified on that ground. Similarly it might have been argued that an applicant for citizenship several years prior to World War I, or prior to World War II, might have been asked a similar question based upon the “farfetched” premise that Germany might later be at war with the United States. Yet world events have a way of aligning erstwhile friends as enemies. What court, or in fact, who, can predict the future when asking a probing question of a man whose loyalty *171is being tested when he seeks to become a citizen of the United States ?
One who harbors reservations in pledging loyalty to the United States is not entitled to citizenship therein. The nation is entitled to receive from each new citizen undivided loyalty and support of both of his hands without any fingers being crossed. I would affirm the order of the district court, which agreed with all of the relevant administrative rulings. To do otherwise would be to judicially sanction the creation of a new class of citizenship, which would be conditional and insecurely based upon the aberrations of loyalty of those in that class.