Court Opinion

ID: 9704920
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:51:49.82047+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:06.489561
License: Public Domain

LEVENTHAL, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
I add to the opinion I have written for the court a few words that help me place this case in perspective.
*1253We did not have before us in this case a statute that set conditions as a prerequisite for the grant of citizenship. Therefore we did not have occasion to consider to what extent Congress could impose such conditions and what kind of conditions, if any, it could impose. My own assumption is that Congress can impose reasonable conditions that must be met before citizenship is recognized.1 But that is not the course that Congress wanted to follow here. It wanted the child beneficiary governed by § 301(a) (7) to be a citizen at birth, with advantages of United States diplomatic protection and other benefits of citizenship, and perhaps with the corollary opportunity to resist citizenship claims of other countries.2
Nor were we required to consider a statute in which residence abroad was not established as an operative fact terminating citizenship, but was given significance only as an evidentiary fact indicative of a voluntary relinquishment of citizenship.3

. "While Congress would have wide latitude in drafting a condition precedent to its grant of citizenship, such conditions would have to comply with the fundamental requirements of equal protection and due process. Compare French, Unconstitutional Conditions: An Analysis, 50 Geo. L.J. 234 (1961).

. See Borchard, Diplomatic Protection of Citizens Abroad § 200, at 462.

. Compare Chief Justice Warren’s dissent in Perez v. Brownell, which states that “certain voluntary conduct results in an impairment of the status of citizenship,” 356 U.S. at 69, 78 S.Ct. at 581, and that *1254“United States citizenship can be abandoned, temporarily or permanently, by conduct showing a voluntary transfer of allegiance to another country.” 356 U.S. at 73, 78 S.Ct. at 583; compare also Justice Black’s concurring opinion in Nishikawa v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 129, 139, 78 S.Ct. 612, 2 L.Ed.2d 659 (1958), where he noted, “Although Congress may provide rules of evidence for [determining when there has been voluntary relinquishment], it cannot declare that such equivocal acts as service in a foreign army, participation in a foreign election or desertion from our armed forces, establish a conclusive presumption of intention to throw off American nationality. [Citation omitted.] Of course such conduct may be highly persuasive evidence in the particular case of a purpose to abandon citizenship.”