Court Opinion

ID: 9446096
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:46:04.38634+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:31.359997
License: Public Domain

LUMBARD, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I do not read the 1952 Act to mean that aliens who prior to the effective date of that Act signed DSS Form 301 applying to be relieved of military service because of their alienage were granted an amnesty if they were not also actually relieved of such service by reason of some clerical act on the part of a draft board. In view of the clearly expressed national policy with regard to those who enjoyed what our country had to offer and at the same time chose not to render military service at a time before 1952 when such service was generally far more hazardous and necessary, I would rest on the definition of those “ineligible to citizenship” as controlling. Thus § 101(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 8 U.S.C.A. § 1101(a):
See. 101. (a) As used in this Act—
“(19) The term ‘ineligible to citizenship,’ when used in reference to any individual, means, notwithstanding the provisions of any treaty relating to military service, an individual who is, or was at any time, permanently debarred from becoming a citizen of the United States under section 3(a) of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, as amended (54 Stat. 885; 55 Stat. 844), * * * or under any section of this Act, or any other Act, or under any law amendatory of, supplementary to, or in substitution for, any of such sections or Acts.” (Emphasis supplied.)
As Mirzoeff executed DSS Form 301 on July 6, 1943, while Iran was still neu*675tral, by that very act he became ineligible for citizenship. In the absence of an unambiguous expression by the Congress of an intention to lift the bar which clearly lay across Mirzoeff’s path to citizenship for nine years, I think what he did in the dark days of July 1943 disposes of the matter.
I would reverse the order of the District Court.