Court Opinion

ID: 9468042
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:02:42.720063+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:38.982456
License: Public Domain

VAN GRAAFEILAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I am troubled by my colleagues’ apparent eagerness to award the perquisites of citizenship to those who fought during World War II, not to defend the United States, but to avoid doing so. I do not believe that the law mandates this result.
Section 2 of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, as amended in 1941, provided that every male citizen and resident of the United States between eighteen and sixty-five had to register for service. 55 Stat. 844. Section 3, as amended, provided that any citizen or subject of a neutral country, could, upon application, be relieved from liability for training and service. 55 Stat. 845. When these sections are read together, as they must be, it is quite apparent that an exempted alien whose homeland abandoned its neutral status would lose perforce his service exemption. Like any other nonexempt male resident, he would then become subject to registration.1
This was the law when appellee relinquished his future claims to citizenship. The Government could not agree to exempt appellee completely and permanently from service, regardless of his homeland’s change of status, without undertaking to violate the law and to give appellee a possible unconstitutional preference. I do not believe that, when Congress enacted section 315(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 8 U.S.C. § 1426(a), it intended to bind the Government nunc pro tunc to agreements that would have been illicit when made. In short, I believe that appel-lee got exactly what he bargained for.
Ecuador declared war on Germany and Japan in February, 1945. Michel, The Second World War 452 (1968); 4 Chamber’s Encyclopaedia 782 (1973). The majority’s contention that by recognizing this obvious loss of neutrality, the United States Government “affirmatively ended appellee’s exemption” demonstrates more ingenuity than is warranted by the merits of appel-lee’s claimed right to citizenship. I believe that Colombo v. United States, 531 F.2d 943 (9th Cir. 1975) and Assi v. United States, *122498 F.2d 1064 (5th Cir. 1974) were correctly decided. I would reverse.

. As Judge Maletz has wisely stated, “persons similarly situated should not needlessly be treated differently.”