Roa v. Collector of Customs (Consti1)

Roa v. collector of Customs

TRANQUILINO ROA, Petitioner-Appellant , vs. INSULAR COLLECTOR OF CUSTOMS, Respondent-Appellee.

En Banc

Doctrine: Series of Conflicting SC Decisions re Citizenship

Date: October 30, 1912

Ponente: Justice Trent

Facts:

• This is an appeal from an order of the Court of First Instance of Cebu recommitting the appellant, Tranquilino Roa, to the custody of the Collector of Customs and declaring the Collector's right to effect appellant's deportation to China as being a subject of the Chinese Empire and without right to enter and reside in the Philippine Islands. There is no dispute as to the facts.
• Tranquilino Roa, was born in the town of Luculan, Mindanao, Philippine Islands, on July 6, 1889. His father was Basilio Roa Uy Tiong Co, a native of China, and his mother was Basilia Rodriguez, a native of this country. His parents were legally married in the Philippine Islands at the time of his birth.
• The father of the appellant went to China about the year 1895, and died there about 1900. Subsequent to the death of his father, in May, 1901, the appellant was sent to China by his mother for the sole purpose of studying (and always with the intention of returning) and returned to the Philippine Islands on the steamship Kaifong, arriving at the port of Cebu October 1, 1910, from Amoy, China, and sought admission to the Philippine Islands. At this time the appellant was a few days under 21 years and 3 months of age.
• After hearing the evidence the board of special inquiry found that the appellant was a Chinese person and a subject of the Emperor of China and not entitled to land.
• In view of the fact that the applicant for admission was born in lawful wedlock
• On appeal to the Insular Collector of Customs this decision was affirmed, and the Court of First Instance of Cebu in these habeas corpus proceedings remanded the appellant to the Collector of Customs
• Under the laws of the Philippine Islands, children, while they remain under parental authority, have the nationality of their parents. Therefore, the legitimate children born in the Philippine Islands of a subject of the Emperor of China are Chinese subjects and the same rule obtained during Spanish sovereignty

Issue: WON Roa is a citizen of the Philippines

Held: YES, The nationality of the appellant having followed that of his mother, he was therefore a citizen of the Philippine Islands on July 1, 1902, and never having expatriated himself, he still remains a citizen of this country.

We therefore conclude that the appellant is a citizen of the Philippine Islands and entitled to land. The judgment appealed from is reversed and the appellant is ordered released from custody, with costs de oficio.

Ratio:

• His mother, before her marriage, was, as we have said, a Spanish subject.
• Section 4 of the Philippine Bill provides:
• That all inhabitants of the Philippine Islands continuing to reside therein who were Spanish subjects on the eleventh day of April, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine, and then resided in said Islands, and their children born subsequent thereto, shall be deemed and held to be citizens of the Philippine Islands and as such entitled to the protection of the United States, except such as shall have elected to preserve their allegiance to the Crown of Spain in accordance with the provisions of the treaty of peace between the United States and Spain signed at Paris December tenth, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight.
• On the death of her husband she ipso facto reacquired the nationality of the country of her birth, as she was then living in that country and had never left it. She was then the natural guardian of Tranquilino. Upon the dissolution of a marriage between a female citizen of the United States and a foreigner, she ipso facto reacquires American citizenship, if at that time she is residing in the United States.
• There is no statutory declaration on the question as to whether or not her minor children would follow that of their widowed mother. If the children were born in the United States, they would be citizens of that country. If they were born in the country of which their father (and their mother during coverture) was a citizen, then they would be a citizens of that country until the death of their father.
• But after his death, they being minors and their nationality would, as a logical consequence, follow that of their mother, she having changed their domicile and nationality by placing them within the jurisdiction of the United States.
• But, of course, such minor children, on reaching their majority, could elect, under the principle that expatriation is an inherent right of all people, the nationality of the country of
• "no principle has been more repeatedly announced by the judicial tribunals of the country, and more constantly acted upon, than that the leaning, in questions of citizenship, should always be in favor of the claimant of it." Quoted with approval in the case of Boyd vs. Thayer (143 U.S., 135)