NATURALIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 



615 



Spain. The arbitrators were to select an um- 

 pire. Article V of the agreement stipulated 

 that " no judgment of a Spanish tribunal dis- 

 allowing the affirmation of a party that he is a 

 citizen of the United States shall prevent the 

 arbitrators from hearing a reclamation pre- 

 sented in behalf of said party by the United 

 States Government. Nevertheless, in any case 

 heard by the arbitrators the Spanish Govern- 

 ment may traverse the allegation of American 

 citizenship, and thereupon competent and suffi- 

 cient proof thereof will be required. The com- 

 mission having recognized the quality of Ameri- 

 can citizens in the claimants, they will acquire 

 the rights accorded to them by the present 

 stipulations as such citizens." The agreement 

 concludes with the declaration that " the two 

 governments will accept the awards made in 

 the several cases submitted to the said arbitra- 

 tion as final and conclusive, and will give full 

 effect to the same in good faith and as soon as 

 possible." 



In the case of Piedro D. Buzzi, who presented 

 a claim of five hundred thousand dollars, the 

 arbitrators were unable to agree as to his right 

 to appear before the commission as an Ameri- 

 can citizen. Buzzi was a Cuban who obtained 

 a naturalization certificate in Baltimore in 

 1869. The law requires the applicant for citi- 

 zenship to make affidavit that he has resided 

 live years in the United States immediately 

 preceding the application. It was proved be- 

 fore the commission that Buzzi had lived in the 

 United States only six months of the five years 

 preceding the date of his naturalization. The 

 remaining four and a half years he had lived 

 in Cuba. The counsel for Spain claimed that 

 Buzzi's certificate had been fraudulently ob- 

 tained, and that Buzzi was not entitled to ap- 

 pear before the commission as an American 

 citizen. The counsel for the United States did 

 not deny the facts on which the allegation of 

 fraud was based, but argued that the certificate 

 must be accepted as conclusive evidence of 

 citizenship. The question was referred to the 

 umpire, Count Lewenhaupt, the Swedish Min- 

 ister at Washington. After reviewing the parts 

 of the diplomatic correspondence preceding 

 the arbitration agreement, which are given 

 above, and citing Article V of the agreement, 

 Count Lewenhaupt says in his decision : " In 

 the opinion of the umpire this correspondence 

 shows that by neither party was the conven- 

 tion intended for the benefit of other in the 

 United States naturalized Spaniards than those 

 who have been naturalized in good faith, and, 

 conformably to the proposal of Mr. Sickles, it 

 was agreed that naturalization, after an un- 

 interrupted residence of five or more years, 

 should be considered as a conclusive test. The 

 umpire is of opinion that Article V of the agree- 

 ment, interpreted in the light of the corre- 

 spondence, and only with reference to the 

 present case, stipulates that the Spanish Gov- 

 ernment may traverse the allegation that the 

 claimant has acquired American citizenship in 



good faith, and thereupon proof satisfactory to 

 the commission will be required of an uninter- 

 rupted residence in the United States during 

 the five years immediately preceding the natu- 

 ralization." He accordingly decided that Buz- 

 zi's naturalization certificate had been fraudu- 

 lently obtained, and therefore gave him no 

 right to appear before the commission. 



When this decision was rendered, Mr. Blaine 

 directed the counsel for the United States to 

 move for a rehearing of the case, but in a note 

 dated November 80, 1881, a short time before 

 his retirement from the State Department, Mr. 

 Blaine withdrew that direction and instructed 

 the counsel that " this Government can not 

 accept such judgment [the decision of Count 

 Lewenhaupt] as within the competence of the 

 umpire to render, and that it can not submit 

 the cases remaining unsettled on the docket to 

 the application of principles distinctly repudi- 

 ated by the agreement itself." Mr. Blaine's 

 protest was based on the ground that the com- 

 mission had no right to go behind a naturaliza- 

 tion certificate, but must accept it as conclu- 

 sive evidence of citizenship. In support of 

 this view, he cited three decisions by two for- 

 mer umpires under the agreement, and claimed 

 that the doctrine affirmed by them was bind- 

 ing upon every subsequent umpire. One of 

 these decisions was that rendered in the Del- 

 gado case by M. Bartholdi, Minister from 

 France. In his opinion, M. Bartholdi held: 

 u That the claimant [Delgado] has been natu- 

 ralized an American citizen according to the 

 laws of the United States ; that the judge who 

 ordered him to be admitted a citizen of the 

 United States was, as it has been decided in 

 many cases by the Supreme Court of the United 

 States, the competent authority to decide if 

 the claimant had sufficiently complied with the 

 law, which prescribed a continued residence of 

 five years in the United States before having a 

 right to obtain the naturalization." 



In the subsequent case of Dominguez, the 

 umpire, Baron Blanc, the Italian Minister, said : 

 "Finally, neither the authorities on public law 

 nor the agreements between Spain and the 

 United States, furnish any unquestioned and 

 controlling definition of what constitutes, in 

 fact, a legal residence with presumable animus 

 manendi, and when absence intervenes with 

 presumable animus revertendi, such as would 

 justify or empower the umpire to overrule by 

 force of treaties, or of the law of nations, the 

 construction placed by a court of competent 

 jurisdiction upon a municipal law, as to the re- 

 quired residence in the United States for the 

 next continued term of five years preceding 

 the admission to American citizenship. There- 

 fore the construction thus given, however 

 broad it may be deemed, must be followed so 

 long as it is unimpeached or unreversed by an 

 American tribunal of superior jurisdiction. 

 The. tribunals of the United States are the sole 

 interpreters of the laws of the country, and it 

 is not the privilege of the umpire to review 



