616 



NATURALIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 



their declarations as to the requirements of 

 these laws." 



In the case of Portuondo, the same umpire, 

 Baron Blanc, decided : " That as to the trav- 

 ersed allegation of American citizenship of the 

 deceased, competent and sufficient proof there- 

 of, as required by the agreement of February 

 12, 1871, is given by his certificate of natural- 

 ization, such certificate not being proved or 

 charged to have been procured by fraud or is- 

 sued in violation of public law, treaties, or nat- 

 ural justice. Such grounds of impeachment 

 upon which any certificate of naturalization 

 may be declared altogether void not being 

 found in this case, the umpire called upon to 

 resolve such conflict about the allegiance of 

 the deceased must, following previous adjudi- 

 cations by umpires of this commission and in 

 the absence of any treaty between Spain and 

 the United States restricting the power of the 

 United States to grant naturalization, in ac- 

 cordance with municipal law, as interpreted 

 by the municipal courts, give full force to the 

 naturalization of the deceased even against 

 Spain." 



In his note of November 30, 1881, to the 

 counsel of the United States before the com- 

 mission, Mr. Blaine, after citing the decisions 

 of the umpire in the above cases, says : 



This Government had the right to consider these 

 decisions as final and conclusive of the meaning of the 

 agreement under them. From the date of the open- 

 ing of the commission, by a succession of umpires, 

 one hundred and seven cases having been tried and 

 decided, forty cases remain on the docket. If the de- 

 cisions of former umpires are to be reversed, then the 

 forty cases are to be judged upon entirely different 

 principles from the preceding cases. In fact, the one 

 hundred and seven cases will have been decided 

 under an agreement meaning an entirely different 

 and even contradictory thing. Two claimants pre- 

 senting certificates of naturalization of the same date, 

 issued from the same court, would be the one received 

 and the other rejected, not on any fixed principle, but 

 according as the number of his claim on the docket 

 brought nis case under the consideration of one or the 

 other umpire. 



What effects should be given to the certificate of 

 naturalization as it is understood by the contracting 

 parties and declared in the stipulations of the agree- 

 ment, and what power the commission itself may have 

 to extend or limit this effect by construction, I will 

 not now discuss ; but it is evident that if the commis- 

 sion has or has not assumed the power to decide this 

 question, which is one not of fact, but of construction 

 of the intent of the argument once decided ; it must 

 be considered as settled for ever ; for it is obvious that 

 no settlement can be reached just to the claimant 

 where the rule of construction varies with every 

 change which may occur in the person of the umpire. 

 And this Government must insist that all claims shall 

 be tried by the same rules and under the same con- 

 struction of the agreement between Spain and the 

 United States. The commission is not a proper tri- 

 bunal to which should be submitted the argument of 

 the United States in this regard. Whether this course 

 is justified by the circumstances, or whether our inter- 

 pretation of the agreement be the correct one, are 

 questions, upon the failure of the commission, to be 

 discussed and decided by the two governments them- 

 selves. For the present' it is sufficient that I refuse 

 to_ recognize the power of the commission to denation- 

 alize an American citizen. When a court of compe- 

 tent jurisdiction, administering the law of the land, 



issued its regular certificate of naturalization to Piedro 

 Buzzi, he was made a citizen of the United States^ and 

 no power resides in the executive department of this 

 Government to reverse or review that judgment, and 

 what the power of the Executive can not do in itself 

 it can not delegate to a commission, which is the mere 

 creation of the Executive agreement. . . . 



Therefore, as this Government perceives that, in 

 the following out practically of the recent decision of 

 Count Lewenhaupt, serious damage would be done 

 the United States, by setting aside of the most im- 

 portant safeguards established in our behalf by the 

 agreement of February, 1871, as it regards the decis- 

 ion of Count Lewenhaupt, entirely beyond the scope 

 of the authority given by the convention, as it is 

 bound to respect and maintain the decision made, not 

 by one, but by a series of former umpires, and which it 

 has regarded final and conclusive, and as it is pledged 

 to insist upon the application of the same law to all 

 the claimants who may come before the commission, 

 you arc instructed not to consent to have any case re- 

 ferred to the umpire wherein the question may be in- 

 volved of the effect due to a certificate of naturalization 

 issued by a competent court, and in which it is not 

 denied that the claimant presenting it is the person to 

 whom it was originally issued. 



1 feel myself the more constrained to give you this 

 instruction, as the commission is not the creation of a 

 treaty constituting it an international court, but sim- 

 ply an arbitration agreed upon between one of my 

 predecessors, as Secretary of State, and the Spanish 

 Secretary of Foreign Affairs. To these commission- 

 ers no larger powers could be given than those pos- 

 sessed by the secretaries that appointed them, and I 

 am thus personally charged with, the duty of seeing 

 that the terms of the arbitration are duly executed, 

 and that no detriment shall come to the interests 

 of the United States by the exercise of a power 

 which I do not possess, and could not therefore dele- 

 gate. 



From the above it will be seen that Secretary 

 Blaine based his protest mainly on the ground 

 that the decision of Count Lewenhaupt was 

 contrary to the principles affirmed by his two 

 predecessors, M. Bartholdi and Baron Blanc. 

 In the popular discussion of the subject which 

 followed the protest, those who did not agree 

 with the views advanced by the Secretary of 

 State contended that his conclusion was not 

 sustained by the authorities which he cited. 

 The question presented in the Buzzi case was 

 whether the commission could question a cer- 

 tificate of naturalization in case of fraud. The 

 umpire found that Buzzi had lived only six 

 months in the United States when he made 

 affidavit of five years' residence, and decided 

 that he had not been naturalized in good faith. 

 In the Delgado case it appeared that the claim- 

 ant had been absent from the territory of the 

 United States only once or twice during the 

 five years preceding his naturalization. The 

 umpire, M. Bartholdi, found that " there is no 

 evidence nor charge of the naturalization hav- 

 ing been obtained by fraud," and held that, as 

 Delgado's certificate had been obtained in good 

 faith, its legal validity was a matter of local law, 

 determined by the court which admitted him to 

 citizenship. On this point the umpire in the 

 Buzzi case seems to have entirely agreed with 

 M. Bartholdi. While holding that the commis- 

 sion had a right to go behind a naturalization 

 certificate in case of fraud, Count Lewenhaupt 

 says, in the Buzzi case : 



