134 F. 988 | E.D. Pa. | 1905
Assuming the testimony offered in this case to be true, and regarding it in the light most favorable to the appellant, it establishes these facts: Joe Dick was born in China in 1874. In the same year his father, Joe Kin, came to the United States, and either then or soon afterwards began trading as a merchant in San Francisco. In 1882 the father sent for his son, and the boy was brought over by a cousin, Joe Sing, and went to live in his father’s house and family. In 1886 the father sold out his interest in the business, left the country permanently, and went back to China, where he has since remained. Joe Dick declined to accompany his father, and, being thrown upon his own resources, began at once to earn his living by manual labor; first as a farm hand in California until 1898, and since that time as a laundryman in the city of Philadelphia. He knew that laborers were required to register by the acts of 1892 and 1893, but did not ask for a certificate, his only excuse being that he “did not have any money then.” In these years he was 18 and 19 years old.
The government concedes that if, when the acts of 1892 and 1893 were passed, the appellant was privileged to remain in this country as the minor son of a Chinese merchant, he is not now liable to deportation, since, to quote from the government’s brief, “it was evidently not the intention of the registration acts to require those to register who in the eye of the law were not laborers at the date of the passage of the acts.” The crucial fact, as it seems to me, in determining how far the
“The domicile of the child is necessarily that of the father, at least so long as the former remains in any manner under the guardianship and control of the latter.
“A case may be supposed, however, in which it would seem unjust to apply this general rule of derivation; e. g., where a father has abandoned his child, and has emigrated to a foreign country or a distant state. Under extreme circumstances in such a case a court might, and probably would, refuse to seek in a distant land a domicile for the child with a parent who had been faithless to parental duty, or, if it did recognize such domicile, refuse to attach to it the usual legal consequences.”
It is argued further that the appellant’s legal infancy in 1892 and 1893 was a valid excuse for not registering. The question was suggested briefly and passed over in Tsoi Sim v. United States, 116 Fed., on page 922, 54 C. C. A. 154, but is now presented for decision. Whether a laborer, who was a minor and living in the household of his father, who was also a laborer, was obliged to register as if he had been an adult, may be left for determination until such a case is presented. The laborer now before the court was near his majority; he had been given the privileges of an adult by his father, and been forced to take up an adult’s burden; he was man enough to earn his own living, and intelligent enough to know that registration acts had been passed affecting the class to which he belonged. Under such circumstances I am at a loss to know upon what principle his exemption from the duty to register can be placed. The act says nothing about minors or adults. It is “laborers” that are referred to; and the presumption is, I think, that their age is a matter of no importance. Of course, the statute is to receive a reasonable construction. Very young or very old persons, incapable of “labor” in the ordinary meaning of that word, are probably not included, although they might be able to do some inconsiderable work with their hands. But when a youth has grown strong enough to do an adult’s work, I see no reason why he should not be classed with
The appellant asks also to be permitted to register now in case the court should decide against his present right to remain in the country. There are, however, two insuperable obstacles in the way of such permission : First, there is no evidence that “by reason of accident, sickness or other unavoidable cause, he has been unable to procure his certificate” (section 6, Act May 5, 1892, 27 Stat. 25 [U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 1320]); and, second, he has not proved by at least one credible witness other than Chinese, that he was a resident of the United States on the fifth of May, 1892 (Act Nov. 3, 1893, c. 14, § 6, 28 Stat. 7 [U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 1320]). All the witnesses before the commissioner and before the court were Chinamen.
The appeal must therefore be dismissed, and the order of deportation made by the commissioner is hereby affirmed.