270 F. 764 | 9th Cir. | 1921
The appellee was born in Ding Boy ■village, China, and lived there until he left China to come to San [fran-cisco, where he arrived July 23, 1918. He clamed admission on the ground that he was the foreign-horn son of Chan Young, who was alleged to have been born in the United States. He was denied admission after a hearing before a board of special inquiry, a decision which, on appeal to the Secretary of Labor, was affirmed. In the petition for habeas corpus, it was alleged that the decision of the immigration officials, in view of the conclusive character of the evidence, amounted to abuse of discretion. Upon the hearing in the court below on the return to the writ the appellee was ordered discharged from custody. From that order this appeal is taken.
The ground on which the appellee was denied admission by the immigration officials was that the American citizenship of his alleged father, Chan Young, was not satisfactorily established. It appeared on the hearing that Chan Young was admitted to the United States in December, 1899, as a native-born citizen, on the evidence of his father,Chan Wong, and another Chinese witness, that he was born in San Francisco on a specified date in the year 1875. It was also shown that in the year 1909 or 1910 Chan Way Bon, a son of Chan Young, was admitted as a son of a native-born citizen, and that in 1917 Chan Way Ging, another son of Chan Young,' was likewise admitted as the son of a native-born citizen. The evidence on which the appellee was excluded, notwithstanding the admission of Chan Young and two of his sons, was that, on the hearing of the appellee’s application, evidence came to light which discredited the testimony that -Chan Young was born in the United States. One item of that evidence
The court below expressed doubt whether the declaration made at Victoria was made by the father of the appellee or by some other, and was in doubt whether either of the items of evidence was competent or admissible against the appellee, but reached the conclusion that in any event the department should be bound by its own prior adjudications, made at a time when the witnesses who had knowledge of the facts' were living and able and competent to testify, and that it-would be gross injustice to exclude the appellee after the death of his 'father and grandfather had rendered it impossible to explain or contradict the statements so received in evidence against him.
There is substantial evidence of the identity- of Chan Young with the Chinese person who appeared upon the Canadian records as arriving at Victoria June 2, 1899, and as sailing therefrom on the steamship Umatilla for San Francisco on December 20, 1899, and who arrived at San Francisco December 23, 1899, and was admitted December
The judgment of the court below is reversed, and the cause is remanded, with instructions to dismiss the writ and remand the appellee to custody.