Felix Frankfurter

“ The first step in our inquiry must be to answer the question: what is the source of power on which Congress must be assumed to have drawn? Although there is in the Constitution no specific grant to Congress of power to enact legislation for the effective regulation of foreign affairs, there can be no doubt of the existence of this power in the law-making organ of the Nation. ”

“ It is a distortion of those cases to explain them away on a theory that a citizen's assent to denationalization may be inferred from his having engaged in conduct that amounts to an 'abandonment of citizenship' or a 'transfer of allegiance.' Certainly an Act of Congress cannot be invalidated by resting decisive precedents on a gross fiction-a fiction baseless in law and contradicted by the facts of the cases. ”

“ No one seems to have questioned the necessity of having the State Department, in its conduct of the foreign relations of the Nation, pass on the validity of claims to American citizenship and to such of its incidents as the right to diplomatic protection. However, it was recognized in the Executive Branch that the Department had no specific legislative authority for nullifying citizenship, and several of the Presidents urged Congress to define the acts by which citizens should be held to have expatriated themselves. ”

“ The legislators, counseled by those on whom they rightly relied for advice, were concerned about actions by citizens in foreign countries that create problems of protection and are inconsistent with American allegiance. Moreover, we cannot ignore the fact that embarrassments in the conduct of foreign relations were of primary concern in the consideration of the Act of 1907, of which the loss of nationality provisions of the 1940 Act are a codification and expansion.
Broad as the power in the National Government to regulate foreign affairs must necessarily be, it is not without limitation. ”

“ Justice McKenna, after finding that merging the identity of husband and wife, as Congress had done in this instance, had a 'purpose and, it may be, necessity, in international policy,' continued:
'As a government, the United States is invested with all the attributes of sovereignty. As it has the character of nationality it has the powers of nationality, especially those which concern its relations and intercourse with other countries. We should hesitate long before limiting or embarrassing such powers. ”

“ Perkins' bill provided that a citizen would be 'deemed to have expatriated himself' when, in peacetime, he became naturalized in a foreign country or took an oath of allegiance to a foreign state; it was presumed that a naturalized citizen who resided for five years in a foreign state had ceased to be an American citizen, and an American woman who married a foreigner would take the nationality of her husband. ”

“ In support of the recommendation of voting in a foreign political election as an act of expatriation, the Committee reported:
'Taking an active part in the political affairs of a foreign state by voting in a political election therein is believed to involve a political attachment and practical allegiance there to which is inconsistent with continued allegiance to the United States, whether or not the person in question has or acquires the nationality of the foreign state. ”

“ Native-born citizens of the United States (as well as naturalized citizens outside of the country of their origin) were generally deemed to have lost their American citizenship only if they acquired foreign citizenship. ”

“ At the outbreak of World War II, petitioner knew of the duty of male United States citizens to register for the draft, but he failed to do so. In 1943 he applied for admission to the United States as an alien railroad laborer, stating that he was a native-born citizen of Mexico, and was granted permission to enter on a temporary basis. He returned to Mexico in 1944 and shortly thereafter applied for and was granted permission, again as a native-born Mexican citizen, to enter the United States temporarily to continue his employment as a railroad laborer. ”

“ As a starting point for grappling with this tangle of problems, Congress in 1868 formally announced the traditional policy of this country that it is the 'natural and inherent right of all people' to divest themselves of their allegiance to any state, 15 Stat. ”

“ After a hearing before a Special Inquiry Officer, he was ordered deported as an alien not in possession of a valid immigration visa; this order was affirmed on appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals. ”