This appeal brings under review a decree setting aside and canceling, under § 15 of the act of June 29, 1906, 34 Stat. at L. 596, 601, chap. 3592, U.S.C.omp. Stat. Supp. 1911, pp. 124, 537, as fraudulently and illegally procured, a certificate of citizenship theretofore issued to George A. Luria by the court of common pleas of the city and county of New York. 184 Fed. 643.
The petition was not carefully prepared, and yet it doubtless was designed to charge that the certificate was fraudulently and illegally procured, in that Luria did not at the time intend to become a permanent citizen of the United States, but only to obtain the indicia of such citizenship in order that he might enjoy its advantages and protection, and yet take up and maintain a permanent residence in a foreign country. There was a prayer that the certificate be set aside and canceled because 'procured illegally.' The sufficiency of the petition was not challenged, and the case was heard and determined as if the issue just described were adequately tendered. In the opinion rendered by the district court it was said, after observing that the petition was subject to criticism: 'That point, however, was not raised, and I suppose the defendant does not mean to raise it.' This view of his attitude passed unquestioned then, and it is too late to question it now.
The case was heard upon an agreed statement and some accompanying papers, from all of which it indubitably appeared that Luria was born in Wilna, Russia, in 1865 or 1868, and came to New York in 1888; that he entered a medical college of that city the next year and was graduated therefrom in 1893; that he applied for and procured the certificate of citizenship in July, 1894; that in the following month he sought and obtained a passport from the Department of State, and in November left the United States for the Transvaal, South Africa, arriving in December; that from that time to the date of the hearing, in December, 1910, he resided and practised his profession in South Africa; that he joined the South African Medical Association and served in the Boer war; that his only return to the United States was for four or five months in 1907, for the temporary purpose of taking a postgraduate course in a medical school in New York; and that when entering that school he gave as his address, Johannesburg, South Africa. From the facts so appearing the district court found and held that within a few months after securing the certificate of citizenship Luria went to and took up a permanent residence in South Africa, and that this, under § 15 of the act of 1906, constituted prima facie evidence of a lack of intention on his part to become a permanent citizen of the United States at the time he applied for the certificate. In the papers accompanying the agreed statement there were some declarations which, if separately considered, would tend to engender the belief that he had not taken up a permanent residence in South Africa, and was only a temporary sojourner therein; but the district court, upon weighing and considering those declarations in connection with all the facts disclosed, as was necessary, concluded that the declarations could not be taken at their face value, and that the residence in South Africa was intended to be, and was, permanent in character. We concur in that conclusion.