Wong Wing Foo v. McGrath Atty. Gen. Of the United States

This is an appeal from a judgment in a suit brought under 8 U.S.C.A. § 903 for a judgment declaring appellant, plaintiff below, hereafter called plaintiff, to be a national of the United States. The district court held him not to be the son of one Wong Yem, an American citizen, and hence not entitled to enter the United States under the provisions of 8 U.S.C.A. § 601 (c).

Plaintiff was born in China in 1928 and resided there until his voyage to San Francisco, California, where he arrived November 28, 1948. Upon presenting a passport from the American Consulate General at Hongkong he was denied his claimed right as an American citizen to enter at once and was held in detention by the immigration authorities. Instead of filing at once the instant suit under § 903 he waited until after the immigration authorities had determined in a proceeding under 8 U.S.C.A. § 153 before a board of special inquiry that he was not the son of Wong Yem.

Plaintiff here contends that the district court erred in not treating the instant § 903 proceeding as an independent action, but instead as a review of the special board of inquiry proceeding in which the evidence before that board was considered…