Nagle

(after stating the facts as above).

It is contended that the appellant, having been a resident alien merchant in the United States, and never having surrendered Ms status as a merchant, was free to desert from .a vessel in the port of San Francisco in 1921 and resume his former business as a merchant. The immigration officials reached the conclusion that the appellant’s claim to a mercantile status in the United States prior to Ms entry in 1921 was not sustained, he being without any papers to show his right to be and to remain in the United States. They were not obliged to credit his uncorroborated testimony that he had received such papers and had lost them, or had been a merchant in New York. His diverse statements and contradictions at the time of the preinvestigation and at the time of the judicial hearing were sufficient to discredit the whole of his testimony, and Ms admission that he had committed perjury on the hearing justified the immigration officials in rejecting Ms statement that he had entered the United *612 States as a merchant or with merchant’s papers, or that hé ever had such papers or lost them. It is no indication’ of unfairness that his testimony was not…