No. 698.
Mr. Bayard
to Mr. Straus
.
Washington , September 30, 1887.
Sir: In your No. 20, of August 20, 1887, you report your action in declining to grant a passport in the case of Alexander Hatchdoorian.
The facts appear to be these: The applicant, Alexander, is the son of Serkis Hatchdoorian, an Ottoman subject by birth, who emigrated to the United States, and was naturalized by the United States circuit court at Boston on June 14, 1854. In 1856 he returned to Turkey bearing a passport dated September 12 of that year, and has since resided there, claiming American citizenship, and being registered at the American consulate. It is not stated that he has at any time returned to the United States or expressed any intention or made any effort to return, or that he is engaged in any business in Turkey which keeps him there as the representative of American interests, or that he is a member of any particular American community in Turkey recognized in Turkey as having distinctive and continuous American privileges.
Alexander, the son, the present applicant, was born in Turkey on January 1, 1865, and therefore attained his majority on January 1, 1886. He has never resided in the United States, and now seeks a passport, not for the purpose of adopting a permanent domicile in this country or assuming any duties of such citizenship, but simply for the purpose of “visiting it some time.” Under these circumstances he falls within the rule repeatedly laid down in this Department that when a foreigner, [Page 1132] after naturalization in the United States, returns to his native land and there, after merging himself in the society and nationality of that land, has a son, that son, should he remain there till his majority, is required, in order to have the protection of American nationality, not merely to elect American citizenship, but to carry that election out by taking immediate measures to come to the United States as a permanent abode. The latter condition does not exist in the present case, and therefore I am of opinion that the passport applied for by Alexander was properly refused by you.
From what has been said you will see that, while reiterating this rule, I am careful to exclude from its operation cases of persons who, with their families, remain in Turkey as the representatives of distinctively American business interests, and of persons belonging to particular American communities settled in Turkey, whose right to preserve a distinctive corporate and continuous American nationality is recognized by Turkey, and was affirmed by me in instructions to you, No. 7, of April 20, 1887, and repeated by me in instructions to W. C. Emmet, United States consul at Smyrna, inclosed in instructions to you, No. 37, of August 11, last. But the present applicant does not claim to fall within either of these classes, and is not, therefore, so far as the case presented by him shows, entitled to the immunities assigned to them.
I am, etc.,