Mr. Gresham to Mr. Terrell.
Washington, November 2, 1893.
Sir: I have received your No. 81, of 12th ultimo, in which you inquire whether Mr. Gargiulo, who for the last twenty years has been living at the U. S. legation as its duly commissioned interpreter, may, by the doctrine of extraterritoriality, be considered to have been within the United States during that period, and whether the minister, by virtue of the judicial powers conferred on our ministers to Turkey, is judge of such a court as may naturalize him. You say that he declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States before the clerk of the supreme court of the District of Columbia in 1881.
Section 2165 of the Revised Statutes is explicit in requiring the application for admission to citizenship to be made before a circuit or district court of the United States or a district or a supreme court of the Territories or a court of record of any of the States.
Notwithstanding the judicial powers conferred on some of our ministers abroad, it is plain that they are not within any of the descriptions of courts above mentioned, nor is it possible to consider Mr. Gargiulo as having been constructively in this country during the past five years merely because he has been in the employment of this Government in Turkey during that time. The fiction of extraterritoriality can not be carried to this extent.
[Page 702]Mr. Gargiulo can not, therefore, be admitted by you to citizenship. I observe, in further reply, that I do not deem iii necessary to take the Attorney-General’s opinion on this point.
I am, etc.,