Mr. Rockhill to Mr. Breckinridge.
Washington, September 19, 1896.
Sir: Your No. 376, of the 28th ultimo, in regard to the status of Hugo Sundel, who is alleged to have been naturalized as an American citizen, has been received.
The Department fully appreciates and shares the doubts you felt with regard to acting upon the application made to you by the Moscow district court for a statement of the evidence upon which Hugo Sundel’s claim to citizenship might rest. While it is, as you say, obvious that you have a right to interfere in defense of a regularly issued passport and its holder upon appeal or otherwise, and while the position taken by this Department in cases arising in Austria and Germany has uniformly been that respect is due to a passport as prima facie evidence of citizenship issued by the competent authority, and that the investigation of any evidence in support of an allegation of fraud in its procurement or of unlawful naturalization is incumbent upon the Government which has so certified to the citizenship of the bearer, it is not at all clear that in the absence of such traversing claim of fraud or invalidity the legation is to be called upon to furnish to the foreign Government evidence upon which it may base an assertion of right to disregard the passport. In issuing a passport this Government follows uniform regulations and decides for itself as to the sufficiency of the evidence upon which the passport is granted, and its decision is not open to review by any foreign authority.
Your reply to the court, declining to furnish the information requested, was the more proper, as it is presumable that the information sought from you was intended to be used to prove the infraction by Hugo Sundel of the Russian law in regard to the alien naturalization of a Russian subject without previous permission.
These observations cover the general points presented by your dispatch. The special case, however, offers peculiar circumstances which suggest that Hugo Sundel himself may be an unworthy person and perhaps not in fact a naturalized citizen. His own statements to the consul at Moscow aver immigration to the United States, declaration of intention, and subsequent naturalization after five or six years, in conformity with the laws; but it appears that neither at the time of the issuance of a passport to him by your legation in 1882 nor at the present time has he been able to produce his naturalization papers. At least it is inferred that they were not produced in 1882 from the entry in the records of your legation showing that passport No. 304 was issued to him August 25, 1882, on the sole evidence of the passport of the State Department of September, 1876. An examination of the record of the previous Department’s passport shows that it was issued September 7, 1876 (No. 50963), upon the sworn statement of the applicant, attested by a witness, that he, Hugo Sundel, was born in the city of Cumberland, Md., on or about the 1st day of October, 1871, the latter date being probably an error for 1851, as Sundel is stated to have been 26 years old at the time of making such declaration. This is entirely at variance with statements made by Sundel to the consul at Moscow and may suggest that, not having been in fact naturalized and being consequently unable to produce the evidence required by the Department before issuing a passport to a naturalized alien, he may have committed a fraud upon the Department in swearing to native birth.
[Page 523]It thus appears that there is no record here, or in Sundel’s possession, to show that he was naturalized, and he must, therefore, in the absence of proof of the fact, be deemed a Russian subject.
It does not appear needful to consider whether the circumstances of Sundel’s going to Russia and protracted domicile there are compatible with continuing allegiance to the United States and with a persisting claim to the protection of this Government.
I am, etc.,
Acting Secretary.