Mr. Hay to Mr. Buck.
Washington, March 21, 1900.
Sir: Your dispatch No. 404, of the 21st ultimo, reporting Mr. A. M. Tracey Woodward’s application to your legation for a United States passport, has been received. It appears that the applicant, now 24 years of age, was born in South Africa of American parents; that he has never been in the United States, and that he declares in his application his intention to return to the United States “within my (his) lifetime.” In view of these circumstances you await the Department’s instructions before acting in the case.
Unless Mr. Woodward satisfies you of his intention to come in the reasonably near future to reside in the United States and perform the duties pertaining to American citizenship, he would not appear to be entitled to, a passport. He was, on your statement, one of those persons described in the statute (R. S., 1993) as “children” born abroad to citizens of the United States, and denned as citizens in virtue of such parentage. The Department does not construe this section as entitling one so born to disregard all duties of citizenship indefinitely and to live abroad permanently without imputation of his nationality. [Page 760] It treats the statute as expressly covering the status of the “child” during legal infancy; but it justly expects that on coming of age a “child” so situated will, of his independent volition and acting sui juris, testify in all proper ways—just as any other American citizen temporarily sojourning abroad—his purpose to conserve and live up to his American status. Mr. Woodward’s assertion of his nationality has apparently been so far limited to taking out a passport in 1897, when he was 22’years old, and when the possession of a passport was necessary to secure extraterritorial rights pertaining to American citizenship in China, where he then resided. He is now, it seems, resident, if not domiciled, in Japan, where the privileges of alien extraterritoriality have been abrogated. His status in Japan is substantially the same as would be that of any American going to and residing indefinitely in a European state. The point to be determined is whether by domicile, occupation, and domestic ties Mr. Woodward has so far permanently identified himself with the country of his residence as to create a presumption of abandonment of his American status strong enough to outweigh any merely floating intention he may have of eventually making the United States his home.
It is, as a general thing, the Department’s desire to deal as broadly as possible with questions affecting the rights of Americans sojourning in the far Orient, and to consider whether, if the protection of the United States should be withdrawn, the individual can obtain any other.
I am, etc.,