PETITION TO BE ALLOWED TO FOLLOW OR TO ACQUIRE PHIL­IPPINE CITIZENSHIP BY VIRTUE OF MARRIAGE TO A FILIPINO CITIZEN. WONG SAU MEI AND ANASTACIO RABO (TA CHING TA), PETITIONERS-AP…

Wong Sau Mei versus Rabo

The Case

This is the petition of Wong Sau Mei and her husband Anastacio Rabo, also known as Ta Ching Ta, asking that Wong Sau Mei be allowed to follow or to acquire Philippine citizenship by virtue of her marriage to a Filipino citizen. The Republic of the Philippines, through the Solicitor General, opposed the petition and appealed the decision that granted it. The case matters because it gathers two settled rules that every examinee must carry into the bar: that Philippine law provides no judicial action for the declaration of citizenship, and that a prior judgment dismissing a case on the merits bars a later petition between the same parties over the same subject matter.

Procedural History

Wong Sau Mei first asked the Bureau of Immigration to cancel her alien registration. The Commissioner of Immigration denied the request without a hearing, and she then filed a petition for mandamus and prohibition with preliminary injunction before the Court of First Instance of Manila. That court dismissed the petition, and when the spouses appealed, the Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal for their failure to file their brief.

Meanwhile, the spouses filed the present petition before the Court of First Instance of Camarines Norte. The trial judge there declared Wong Sau Mei a citizen of the Philippines by reason of her marriage. The Provincial Fiscal filed a notice of appeal, which the trial court at first dismissed, then later set aside its own dismissal and approved the record on appeal. The case thus reached the Supreme Court on appeal by the Republic.

Facts

On December 29, 1961, Wong Sau Mei, then seventeen years old and a citizen of Nationalist China, was admitted into the country as a temporary visitor authorized to stay until March 15, 1962. She had represented that her Chinese father was a permanent resident, and she lived with him in Camarines Norte until she married Anastacio Rabo on February 4, 1962.

She claims that her husband is a natural born Filipino citizen, although he was born in China of a Chinese mother, because his father Benito Rabo is allegedly a Filipino citizen and because he was brought to the Philippines as an infant and baptized in Camarines Norte. On the strength of that marriage, she filed with the Bureau of Immigration a petition to cancel her alien registration, contending that she possessed no disqualification to become a Filipino citizen.

The Commissioner of Immigration denied her petition without hearing, holding that marriage to a Filipino citizen does not automatically confer Filipino citizenship. The spouses then pursued two cases: the Manila petition for mandamus and prohibition, which was dismissed and whose appeal was later dismissed by the Court of Appeals, and the present petition in Camarines Norte, which the trial court granted.

Issues

• Whether or not a petition praying that an alien wife be allowed to follow or acquire Philippine citizenship by virtue of her marriage to a Filipino citizen is a proceeding authorized by law.
• Whether or not the dismissal of the earlier Manila case bars the present petition under the defense of res judicata.

Applicable Provisions

Section 15 of Commonwealth Act Number 473, the Naturalization Law, provides:

Any woman who is now or may hereafter be married to a citizen of the Philippines, and who might herself be lawfully naturalized, shall be deemed a citizen of the Philippines.

This is the provision on which Wong Sau Mei rested her claim that marriage alone made her a Filipino citizen, and it is the provision the Republic invoked to answer that she must still be lawfully naturalizable.

Section 4 of Commonwealth Act Number 473 provides:

The following persons cannot be naturalized as citizens of the Philippines: (a) Persons opposed to organized government or affiliated with any association or group of persons who uphold and teach doctrines opposing all organized governments; (b) Persons defending or teaching the necessity or propriety of violence, personal assault, or assassination for the success and predominance of their ideas; (c) Polygamists or believers in the practice of polygamy; (d) Persons convicted of crimes involving moral turpitude; (e) Persons suffering from mental alienation or incurable contagious diseases; (f) Persons who, during the period of their residence in the Philippines, have not mingled socially with the Filipinos, or who have not evinced a sincere desire to learn and embrace the customs, traditions, and ideals of the Filipinos; (g) Citizens or subjects of nations with whom the United States and the Philippines are at war, during the period of such war; (h) Citizens or subjects of a foreign country other than the United States whose laws do not grant Filipinos the right to become naturalized citizens or subjects thereof.

The Republic argued that the petition failed to allege that Wong Sau Mei did not labor under any of these disqualifications, which is the very test of whether she might herself be lawfully naturalized.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that the petition is in the nature of a petition for declaratory judgment, because it prays that Wong Sau Mei be allowed to follow or to acquire Philippine citizenship by virtue of her marriage. The Court restated its consistent ruling that there is no proceeding authorized by law or by the Rules of Court for the judicial declaration of citizenship of an individual, and that such a declaration cannot even be decreed pursuant to an alternative prayer in a naturalization proceeding.

On the second issue, the Court held that the defense of res judicata is tenable. The dismissal by the Court of Appeals of the Manila case foreclosed the right of the petitioners to file this petition before the Court of First Instance of Camarines Norte. The Court found no dispute that both cases involve the same issues, that the allegations in the Manila case are substantially the same as those in the original and amended petitions in Camarines Norte, that the petitioners are the same, and that the respondent or oppositor in both is the Republic of the Philippines represented by the Solicitor General. The acting Commissioner of Immigration was merely a nominal party respondent in the Manila case, since he represented and was an agent of the Republic.

Doctrine

First, there is no proceeding authorized by law or by the Rules of Court for the judicial declaration of citizenship of an individual. A petition praying that a person be allowed to follow or acquire Philippine citizenship by virtue of marriage is a petition for declaratory judgment, and it must be denied. This rule stands beside Section 15 of the Naturalization Law, which deems a woman married to a citizen of the Philippines a citizen only if she might herself be lawfully naturalized, meaning she must not labor under any of the disqualifications under Section 4.

Second, the dismissal of a prior case on the merits, including the dismissal of an appeal for failure to file the appellant's brief, bars a later petition between the same parties, over the same issues, and against the same real party in interest. A government officer sued as a nominal party is treated as the Republic itself, so identity of parties is satisfied.

Disposition

The Court reversed the judgment appealed from and denied the petition, with costs against the petitioners.

Remember This

Memorize the line that there is no proceeding authorized by law or by the Rules of Court for the judicial declaration of citizenship of an individual. Examiners use this case to test the interplay of Section 15 and Section 4 of the Naturalization Law on alien wives, and to test res judicata where a government officer is sued as a nominal party.