NGO DY, IN BEHALF OF HIS WIFE NGO SIUTSE AND HIS CHILDREN NGO MING SEK AND NGO MEE MEE, BOTH MINORS, PETITIONER-APPELLEE, VS. THE COMMISSIONER OF IMMIGRATION, RESPONDENT-APPELLANT.

The present case originated from a petition for prohibition and mandamus with preliminary
injunction instituted on September 13, 1962 by petitioner in the Court of First
Instance of Manila, praying for the issuance of an order prohibiting respondent
Commissioner of Immigration from proceeding with the arrest and detention of
petitioner’s above named wife and their two foreign-born minor children
preparatory to their expulsion from the country as overstaying temporary
visitors.

During the pendency of the case the
parties submitted on August 24, 1965, an
amended stipulation of facts wherein it was brought out that on January
3, 1964, petitioner, upon previous authorization, over the State’s objection,
of the Court of First Instance of Manila in Case No. 44530 thereof, had taken
his oath of allegiance as Filipino citizen and was issued by the clerk of court
the corresponding certificate of naturalization.

The lower court, following decisions of this Court that the alien
wife of a naturalized Filipino citizen does not automa­tically acquire his
citizenship but must prove in an appropriate proceeding her qualifications and
lack of disqualifications for Filipino citizenship, dismissed the petition with
respect to peti­tioner’s wife and dissolved the writ of preliminary injunction
against her expulsion; directing respondent commissioner, how­ever, to take the
necessary action on the matter relevant to the status of petitioner’s wife in
consonance with its opinion that she should be allowed to stay in the country
and be given an opportunity to prove that she might herself be lawfully
naturalized and thus acquire her husband’s Filipino citizenship.  With respect to petitioner’s two minor
children, the lower court granted the petition with respect to them, making
permanent the writ of preliminary injunction issued by it against their
expulsion, expressing its opinion that they ipso facto became
Filipino citizens under the provisions of section 15 of the Revised
Naturalization Law.

Both parties appealed on
purely questions of law from the decision in so far as it was adverse to them.

On November 9, 1966, petitioner filed a manifestation pray­ing
that his appeal be dismissed and/or disregarded for having become moot and
academic since his wife had left the country on May 8, 1966 for Taipeh, Taiwan, and returned on May 15, 1966 to the
Philippines and had since been documented by respondent commissioner as a
permanent resident under section 13 of the Immigration Act of 1940 as amended.  After the filing on April 6, 1967 of the Solicitor General’s brief for
respondent commissioner, petitioner filed on August 13, 1967, a motion to dismiss appeal on the ground
that the issues raised in respondent’s appeal have become moot and
academic.  In support thereof, petitioner
submitted docu­ments showing that on June
17, 1967, he accompanied his two minor children out of the country
and returned with them to the Philippines
on June 24, 1967 and sought
their admission to the Philippines
as Filipino citizens.  The Board of
Special Inquiry of the Bureau of Immigration rendered its decision dated July 13, 1967 admitting said minors
as Filipino citizens finding them to be the legitimate minor children of a
Filipino citizen, which decision was confirmed by the Immigration Bureau’s
Board of Comniissioners on August 3, 1967.

The Court acting on said motion to dismiss in its Resolution of
September 8, 1967 and “considering that on August 14, 1967 we considered
this case submitted for decision without appellee’s
brief . . . . . RESOLVED that said motion be resolved when the case is decided on the merits.”

Petitioner in a manifestation dated August 30, 1968, submitting
that “in view of the fact
that the objections of the respondent-appellant to the continued stay in this
country of pe­titioner’s wife and the ipso facto acquisition of
Philippine citi­zenship of the foreign-born minor children of petitioner have
been removed and/or corrected in accordance with the prevail­ing rules and
regulations and to the satisfaction of the respondent-appellant (the Commissioner
of Immigration, who affirmed the decisions of the Board of Special Inquiry
admitting petitioner’s wife as a permanent resident and petitioner’s
foreign-born minor children as Filipino citizens), the questions of law
allegedly raised by the respondent-appellant have now become moot and academic
x x. x” renewed its prayer for dismissal of the
present case.

In
compliance with this court’s resolution requiring res­pondent’s comment, the
Solicitor General filed on behalf of res­pondent commissioner under date of September 11, 1968 his re­ply to
manifestation, as follows:

“COMES NOW the Commissioner of Immigration,
respondent-appellant in the above-entitled case, by the undersigned counsel,
and with reference
to petitioner-appellee’s Manifestation, dated August
30, 1968, to this Honorable Court respectfully states that he would interpose
no objection to the dismissal of the instant case, subject to the following
conditions, to wit:

“1.  The admission to this country of peti­tioner’s
wife as permanent resident under Section 13 (a) of the Immigration Act, being the wife of a naturalized
Filipino (Decision of May 24, 1966
Board of Special Inquiry, Annex ‘A’, Manifestation), and the admission of
petitioner’s foreign-born minor children as Filipino citizens (Decision of July
13, 2967.  Board of Special Inquiry, Annex ‘D’, Manifestation)
shall retroact as to overcome the fact that they ‘overstayed’ beyond the
authorized period of sojourn as tem­porary visitors; and

“2.  However,
petitioner’s foreign-born minor children shall not be considered as Fili­pino
citizens considering the fact that at the time of petitioner’s oath-taking as a
naturalized Filipino, said foreign-born minor children were ‘not lawfully
dwelling’ in their country (Vivo vs. Cloribel, G.R.
No. L-23239, November 23, 1966),
without
prejudice to whatever action the Soli­citor General may presently take towards
the cancellation of the naturalization of petitioner.”

Petitioner, under date of September
19, 1968, filed a re­joinder to said reply as follows:

“3.  That a close scrutiny of the full import of
paragraphs 1 and 2 of respondent’s reply to Manifestation shows two
diametrically opposed positions in view of the fact that in the first paragraph
of its Reply, respondent premises its conformity to the dismissal of the instant case on
the retroactive effect of the admission of petitioner’s foreign-born minor
children as Filipino citizens (Decision of July 13, 1967, Board of Special
Inquiry, Annex ‘D’, Manifesta­tion) so as ‘to overcome the fact that they
overstayed,’ while in the second paragraph of the same Reply, respondent
asserts that the foreign-born minor children of petitioner should not be
considered as Filipino citizens for the alleged reason that at the time of
petitioner’s oath-taking as a naturalized Filipino the said children were not
lawfully dwelling in this country;

“4.  That petitioner submits and the respondent
concurs, that the Decision of the Board of Special Inquiry dated July 13, 1967 has retro­active
effect.  As such, therefore, the
retroactivity of the admission of petitioner’s minor children as Filipino
citizens must be interpreted to have a curative effect and should operate to correct and/or
remove any and all defects, if any, relative to the alleged ‘overstaying’
status of said children prior to or at the time of the oath-taking of the
petitioner as a naturalized Filipino.”

The Court in its resolution of September 27, 1968 resolved to deny the dismissal prayed
for by petitioner.

The
Solicitor General thereafter filed on October
1, 1968 his surrejoinder, stating that:

“1.  To clarify matters and remove all possible
doubts on the conditions stated in his Reply to Manifestation, dated September
11, 1968, the statement that the decisions for admission of petitioner’s wife
and children to this country ‘shall retroact as to overcome the
fact that they overstayed beyond the authorized period of sojourn as
temporary visitors’
should be construed to mean that the said decisions for admission to
petitioner’s wife and children amounted to and in effect, constituted a waiver
of grounds of exclusion against them for having overstayed.  In short, the Commissioner waived the grounds
of exclusion against said temporary visi­tors (Sec. 29 a(15)
(17), Com. Act No. 613 as amend­ed; Sy Hong vs.
Commissioner of Immigration, G.R. No. L-10224, May 11, 1957).

“2.  But the fact that petitioner’s minor children
were ‘not lawfully dwelling’ in this country, being overstaying temporary
visitors, at the time of petitioner’s oath taking as a naturalized Filipino
certainly cannot be erased or wiped out by any kind of
legal fiction, and this is the import of the second paragraph of our Reply to
Manifestation, dated September 11, 1968.”

Petitioner subsequently filed on September 10, 1968 a motion to dismiss appeal and/or a
motion to withdraw petition.  He
contended that the issues presented in the instant appeal to wit:  the legality of the continued stay of his
wife as a temporary visitor and the court’s ruling of ipso facto acquisition
of Filipino citizenship of his two foreign born minor children upon his natu­ralization
without proper documentation as such by the Bureau of Immigration have become
moot and academic by virtue of the subsequent acts of respondent commissioner and
his Board of Commissioners admitting his wife as a permanent resident and his
two children as Filipino citizens as above stated.

In compliance with this Court’s resolution for respondent’s
comment, the Solicitor General filed his comment under date of January 16, 1969
opposing the same on the ground that the case was already deemed submitted for
decision without petitioner-appellee’s brief per the
Court’s resolution of October 14, 1967 and that there are remaining question
ripe for judicial determi­nation.  The
court in its Resolution of January 24
1969 accordingly denied
petitioner’s motion.

Upon a review of the records of the present appeal and of the
case below, the Court finds that the subsequent actions of respondent
commissioner and his Board of Commissioners, after the lower court’s decision
of December 20, 1965 and pending this appeal, namely, their action of June 27,
1966 granting the readmission on May 15, 1966 of petitioner’s wife as a
permanent resident and that of August 3, 1967 granting the readmission on June 24, 1967 of petitioner’s foreign born minor
children as Filipino citizens, were never involved or placed in issue in the case below which involved solely the issue of
their expulsion from the Philippines as then overstay­ing temporary visitors.  The issue of the expulsion as over­staying
temporary visitors of petitioner’s wife and two minor children therefore became
moot upon their departure from the Philippines and their
readmission afterwards under a completely new status as permanent residents.  Their readmission there­after upon proper
documentation by respondent commissioner is a new matter which cannot properly
be resolved here, since it was not in issue nor litigated at all in the case
before the lower court.

Insofar as their readmission as permanent residents is concerned,
respondent commissioner, through the Solicitor General’s Surrejoinder
of October 1, 1968 expressly acknowledged that he “waived the grounds of
exclusion against said temporary visitors” for having overstayed.  As to respondent commissioner’s readmission
and documentation of petitioner’s two foreign-born minor children as Filipino
citizens, this obviously cannot be re­solved in the present case but would have
to be threshed out in the appropriate proceeding therefor
as intimated by the Solicitor General in his above-quoted reply of September 11, 1968.

Under such circumstances, the issues involved in the present case
have become moot, and not only the present appeal of respondent commissioner
but the case as originally filed should be, as they are hereby, dismissed.

Concepcion, C.J., Reyes, Dizon, Makalintal, Zaldivar, Fernando, and
Villamor, JJ., concur.

Castro, J., on leave.

Barredo, J., took no part.