Procurator Fiscal v Moritz Hendler

• Jurisdicción: Argentina
• Fecha: 03 Octubre 1921
• Número de expediente: Case No. 143
• Emisor: Federal Court of Appeals (Argentina)

Argentina, Federal Court of Appeal.

Case No. 143

Procurador Fiscal

and

Moritz Hendler.

Naturalisation — Cancellation — Reasons of.

The Facts.—Hendler was granted naturalisation in Argentina in 1908. He was shown to have been engaged in immoral business enterprises and to have been a disturber of the public peace. In 1919 a civil action was brought against him to cancel his naturalisation papers. The lower Court cancelled them, and he appealed.

Held, by a vote of 3 to 2: That the judgment must be affirmed. Law 7029 enacts that an alien whose entry into the country is prohibited, as well as those referred to by Law 4144, cannot become naturalised; and, if granted naturalisation despite this, the naturalisation may be annulled. Law 4144 referred, inter alia, to all aliens whose conduct compromised the national security or disturbed the public order, or those whose antecedents merited their inclusion among those expressly enumerated.1 (Judge Escobar held with the majority,

but thought this a penal proceeding and not a civil action.1)

¹ See the case of Alejandro Esteban Graf (Cámara Federal, 3 June, 1921), Gaceta del Foro, vol. 32 (June, 1921), p. 246, annulling citizenship because the naturalised citizen had failed to perform his military service obligations. Cf.

the cases of José Esteban (Cámara Federal, 29 August, 1924), Gaceta del Foro, vol. 54 (January, 1925), p. 92 (refusing to revoke naturalisation after the one-year prescriptive period had run); and Francisco Diez (Cámara Federal, 26 August, 1921), Gaceta del Foro, vol. 34, p. 47 (to a similar effect).

See also the case of Julio Akerman (31 July, 1922), Fallos, vol. 136, p. 438, in which the Supreme Court based its decision on a procedural point, but in which the Cámara Federal (30 June, 1921), Gaceta del Foro, vol. 33 (July, 1921), p. 45, allowed cancellation, saying that although the national Constitution wanted to attract aliens and make their incorporation into the nation easy, in order to populate the country, it only wanted to attract and incorporate useful elements. “The nation, in conferring political rights upon aliens as a gift, for supreme reasons of political organisation and public good, … does not grant irrevocable rights, nor would it be able to grant them, because no one ‘can acquire irrevocable rights against laws of public order; and just as the beneficiary can renounce the tie at any moment by naturalisation in another country, the...