Flynn ex rel. Moy You Hung v. Ward

93 F.2d 552, 1937 U.S. App. LEXIS 2863
CourtCourt of Appeals for the First Circuit
DecidedDecember 31, 1937
DocketNo. 3278
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 93 F.2d 552 (Flynn ex rel. Moy You Hung v. Ward) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the First Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Flynn ex rel. Moy You Hung v. Ward, 93 F.2d 552, 1937 U.S. App. LEXIS 2863 (1st Cir. 1937).

Opinion

BINGHAM, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from an order or decree of the District Court for Massachusetts dismissing a writ of habeas corpus and remanding the applicant, Moy You Hung, to the custody of the Commissioner of Immigration for deportation to China.

The applicant claims the right of admission to this country as a foreign-born son of Moy Wing, an alleged citizen of the United States. It appears that hearings were had before a Board of Special Inquiry at Boston on March 15, 16, 17, 22, and 23, 1937; that while the Board was satisfied as to the citizenship of the alleged father, it was not as to the claimed relationship of the applicant, and recommended that he be excluded as an alien not a member of any of the exempt classes entitled to come into the United States; that an appeal was taken to the Secretary of Labor; that the appeal was heard on April 27, 1937, before a Board of Review which rendered an opinion in which, after stating that the issue was that of the relationship of the applicant, who claimed to have been born February 9, 1900, it concluded that, in view of the improbability that Moy Wing was of sufficient age at the time of the applicant’s birth to have been his father, and of some discrepancies in the testimony given by the applicant, his brother Moy Hung Git, and the identifying witness Woo Loo Jung, the relationship was not satisfactorily established and recommended that the appeal be dismissed. The Assistant Secretary of Labor so ordered. Thereupon this writ of habeas corpus was prosecuted and, after a hearing in the District Court at which the only evidence submitted was that introduced before the immigration authorities, the decree here appealed from was entered.

The ground of complaint is that the immigration authorities acted arbitrarily in finding that.the relationship did not exist, and without any substantial evidence for its support.

At the time Moy You Hung applied for admission in March, 1937, he was thirty-seven years of age. His alleged father was then dead, having died in China May 24, 1936, and his alleged brother, Moy Hung Chuck, who was admitted to the United States in August, 1926, as a son of Moy Wing, was away on a trip to China.

The Board of Review found that the citizenship of Moy Wing was “res adjudicata,” he having been discharged as a citizen by Judge Barnard of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia on August 14, 1906; that he was then seventeen years of age, was born in 1889, went to China with his parents at the age of five (1893 or 1894), and returned to the United States in 1902, then being thirteen years old; that he could not have been more than eleven when the applicant, Moy You Hung, was born in 1900, and nine months or so younger when conception could have taken place; and that, consequently, the applicant could not have been the son of Moy Wing. - This, undoubtedly, was the real ground upon which the exclusion order was based. It is true that certain discrepancies in the testimony were alluded to by the Board, but they were of a collateral nature and had no real bearing on the question of relationship and are of little or no importance.

The applicant testified that his given name was Moy You Hung and his married name Moy Huk Wah; that he was born in February, 1900, in Chung Sing Village, S. N. D., China, where he had always lived; that he was the son of Moy Wing and was married to Ng She in Chung Sing Village January 15, 1919; that he had two sons living, Moy You Gin, eighteen years old, born January 9, 1921, and Moy You Ngan, fifteen years old, born September 25, 1923; that he had a daughter born April 1, 1930, who had no name and lived only two hours; and that his wife was an expectant mother and had been for a little more than three months; that his mother’s name was Loo She; that she died in the home village January 30, 1928, and ten days before the alleged father, Moy Wing, arrived in China; that, if now living (1937), she would be fifty-eight years old; that Moy Wing was fifty-seven years old when he died May 24, 1936; that shortly after Moy Wing arrived in China in 1928 he married a second time; that he had eight brothers but no sisters; that three of his brothers were by his father’s first wife, and the remaining five were by his second wife; that he was a son by the first wife and the names of all his brothers were: Moy Hung Chuck, twenty-eight years old, bom May 8, 1910; Moy Hung Git, twenty-seven years old, born January 16, 1912; Moy Hung Hen, twin brother of Moy Hung Git; Moy Hung Fook, ten years old, born December 13, 1928; Moy Hung Hee, nine years old, born December 12, 1929; Moy Hung Seow, eight years old, born January 23, 1931; Moy Hung Song, seven years old, born January 27, 1932; and [554]*554Moy Hung Seung, five years old, born February 9, 1933. That all of these children of Moy Wing were born in Chung Sing Village ; that the three oldest and the applicant were by his father’s first wife; that he was the only son that was married; that he had lived in his father’s house in Chung Sing Village since he could remember; that, after his marriage in 1919, he had continued to live in that house with his wife and the two sons that were born to them down to the time of his coming to this country in 1937, first with his mother down to the time of her death in 1928, and thereafter with his father, Moy Wing, and his second wife and the children born of the second wife. He described the home village, the people living in the various houses, the rows of houses and the number of houses in each row, the schoolhouse where he and his brothers attended school, the burial ground of his ancestors, and the house in which his father, his brothers, he and his sons and the other members of the family lived. He testified that his brothers Moy Hung Chuck and Moy Hung Git came to the United States in 1926 and were admitted as the sons of Moy Wing; that Moy Hung Hen, the twin brother of Moy Hung Git, came to the United States in 1927 and, on being refused admittance, returned to, China and was now working in Gung Yick City; that his father, Moy Wing, was taken sick late in January, 1936, and during his sickness was visited several times by Woo Loo Jung, who had worked with his father for many years in the United States and had returned with him to China in 1928; that on these visits Woo Loo Jung saw the applicant and the other members of the father’s family. He further testified that, after the death of his father, he arranged to come to the United States and that he sent, among other things, his father’s return certificate, issued the latter part of 1927.

Moy Hung Git, an alleged brother of the applicant, was admitted to the United States in 1926, when fourteen years of age. In his testimony he corroborated that of the applicant as to Moy Wing and his sons, their ages and dates of birth, the two marriages of Moy Wing, the marriage of the applicant and the children he had, the home where they all lived in Chung Sing Village, describing the houses in the village and the people occupying them, the ancestral burial ground, and otherwise corroborated the testimony of the applicant.

Woo Loo Jung identified a photograph of the applicant and testified as to his visits in the applicant’s home village upon his sick father, referred to the members of the father’s family and that of the applicant, and that he saw them in that village living in Moy Wing’s house.

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Related

Wong Kew ex rel. Wong Yook v. Ward
33 F. Supp. 994 (D. Massachusetts, 1940)

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Bluebook (online)
93 F.2d 552, 1937 U.S. App. LEXIS 2863, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/flynn-ex-rel-moy-you-hung-v-ward-ca1-1937.