the record on which to determine whether or not a warrant for deportation shall issue. Considering the summary character of the hearing provided by statute and the rights given to counsel in the rules prescribed, we are not prepared to say that the rules are so arbitrary and so manifestly intended to deprive the alien of a fair, though summary, hearing as to be beyond the power of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor under the authority of the

statute.

The petition would be much more satisfactory if the general rule had been complied with and the proceedings had before the immigration officer had been set out. As a general rule in habeas corpus proceedings a copy of the record of the proceedings attacked is required. Craemer v. Washington, 168 U. S. 124, 128, 129. The reasons given for failure to comply with this rule, as stated in the petition, are that the record is too voluminous to be made a part thereof, that to incorporate a copy of the entire proceedings would "burden the petition and cloud the issue," that the petitioner was not in the possession of the entire record and was unable to secure it in time to file it with his petition, and that the Commissioner of Immigration had a copy of the record which he could produce with the body of Li A. Sim. It does not appear that a copy of the essential part of the proceedings was not in the possession of the petitioner or could not be had, and so far as it was within his power he should have complied with the rule.

An examination of the petition, omitting such allegations as are merely conclusions or charges of bad faith, we think, justified the court below in sustaining the demurrer, provided that, at the time of the arrest and order of deportation, Li A. Sim was an alien within the meaning of the statute which provides for the deportation of any alien found as an inmate of a house of prostitution or practicing prostitution after entering the United States, when the

proceeding shall be instituted within three years from the entry of such alien into this country.

The statute in terms applies in general to all aliens. An alien has been defined to be "one born out of the jurisdiction of the United States, and who has not been naturalized under their Constitution and laws." 2 Kent, 50; 1 Bouvier Law Dictionary, 129. Within this general description Li A. Sim would clearly come, unless her status was changed, as is alleged, by marriage to a Chinaman of American birth, who is consequently an American citizen. It is unnecessary to discuss the effect of such marriage at common law, as in this country the matter is regulated by statute. Section 1994 of the Revised Statutes provides:

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

This section is said to originate in the act of Congress of February 10, 1855 (10 Stat. 604, c. 71), which in its second section provided "that any woman, who might lawfully be naturalized under the existing laws, married, or who shall be married to a citizen of the United States, shall be deemed and taken to be a citizen." This section was construed in Kelly v. Owen, 7 Wall. 496, and was held to confer the privileges of citizenship upon women married to citizens of the United States, if they were of the class of persons for whose naturalization the acts of Congress provide. So under the present statute, when a woman who could be naturalized marries a citizen of the United States, she becomes by that act a citizen herself.

Li A. Sim was a Chinese person not born in this country, and could not become a naturalized citizen under the laws of the United States. Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U. S. 698, 716; Act of May 6, 1882 (22 Stat. 58, 61, § 14, c. 126). Being incapable of naturalization herself, although the wife of a Chinaman of American birth, she remained an alien and subject to the terms of the act, un

Opinion of the Court.

225 U.S.

less it can be successfully maintained that she was not within the intent and purpose of the act when it is properly construed. In this behalf the argument of her counsel is that Congress did not intend, notwithstanding the terms of the act in question, to make it applicable to a Chinese woman married to an American citizen lawfully domiciled within this country.

To sustain this position Gonzales v. Williams, 192 U. S. 1, is cited by counsel. In that case this court held that Isabella Gonzales, an inhabitant of Porto Rico at the date of the proclamation of the treaty of 1898, could not be prevented from landing and detained by an immigration inspector as an alien immigrant in order that she might be returned to Porto Rico, it appearing likely that she might become a public charge. This court held that she had been made by act of Congress a citizen of Porto Rico; that she was within the class absolved from all previous allegiance to the Spanish Government; that the act excluding alien immigrants was intended to apply to foreigners as respects this country, to persons owing allegiance to a foreign government and citizens or subjects thereof; that citizens of Porto Rico whose permanent allegiance was due to the United States and who lived in the peace of its dominion, the organic law of whose domicile was enacted by the United States and enforced through its officials, could not be considered alien immigrants within the meaning of the exclusion act of March 3, 1891 (26 Stat. 1084, c. 551). From a reading of that case it is manifest that this court did not think that Congress intended to exclude those over whom it had acquired jurisdiction under the Treaty of Paris and the subsequent legislation of Congress, whose sole allegiance was to this country and who were not aliens to it in any just sense of the term.

The case of United States v. Mrs. Gue Lim, 176 U. S. 459, is also relied upon. We think that case is readily distinguished from the one at bar. It was there held, that

the wife of a Chinese merchant entitled by treaty to come into this country and dwell here could not be required to furnish the certificate required by the statute from Chinese persons other than laborers, as such construction of the statute would lead to absurd results in requiring a certificate from the wife of a merchant in regard to whom it would be impossible to give the particulars which the statute required should be stated in the certificate; that the real purpose of the statute was not to prevent the persons named, who under the second article of the treaty had the right to come into this country, from entering, but was to prevent Chinese laborers from entering under the guise of being one of the classes permitted to enter. "To hold that a certificate is required in this case,' the court said, at p. 468, "is to decide that the woman [the wife of a Chinese merchant] cannot come into the country at all, for it is not possible for her to comply with the act, because she cannot in any event procure the certificate even by returning to China. She must come in as the wife of her domiciled husband or not at all," and it was held that the act was never intended to exclude the wife and minor children of a merchant lawfully entitled to enter.

It is argued that, being a citizen of California, the petitioner and her husband are to be protected from the operation of the act. Assuming that they are citizens of California, there is nothing in that fact to prevent the officers of the United States from exercising the authority conferred upon them to exclude or deport aliens or others who are such within the terms of the Federal law.

We find nothing in the previous decisions of this court which exempts Li A. Sim from the operations of the statute as an alien person. True it is, as contended, that all statutes must be given a reasonable construction, with a view to effecting the object and purposes thereof. It was the manifest purpose of Congress in passing this law to prevent the introduction and keeping in the United States

of women of the prohibited class. The object of the act was to exclude alien prostitutes, or, if they entered and were found violating the statute within the period prescribed, to return them to the country whence they came. A married woman may be as objectionable as a single one in the respects denounced in the law. There is nothing in the terms of the act showing the congressional purpose to exclude from its provisions an alien who had previously married or who might marry an American citizen. Indeed, if this construction were adopted, the marriage of such alien to a countryman of American citizenship who might be ignorant of the conduct of the alien or willing to condone it, would afford an easy means of evading the statute. In the present case, in view of the finding of the immigration officer, approved by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, it must be taken as true that Li A. Sim, notwithstanding her marriage relation, was found in a house of prostitution in violation of the statute. This situation was one of her own making, and, conceding her right to come into the United States and dwell with her husband because of his American citizenship, it is obvious that such right could have been retained by proper conduct on her part and was only lost upon her violation of the statute, she, being an alien, thereby forfeiting her right to longer remain in this country. If it be admitted that the present is a hard application of the rule of the statute, with the effect of such law this court has nothing to do. The provisions of the statute are plain, and it was passed by Congress with full power over the subject. In our view the present case is brought within the terms of the law, when given a reasonable construction with a view to effecting its purposes. If it ought to be amended so as to except from its operation alien wives of American citizens, that result can only be legitimately obtained in the exercise of legislative authority.

Judgment affirmed.