Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/28

16 FEDBEAIj bbpobter. �riage to a citizen. But the answer to thia argument is found in the fact that an alien woman who marries a citizen of the United States must be presumed to assent to the obligations, duties, and status which the law provides shall be consequent npon the act of entering into such relation. �No law expressly providing for a temporary or contingent citizenship is known to the legislation of the United States, and 80 unusual and singular a purpose ought not to be attributed to congress without an explicit provision to that efifect. The language of the statute in question, taken in its most natural and apparent sense, conferred citizenship upon the plaintiff on her marriage with Leonard, and there ia nothing in it, or the nature or eircumstances of the case, to warrant the conclusion that congress thereby only intended to confer upon her aqualified citizenship — a citizenship dur- ing marriage. �The phrase, "shall be deemed a citizen," in section 1994, Rev. St., or as it was in the act of 1855, supra, "shall be deemed and taken to be a citizen," while it may imply that the person to whom it relates has not actually become a citizen by the ordinary means or in the usual way, as by the judgment of a competent court, upon a proper application and proof, yet it does not follow that such person is on that ac- count practically any the less a citizen. The word "deemed" is the equivalent of "considered" or "judged;" and, therefore, whatever an act of congress requires to be "deemed" or "taken" as true of any person or thing, must, in law, be con- sidered as having been duly adjudged or established concern- ing such person or thing, and have force and eliect accord- ingly. When, therefore, congress declares that an alien woman shall, under certain eircumstances, be "deemed" an American citizen, the effeot, when the contingency occurs, ia equivalent to her being naturalized directly by an actof con- gress, or in the usual mode thereby prescribed. �There is another question in this case that is not so easy of solution. An alien woman who marrie» a citizen of the Unitôd States does not thereby become an American citizen, unless, at the time, "she might herself be lawfuUy natural- ����