Poor Grace, no longer natural-born, but American still?
Excepts from Francisco Tatad's column in The Manila Times
She became an American citizen by naturalization. This was long before the passage of the Philippine Dual Citizenship law, otherwise known as Republic Act 9225, in 2003. This law allows a natural-born Filipino to retain her original citizenship while acquiring a new citizenship, simply by taking a prescribed oath.
This seems to go against Section 5 Article IV of the Constitution, which provides, “Dual allegiance of citizens is inimical to the national interest and shall be dealt with by law.” But the constitutionality of this law has never been questioned in court, and there has been no effort to put flesh and bones to Article IV Sec. 5, either.
Presumably when Grace Poe was granted US citizenship, she had to take the oath of allegiance to the US, in which she swore to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States against all its enemies, foreign and domestic,” but to renounce and abjure “absolutely and entirely… all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.” She lost her Filipino citizenship, and all rights and duties pertaining thereto, in favor of her US citizenship.
After her adoptive father’s death, she came home. In order to become a Filipino citizen all over again, she had to take a new oath of allegiance to the Republic of the Philippines, as provided by law. We do not know if this happened before she left the US, or while she was already back in the Philippines. But the very fact that she had to go through a process to reacquire Filipino citizenship proves that she had lost her natural-born status. Sec. 2 Article IV of the Constitution provides: “Natural-born citizens are those who are citizens of the Philippines from birth without having to perform any act to acquire or perfect their Philippine citizenship.”
So, when did she reacquire her Philippine citizenship? And when did she renounce her US citizenship, assuming she has? Granted, Ms. Poe came home with her family in 2005, what passport did she use, Philippine or US? According to the Times report, the last time she used her US passport was on Dec. 27, 2009, four years after she come home. Then she was issued another US passport by the Washington Passport Agency in December 2011, while she was already MTRCB chair. She was issued a Philippine passport on May 16, 2014, a year after she became senator; it expires on May 17, 2019.
This means that when Ms. Poe came home, as she says, in 2005, she was still an American citizen. She may still be, crypto and incognito, unless she has surrendered her US passport and her certificate of naturalization as an American citizen. Unless she has appeared before a US consular officer in the office of the American citizenship services of the US Embassy to voluntarily renounce her citizenship with the corresponding payment of $450 and the subsequent issuance of Certificate of Loss of US Citizenship, she remains from the US perspective a US citizen still.
Sitting in the Senate after having lost one’s natural-born status is sordid enough. But sitting there while remaining the citizen of a foreign power carries with it the foul odor of treason.
