"Citizenship," and in its broader sense "belonging," have referred generally to rights and

obligations defining the relationship between an individual and a political entity such as a city,
an empire, a kingdom, a nation-state, a commonwealth or a tribe; administrative entities such as
a professional organization or a workplace; or social entities such as a religious organization or
family. Citizenship rights may include (but aren't necessarily limited to) the right to live, work and
own property in the community; the right to participate politically; and the right to receive both
protection and justice. Citizenship obligations include loyalty to the political entity and its laws,
and may entail such things as taxes and military service. The study of citizenship and belonging
is an analysis of one's interactions on equal terms with other members of an organization,
broadly defined, and the factors that inhibit equality. Because citizenship demarcates the
boundaries of a community — and communities are always changing — it is not a static
concept. The boundary-drawing involved in citizenship happens within particular historical,
social, political, economic and geographic settings. It may also be affected by factors such as
language, race, religion, ethnicity, gender, age, class, dis/ability, age, sexual orientation and
culture.

Scholars refer to juridical, social, cultural and participatory citizenship. They often distinguish
between formal citizenship and substantive citizenship; the latter refers to the actual possession
of civil, social and political rights and thereby raises cultural dimensions of belonging. Formal
legal citizenship creates the structures that legitimate the granting or denial of rights, but it is not
sufficient to guarantee their exercise. Many factors affect the exercise of substantive citizenship,
including economic security, societal prejudice and mechanisms for enforcing citizenship rights.

Citizenship

Historically (or at least for the last 200 years), citizenship has been tied to a nation-state: to be a citizen
is to be a member of a nation. It is a legal status of membership.

As we think about citizenship historically, there are two main sets of questions:

FIRST, we need to ask who gets to count as a citizen and who doesn’t. Like in the United States, in much
of Latin America citizenship was not initially extended to women, children, and racial minorities —
instead, it was a special status reserved only men of European descent. Not infrequently other criteria,
such as property ownership and literacy, also had to be met. Much of what we will be studying this
semester is how disenfranchized groups of people fought for and won the benefits of citizenship over
the past 200 years of Latin American history. In our times, citizenship is still about both inclusion and
exclusion. Presently, approximately 11 million people who are part of our social fabric are
“undocumented”: they do not garner the benefits of citizenship (despite paying taxes) and instead are
persecuted by the US government. Citizenship, in this case, is a weapon of exclusion.
Even after officially gaining citizenship, immigrants often still have to prove their American-ness.
Moroccan immigrant and novelist Laila Lalami, for instance, describes her status as “conditional
citizenship”; because of anti-Muslim sentiment in the US, she must hide or tamp down this part of her
identity to enjoy the benefits of US citizenship.

SECOND, we need to consider what citizenship meant and included in different times and places.
Traditionally, political scientists identify two primary legal sides of citizenship:

Rights and protections: Citizenship promises protections, such as free commerce, trial by jury, free
movement, etc. (This is usually referred to as “liberal citizenship”)

Responsibilities: Citizens have static responsibilities, like paying taxes, but also civic responsibilities, such
as participation in the political process and contributing to the common good. (“Republican citizenship”)

Over the past several decades, however, these senses of citizenship have come under criticism for the
way they are inadequate or even inherently unjust in a globalizing world. How can a society justly decide
who is in and who is out when people are in constant movement and their lives have global
connections? How can citizenship protect people’s rights and provide them with meaningful suffrage
(voting) when decisions made by (for instance) a corporate executive in a foreign country can have such
drastic domestic effects? When we are all tied together in a global economy, how is it fair that some
people are born with citizenship in a poor country and others citizenship in a rich country?

In response to these and other critiques, activists of many sorts have supplied alternative ideas and
levels of citizenship, such as global citizenship, urban (city-based) citizenship, regional citizenship,
multiple citizenship, and plurinational citizenship. There are also ideas about non-geography-based kinds
of citizenship for a world in which our internet-assisted lives connect us in transnational communities.

Philippine citizenship: From jus soli to jus sanguinis

MAR 26, 2016 9:30 AM PHT

FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

image

https://www.rappler.com/voices/thought-leaders/philippine-citizenship-jus-soli-jus-sanguinis

'The Grace Poe case reminds us that citizenship is not a static, but rather a dynamic, political concept'

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The recent Supreme Court decision on Grace Poe has made many legal minds raise the question of
whether or not they still knew the law as they had learned it in law school. Although the High Court’s
decision is acceptable to a majority of the electorate as a recent survey reveals, many lawyers find it
hard to accept the decision, which they believe throws the book on citizenship out the window. For
instance, that foundlings are presumed natural-born Filipinos is unprecedented.

This case reminds us that citizenship is not a static, but rather a dynamic, political concept. New
legislation may be enacted – such as, in 2003, RA 9225, “An Act Making the Citizenship of Philippine
Citizens Who Acquire Foreign Citizenship Permanent” – which changes the rules of political
membership. But the law need not be changed for a different reading to surface. The same law can be
interpreted differently under a new set of circumstances.

Today, we take it for granted that the Philippines follows the principle of jus sanguinis (law of the blood)
to determine citizenship, but in the first half of the 20th century, the principle of jus soli (law of the soil)
was once regnant.

In fact, the 1899 Malolos Constitution enunciated jus soli as the principle of citizenship, declaring that
Filipinos included “all persons born on Filipino territory.” Malolos was remarkably inclusive. However,
the US military invasion of the Philippines truncated the Malolos Republic and left no opportunity to
probe its tenets on citizenship before a court of law.

The invention of Philippine citizenship came with the Philippine Bill of 1902, signed into law on July 1,
1902, to become the country’s “first organic act.” Section 4 stipulated that the “inhabitants” of the
Philippine Islands who were Spanish subjects on April 11, 1899, the date when the Treaty of Paris was
proclaimed as duly ratified by both Spain and the United States, became “citizens of the Philippine
Islands” (unless one opted for Spanish nationality). Philippine citizenship was a direct successor to
Spanish subjecthood. The diverse populations in the country at that time thus acquired Philippine
citizenship, a political status they could pass on to their children – suggesting jus sanguinis as one of the
means to determine Philippine citizenship.

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PH FLAG. Filipino soldiers hold a large-scale Philippine national flag at Independence Day rites in Manila,
Philippines, on June 12, 2015. Photo by Francis R. Malasig/EPA

PH FLAG. Filipino soldiers hold a large-scale Philippine national flag at Independence Day rites in Manila,
Philippines, on June 12, 2015. Photo by Francis R.

MALASIG/EPA

Cases

The Supreme Court first enunciated jus soli citizenship in the case of Benito Muñoz, who was born in
Camalig, Albay, on January 17, 1880. Muñoz was denied admission in January 1911 as he returned to the
Philippines from China, where his Chinese father and Filipina mother had sent him when he was 11
years old.

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Muñoz asserted he was a “native and citizen” of the Philippines and “presented satisfactory proof that
he would have returned sooner to the Philippine Islands had it not been for certain financial difficulties,
and that he had never intended to expatriate himself and had never taken any active steps to that end.”

The Court ruled on November 23, 1911, that Muñoz was a Philippine citizen. The Court also emphasized
that Muñoz, who stayed in China for some twenty years until he was 31 years old, had the “honest”
intention to return to the Philippines (“the animus revertendi existed”).

Tranquilino Roa, who was born in Luculan, Mindanao, on July 6, 1889, was similarly denied entry as he
returned to the Philippines from China in October 1910.

Roa’s father went to China in 1895 and died there 5 years later. His “Filipina” mother later sent him to
China to study “and always with the intention of returning” to the Philippines, which he did in 1910
before he reached his 21st birthday.
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In its October 30, 1912 decision, the Supreme Court declared Roa a citizen of the Philippine Islands “and
never having expatriated himself, he still remains a citizen of this country.” We note that in these two
cases, being in a foreign country did not mean expatriation.

The Supreme Court’s decision on Roa’s case advanced an interpretation of Section 4 of the Philippine Bill
that “the doctrine or principle of citizenship by place of birth which prevails in the United States was
extended to the Philippine Islands, but with limitations.” The Court argued that Section 4 “must be read
according to its spirit and intent….It is to be given that construction which best comports with the
principles of reason and justice.”

The Court cited approvingly a previous US Supreme Court decision that “no principle has been more
repeatedly announced by the judicial tribunals of the country, and more constantly acted upon, than
that the leaning, in questions of citizenship, should always be in favor of the claimant of it.”

Following this principle, the Supreme Court of the Philippines espoused a compassionate reading of
Section 4 of the Philippine Bill. It asserted that to construe this provision as preventing Roa’s return to
the Philippines “would have the effect of excluding the appellant from his native country, from home
and all that home means, from his mother, brothers, and sisters, and compel him to live in practically a
strange country and among strange people.”

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The Court suggested that, in addition to birth in the territory, personal sentiments and affection and
familial ties were implicated in the principle of political belonging.

Wong Kim Ark

The Filipino and American justices of the Supreme Court exemplified liberality throughout the period of
US colonial rule. The case decisions indicate that they were drawing from the “activist” or “reformist”
edge of the US Supreme Court, exemplified in its March 1898 decision on the case of Wong Kim Ark,
born in San Francisco in 1873 of Chinese parents who, although legal migrants, were ineligible for
naturalization. The Court’s recognition of Wong’s US citizenship contradicted the prevailing public
sentiment and anti-Sinicism that were fueling the Chinese Exclusion Laws at the time.
The landmark case of Wong Kim Ark exerted a powerful jurisprudential influence on the Philippine
Supreme Court, its invocation made all the more stark by the parallel exclusion laws that immigrants
confronted in both the Philippines and the United States. The force of this jurisprudence moved justices
in the Philippines to uphold “the principles of reason and justice” by insisting on the extension of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Philippines as the spirit of the law. The High Court thus contradicted the
earlier stance of the US Congress and the executive branch, particularly the Bureau of Insular Affairs of
the War Department.

In the convention that was called to draft the 1935 Constitution there was spirited debate on the two
principles of citizenship. Advocates of jus sanguinis raised the specter of those born in the country of
foreign parentage who would use Philippine citizenship to steal the “national patrimony.” One’s real
political sentiments, it was believed, resided “in the blood,” which gave one a set of immutable personal
as well as political characteristics. The 1935 Charter enshrined jus sanguinis.

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Sea change

The tide of legal opinion was undergoing a sea change, which would culminate in 1947, when the
Supreme Court closed Tan Chong’s case. Records indicate that Jose Tan Chong was born in San Pablo,
Laguna, in July 1915, of a “Chinese” father named Tan Chong Hong and a “Filipino” mother named
Antonia Mangahis. His parents took him to China in 1925 when he was 10 years old, and he returned to
the Philippines on January 25, 1940, when he was 24 years old. He was denied entry for being a Chinese
citizen, a decision affirmed by the Secretary of Labor who ordered his deportation.

On October 15, 1941 the Supreme Court – with an all-Filipino bench but still under US jurisdiction –
affirmed the judgment of the lower court that Tan Chong, “having been born in the Philippines before
the approval of our [1935] Constitution, of a Chinese father and a Filipino mother, is a Filipino citizen.”
The Court also noted that Tan Chong’s delayed return to the Philippines was due to “his father [who]
would not allow him to come, and he did not have the means to pay for his transportation back to the
Philippines until the date of his return.”

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A week after the Court issued its decision, the solicitor general filed a motion for reconsideration,
contending that Tan Chong was not a citizen based on the laws at the time of his birth. The war
intervened before the case could be resolved, destroying the records that had to be reconstituted in
1946.

On September 16, 1947, the Supreme Court – now of the formally independent Republic of the
Philippines – proceeded to resolve the prewar motion for reconsideration.

It admitted: “In a long line of decisions, this Court has held that the principle of jus soli applies in this
jurisdiction.” But after providing a different reading of previous case decisions, it proceeded to assert,
“While birth is an important element of citizenship, it alone does not make a person a citizen of the
country of his birth.” Jose Tan Chong, then 32 years old, was declared not a citizen of the Philippines.
One could only speculate that, had the case been resolved prior to the war, Tan Chong would have been
declared a Filipino citizen.

In 1947, the Supreme Court argued that the US tenet of jus soli embodied in the Fourteenth
Amendment was never extended to the Philippines. It rendered a different reading of Section 4 of the
Philippine Bill of 1902 as amended in 1912. Reinterpreting the same legal texts but in a different context,
the Supreme Court abandoned jus soli. The book on citizenship that had been in use was thrown out of
the window.

Jus sanguinis has since been the regnant principle in Philippine citizenship. But as this highly condensed
history suggests, invoking “the principles of reason and justice” does not occur in a vacuum. Whatever is
deemed absolute about citizenship holds only for a given time and place. It is open to change given the
predominating spirit of the times. – Rappler.com

How did this story make you feel?

SEE THE RESULTS

Photo of Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr from the Ateneo de Manila University website

Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr is professor in the Department of History and Project Director at the Institute of
Philippine Culture (IPC), both in the School of Social Sciences, Ateneo de Manila University. An extended
discussion may be found in Between the Letter and Spirit of the Law: Ethnic Chinese and Philippine
Citizenship by Jus Soli, 1899-1947 published in Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 49, no. 3 (2011): 431–463.
WHO ARE CITIZENS OF THE PHILIPPINES?

Posted on Sunday, January 3, 2010. Filed under: PHILIPPINE ELECTION 2010 | Tags: citizen, dual
allegiance, dual citizenship, Filipino citizen |

A citizen is one who is a member of a State who was accorded with full civil and political rights, subject
to disqualifications provided by law, and who is duly protected inside and outside of the State where he
is a citizen. Together with other citizens, they make up a political community.

Citizenship is a term signifying membership of a citizen in a political community. Since the State provides
protection and security to its members, the member on the other hand has the reciprocal duty of
allegiance to the State.

To be a Filipino citizen, a person must belong to any classes of citizen enumerated under Section 1,
Article IV of the 1987 Philippine Constitution. The same section provides:

The following are citizens of the Philippines:

1) Those who are citizens of the Philippines at the time of the adoption of this Constitution;

2) Those who fathers and mothers are citizens of the Philippines

3) Those born before January 17, 1973, of Filipino mothers, who elect Philippine citizenship upon
reaching the age of majority; and

4) Those who are naturalized in accordance with law.

Based on the said provision of the Constitution, there are two kinds of Filipino citizens: 1) natural – born
Filipino citizen, and naturalized Filipino citizen. In determining the kind of citizenship, we follow the jus
sanguinis principle. Under the jus sanguinis principle, blood relationship is the basis for the acquisition of
citizenship. This means that a newly – born child follows the citizenship of his parents. In contrast with
the jus soli or jus loci principle, a newly – born child follows the citizenship of the State where he was
born irrespective of the citizenship of his parents.
Following the principle of jus sanguinis therefore, a natural – born Filipino citizen generally is one who
was born with one of his parents, or both, is a Filipino citizen Regardless of the place where he was born,
he follows the citizenship of the Filipino parent.

A natural – born Filipino citizen specifically is one who does not have to perform any act to acquire his
Philippine citizenship. Those who elect citizenship in accordance with par. 3, sec. 1 hereof shall also be
deemed natural – born citizens (Sec 2, Art 4, 1987 Constitution).

A naturalized Filipino citizen is one who underwent the naturalization process under the law of the
Philippines. Naturalization is the act of formally adopting a foreigner into the political community of a
State and giving him the rights and privileges of citizenship. When a person is naturalized, he already
renunciated his former citizenship, therefore, his allegiance is now on the State where he was
naturalized. The Revised Naturalization Act (CA No. 473, as amended) is the current naturalization law of
the Philippines.

The following are the ways of acquiring Filipino citizenship by naturalization:

1) By judgment of the court – application for naturalization shall be filed in the proper Regional Trial
Court.

2) By direct act of Congress – the Congress enacts an act conferring citizenship on a foreigner.

3) By administrative proceedings – subject to Republic Act 9139 “The Administrative Naturalization

Law of 2000” (January 8, 2001).

Dual Citizenship vs. Dual Allegiance

Dual citizenship refers to the possession of two citizenships by an individual, that of his original
citizenship and that of the country where he became a naturalized citizen. It may also arise in an
instance wherein a person was born of Filipino parents but in another country where said country
follows jus soli or jus loci principle.

Dual allegiance, on the other hand, refers to the continued allegiance of a naturalized citizen to their
mother country even after acquiring Filipino citizenship.
The Philippine government prohibits dual allegiance. Section 5, Article IV of the 1987 Constitution
declares that “dual allegiance of citizens is inimical to the national interests and shall be dealt with by
law”.

Dual allegiance is not prohibited, however, it may be regulated or restricted by Philippine laws where it
is conducive or could deal to dual allegiance. It is because citizenship requires allegiance to a country to
which one is a citizen which must be absolute and undivided. This is to avoid as to the one having a dual
citizenship shall support just in case the “national interest” of the countries where he has citizenships
collide most especially if there is a state of war.

An instance where dual allegiance is not allowed is in the qualification for an elective or appointive
position in the Philippine government service. Public service requires “…utmost loyalty…” (Section 1,
Article XI, 1987 Constitution). It was deemed that a public officer having dual allegiance cannot serve
with utmost loyalty.

Filipino citizens having dual citizenships are disqualified from seeking an elective position in the
Philippines.

1973 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines

1973

PREAMBLE

We, the sovereign Filipino people, imploring the aid of Divine Providence, in order to establish a
Government that shall embody our ideals, promote the general welfare, conserve and develop the
patrimony of our Nation, and secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of democracy under a
regime of justice, peace, liberty, and equality, do ordain and promulgate this Constitution.

ARTICLE III

CITIZENSHIP

SECTION 1. The following are citizens of the Philippines:

(1) Those who are citizens of the Philippines at the time of the adoption of this
Constitution.

(2) Those whose fathers or mothers are citizens of the Philippines.

(3) Those who elect Philippine citizenship pursuant to the provisions of the Constitution
of nineteen hundred and thirty-five.

(4) Those who are naturalized in accordance with law.

SEC. 2. A female citizen of the Philippines who marries an alien shall retain her
Philippine citizenship, unless by her act or omission she is deemed, under the law, to
have renounced her citizenship.

SEC. 3. Philippine citizenship may be lost or reacquired in the manner provided by law.

SEC. 4. A natural-born citizen is one who is a citizen of the Philippines from birth
without having to perform any act to acquire or perfect his Philippine citizenship.

ARTICLE V

DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS OF CITIZENS

SECTION 1. It shall be the duty of the citizen to be loyal to the Republic and to honor
the Philippine flag, to defend the State and contribute to its development and welfare, to
uphold the Constitution and obey the laws, and to.cooperate with the duly constituted
authorities in the attainment and preservation of a just and orderly society.

SEC. 2. The rights of the individual impose upon him the correlative duty to exercise
them responsibly and with due regard for the rights of others.

SEC. 3. It shall be the duty of every citizen to engage in gainful work to assure himself
and his family a life worthy of human dignity.

SEC. 4. It shall be the obligation of every citizen qualified to vote to register and cast his
vote.