PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _______________ No. 18-1741 _______________ JOZEF R. MADAR, Appellant v. UNITED STATES CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES _______________ On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania (District Court Civil No. 2-07-cv-01254) District Judge: Hon. David S. Cercone _______________ Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) on January 18, 2019 Before: GREENAWAY, JR., SHWARTZ, and PORTER, Circuit Judges. (Opinion filed: March 7, 2019) _______________ Mark A. Goldstein Goldstein & Associates 1125 Penn Avenue 3rd Floor Pittsburgh, PA 15222 Counsel for Plaintiff-Appellant Laura S. Irwin Office of United States Attorney 700 Grant Street Suite 4000 Pittsburgh, PA 15219 Joseph H. Hunt William C. Peachey Sairah G. Saeed Gisela A. Westwater United States Department of Justice Office of Immigration Litigation P.O. Box 868 Ben Franklin Station Washington, DC 20044 Counsel for Defendant-Appellee _______________ OPINION OF THE COURT _______________ 2 PORTER, Circuit Judge. Our immigration laws have long required foreign-born children of citizens to reside or be physically present in the United States for some amount of time to retain citizenship. In extraordinary cases, these retention requirements can be con- structively satisfied if circumstances prevented the foreign- born individual from complying with the statute. But while eq- uity may allow someone to retain citizenship, it has only sup- ported transmitting that retained citizenship to a descendant in rare cases—typically, when a government error causes citizen- ship to lapse. Here, we consider whether Jozef Madar is a citizen. Madar argues that he is because his father constructively satis- fied the statutory requirements for retaining citizenship and transmitted this citizenship to Madar himself. Because Madar’s father, even if he were a citizen, did not transmit citizenship under a constructive physical presence theory, we will affirm the District Court’s judgment. I Madar was born in communist-ruled Czechoslovakia in 1964 and entered the United States in 1991. After overstaying his visa, he settled in the Pittsburgh area. He has litigated his legal status in the decades since his arrival. In this proceeding, Madar seeks a declaration that he is a United States citizen be- cause his late father, Jozef Madar, Sr., was a citizen, and his father’s citizenship transmitted to him. Untangling this citizen- ship question requires a brief journey through the Madar family tree. 3 Madar’s paternal grandmother, Julianne Cikovsky, was born in 1906 in Youngstown, Ohio. As she entered her teenage years, she left the United States to settle in Czechoslovakia. She married there and gave birth to a son, Madar, Sr., in 1940. Madar, Sr. lived in Czechoslovakia—and after its dissolution, Slovakia—his entire life. Madar, Sr. never lived in the United States. In the 1960s, Madar, Sr. married a non-United States citizen in Czechoslovakia and had children. One child was the petitioner, Madar. Madar, Sr. knew of his mother’s American birth, but he did not know that this might entitle him to United States citi- zenship. Madar, Sr. learned of this possibility through his son’s immigration proceedings in the 1990s. In one ...
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