G.R. No. L-24102. January 30, 1971.
JUANITO SORIA, petitioner-appellant, vs. COMMISSIONER OF IMMIGRATION, respondent-appellee.

FACTS

Petitioner Juanito Soria entered the Philippines as a temporary visitor in 1960. Claiming to be an illegitimate son of a Filipino mother and a Chinese father, he petitioned the Commissioner of Immigration for recognition as a Filipino citizen. After an investigation, the Commissioner denied his petition on March 22, 1961, citing insufficiency of evidence to prove his alleged illegitimacy. Soria initially filed a mandamus case in the Court of First Instance (CFI) to challenge this denial but later moved for its dismissal after securing, while the case was pending, a Certificate of Registration and Identity as a Filipino citizen from the Philippine Vice-Consul in Bangkok.
Armed with this certificate, Soria returned to the Philippines in November 1961. The Bureau of Immigration, however, denied him entry, disregarding the Department of Foreign Affairs documentation and ordering his arrest and exclusion on the ground that he remained an alien based on its own records. To prevent this, Soria filed a new petition in the CFI for certiorari with preliminary injunction, seeking to annul the exclusion order and to be declared a Filipino citizen.

ISSUE

Whether the Court of First Instance erred in dismissing Soria’s petition for certiorari, which challenged the Commissioner of Immigration’s exclusion order and sought a judicial declaration of his Philippine citizenship.

RULING

The Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s dismissal. On the procedural aspect, the Court held that certiorari under Rule 65 is only available to correct actions taken without or in excess of jurisdiction or with grave abuse of discretion. The Commissioner of Immigration acted within his statutory authority in determining Soria’s admissibility and in issuing the exclusion order after finding his claim of citizenship unsubstantiated. There was no showing of a jurisdictional error or grave abuse of discretion, as the Commissioner evaluated the evidence and found it insufficient to prove Soria’s alleged illegitimate birth to a Filipino mother.
On the substantive plea for a declaration of citizenship, the Court ruled that such relief cannot be granted in a certiorari proceeding. The Court reiterated the settled doctrine that there exists no judicial proceeding established by law or the rules specifically for the direct judicial declaration of an individual’s citizenship. A judicial pronouncement on citizenship can only be made incidentally in an appropriate action where citizenship is a material issue in dispute, not as the primary object of a special civil action for certiorari. Soria’s proper recourse, if any, was a different judicial action where his citizenship could be litigated as a central factual matter, not through a challenge to the Commissioner’s discretionary order. Therefore, the lower court correctly denied the petition.