G.R. No. 10828 - Cang Kai Guan vs. Insular Collector of Customs

The plaintiff and appellant, Cang Kai Guan, arrived at the port of Cebu on November 19, 1914, aboard the steamship Linan.
Upon arrival, he requested permission to enter the Philippine Islands.

Cang Kai Guan was born in China and is identified as a Chinaman.
He was eighteen years of age at the time of his arrival in the Philippines.
It was his first entry into the Philippine Islands.
His father, who had been a merchant in the Philippine Islands for several years, had died in China approximately six years earlier.

The plaintiff was not in possession of the “section six certificate,” a document necessary for entry under the prevailing immigration regulations.
This absence of the required certificate is a crucial fact in determining his admissibility to the Philippine Islands.

A board of special inquiry was convened to investigate his application to enter the country, and it ultimately denied his petition.
An appeal was then made to the Collector of Customs, the Honorable B. Herstein, who affirmed the board’s decision after considering the case’s facts, and ordered that Cang Kai Guan be deported.
Subsequently, a petition for a writ of habeas corpus was presented in the Court of First Instance of Cebu, seeking relief from the deportation order.
The presiding judge, Honorable Adolph Wislizenus, after hearing both parties, denied the petition for the writ of habeas corpus.
Following this denial, the plaintiff appealed to the Supreme Court, making several assignments of error in an effort to contest the administrative and judicial findings.

Whether the minor son of a Chinese merchant who has lost both parental support due to his father’s death may be allowed entry into the Philippine Islands without possessing the mandatory “section six certificate.”
If the absence of the “section six certificate” should be deemed an insurmountable impediment to the entry of a minor into the country, in light of established immigration policies and previous case precedents.