FOREIGN Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. admitted Monday that he was able to acquire US citizenship but said he was not an American because he obtained it illegally.
“Taking my oath does not make me a US citizen if precisely the basis upon which the grant of American citizenship is flawed and is defective… I did not acquire legally American citizenship,” Yasay said in an interview with ABS-CBN.
When he was questioned about his citizenship during his confirmation hearing in February, Yasay said he did not legally acquire US citizenship.
He admitted that he was granted US citizenship in 1986 but he was later disqualified because he had the “preconceived intent of abandoning his US residency.”
He took an oath of allegiance on Nov. 24, 1986 but returned to the Philippines three months after, in January 1987.
Yasay said he applied for US citizenship after former Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. was killed in 1983. He said he never expected that President Ferdinand Marcos would be ousted from his post.
“When the ouster came, my application was already there, and when I came back, and I took my oath, I had the pre-conceived intent already because I just came back from the Philippines and said that I was immediately going back,” he said.
Yasay said he went back to the Philippines right after the Edsa People Power Revolution in February 1986.
“I would not have and I did not acquire legally American citizenship. It is precisely for that reason that three months after, in January 1987, I returned back to the Philippines,” he said.
“And this consolidated the position that I did not legally acquire US citizenship and I returned all of my papers, executed an affidavit, telling the American authorities that I did not qualify and this is my right,” he added.
He said under American law, one is “disqualified for being an American citizenship” if at the time of application or granting, one had the pre-conceived intent of abandoning his US residency and in fact abandoned his US residency within two years after obtaining that US citizenship.
Yasay insisted that he is a Filipino citizen amid accusations that he violated the Philippine Citizenship Retention and Reacquisition Act of 2003, which says appointed public officials cannot be a citizen of another country.