NATIONALITY AND

CITIZENSHIP UNDER
THE 1973 PHILIPPINE
CONSTITUTION
Group 3
Dean Placido Sabban -
John Mark N. Paracad -
-
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Philippine Citizenship under 1973
Constitution (Sec. 1, Art. 3)
 Those who are citizens of the Philippines at the
time of the adoption of this (1973) Constitution;
 Those whose fathers or mothers are citizens of
the Philippines;
 Those who elect Philippine citizenship pursuant to
the provisions of the 1935 Constitution;
 Those who are naturalized in accordance with
law.
Salient features:
 The 1973 Constitution had preserved JUS SANGUINIS as
the basic principle of citizenship;
 It had put women at par with men in terms of citizenship;
 Those mothers alone who held Philippine citizenship
needed to elect Philippine citizenship upon reaching legal
age WAS REMOVED;
 Thus, a child is a citizen of the Philippines if either parent
is a Filipino citizen at the time of the child’s birth,
regardless of the other parent and of the child’s place of
birth.
 It went further than the 1935 Constitution in gender equality by
recognizing the right of women to Philippine citizenship despite
marriage to a non-citizen;
 Section 2 of Article 3 provides:
“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.”
-this was noted to be in lined with the principle embodied in the
1957 U.N General Assembly Convention on the Nationality of
Married Women (agreement of contracting states that neither the
celebration nor dissolution of marriage between one of its
nationals and an alien, nor the change of nationality by the
husband during the marriage, shall automatically affect the
nationality of the wife)
 Section 4 of Article 3 of the 1973 Constitution defined
NATURAL-BORN CITIZEN:
-”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”.

 It expunged the 1935 provision that granted an extremely

limited form of Jus Soli to those who were born in the
Philippines of non-Philippine citizen parents but who had
been elected to public office. Instead, such persons can
acquire Philippine citizenship through NATURALIZATION,
with birth on Philippine territory providing a slight
advantage over non-citizens without this qualifications.
NATURALIZATION during the 1973
Constitution
 Commonwealth Act 473 was in effect that time BUT it was UNWIELDY
and EXPENSIVE discouraging numbers of aliens from acquiring
Philippine citizenship;
 Letter of Instruction (LOI) 270 or the Naturalization of Deserving
Aliens by Decree was issued on April 1975 (an administrative
procedure in which applicants for naturalization indicated their
interest to acquire Philippine citizenship to a committee headed by
the Solicitor General. Such committee then submits
recommendations to the President who issued several decrees that
granted Philippine citizenship to specific individuals by name)
-It was in lieu of the complicated and costly court case process of
naturalization but retaining conditions specified inn CA 473
 Presidential Decree 836- to expand the coverage of mass
naturalization to include the wife and minor children of the principal
petitioner because they were deemed Philippine citizens by virtue of
the naturalization of the husband or the father.
-it did not have gender parity (if the principal petitioner is a woman,
derivative citizenship does not apply to any of her minor children whose
father was a non-citizen)

 BALIKBAYAN (Visit the Homeland) Program in 1973 of Marcos Regime

-allowed the idea of DUAL CITIZENSHIP as legitimacy-seeking measure
-it was a state’s two-pronged strategy of wooing back the long gone
migrants
 In 1980, several parliamentary bills and resolutions on dual
citizenship were also introduced to further gain support of overseas
Filipinos specifically Filipino-Americans for Marcos regime but did not
succeed.