Santos Gonzalez de Lara, petitioner-appellant, was born in Mexico on November 1, 1945, the son of a Mexican national father and an American citizen mother. He was admitted to the United States on December 2, 1960, as a resident alien. On March 14, 1968, he was convicted in a Texas district court for unlawful possession of marijuana and placed on probation. When petitioner had satisfactorily complied with the con*1317ditions of his probation, the state court, pursuant to petitioner’s motion under section 7 of the Texas Adult Probation and Parole Law,1 set aside the verdict of conviction. Following a hearing before a Special Inquiry Officer of the Immigration and Naturalization Service petitioner was ordered deported from the United States under section 241(a) (11) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.2 After the order was affirmed by the Board of Immigration Appeals, petitioner filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus, wherein he contended that the deportation order was invalid for two reasons: (1) He is not an alien but a citizen of the United States; and (2) his conviction, which was subsequently set aside by the state court, does not constitute a final conviction upon which a valid deportation order may be predicated. From the district court’s denial of the petition, Gonzalez de Lara takes this appeal. We affirm.
Appellant’s first contention, that he is a United States citizen, is without merit. His mother, who left this country prior to her twelfth birthday and remained absent from it for twenty-six years, clearly did not fulfill the statutory residency requirement that would have entitled appellant to claim United States citizenship by birth.3 Appellant, however, suggests that the residency requirement is onerous and invites us to declare it unconstitutional,4 an offer we must refuse. Congress unquestionably possesses the authority to create standards for the attainment of United States citizenship by foreign-born persons.5 The standards here challenged, which were promulgated under that authority, are neither arbitrary nor unreasonable and are not susceptible to successful attack on constitutional grounds.6
Appellant’s remaining argument is that he is not deportable under 8 U. *1318S.C. § 1251(a) (11) 7 because he has not been finally convicted of the marijuana offense upon which the deportation order is predicated. This allegation is premised on the theory that a motion under section 7 of the Texas Adult Probation and Parole Law,8 when granted, serves to expunge or erase the conviction. We join the Ninth Circuit, which has faced the same argument in construing a California statute similar to the one in question,9 in rejecting the ex-pungement rationale. First, it is by no means clear that the effect of a motion to set aside the verdict, when granted, is to erase the conviction completely. We note, for example, that section 7 specifically provides that after the court has granted the motion to set aside the verdict, the party “ * * * shall thereafter be released from all penalties and disabilities resulting from the offense or crime of which he has been convicted * * *, except that proof of his said conviction * * * shall be made known to the court should the defendant again be convicted of any criminal offense.” Rather than a statute that completely erases the conviction, we believe the provision in controversy is accurately characterized as one that rewards a convicted party for good behavior during probation by releasing him from certain penalties and disabilities otherwise imposed upon convicted persons by Texas law. Secondly, we believe that the sanctions of 8 U.S.C. § 1251(a) (11) are triggered by the fact of the state conviction. The manner in which Texas chooses to deal with a party subsequent to his conviction is simply not of controlling importance insofar as a deportation proceeding — a function of federal, not state, law — is concerned. We agree with the Ninth Circuit that “[i]t would defeat the purpose * * * [of federal law] if provisions of local law, dealing with rehabilitation of convicted persons, *1319could remove them from the ambit of [federal penal enactments] * * * We do not think Congress intended such a result.”10
For the foregoing reasons we affirm
Affirmed.