* * * long-standing interpretation [of the statute] concurred in by the State and Justice Departments [is] that membership in a professional organization or trade union behind the Iron Curtain is considered involuntary unless the membership is accompanied by some indication of voluntariness, such as active participation in the organization's activities or holding an office in the organization.205
Since there was no evidence that Marina Oswald actively participated in the union's activities or held an office in the organization, her union membership was properly held not to bar her admission to this country.
Although Marina Oswald declared that she was not a member of the Komsomol or any other Communist organization, she was in fact a member of the Komsomol, the Communist youth organization.206 If this fact had been known to the State Department, Marina Oswald would not necessarily have been denied a visa, although a careful investigation into the nature of the membership would have been required.207 However, had her membership in the Komsomol become known to the Department after her denial of such membership, it is possible that she would have been excluded from the United States on the ground of having willfully misrepresented a material fact.208
Judicial decisions are not in agreement as to what constitutes a "material fact" such that its intentional misrepresentation warrants exclusion of the alien.209 Some cases indicate that a misrepresentation in an application for a visa involves a material fact even if the alien would not definitely have been excluded on the true facts; 210 others hold that a misstatement is material only if it referred to such facts as would have justified refusing the visa had they been disclosed.211 The Visa Office of the Department of State has announced that it applies a "rule of probability" under which a misstatement will be deemed ma-