want to give a quick overview of the case i realize that you are probably all very intimately familiar with this but basically we have a case something old immigration laws of suspension and we have this three criteria that are required in suspension cases the seven years continuous residence good moral character extreme hardship the immigration judge denied the case on the basis of extreme hardship and seven years residency the board of immigration appeals did not address the issue of hardship but only addressed the issue of residency and denied his application on that basis it was if this might i don't mean to interrupt the floor you are going but it might help your perspective at least from one judge's point of view my understanding is that we can't consider the hardship issue because of the supreme court's mature decisions since the board the board of immigration appeals didn't address that when i was homeless is that kind of a part of it yes i would say that is the heart of it and i also recognize that it's very difficult like you indicated for this court to address the extreme hardship issue i issue is the only real issue in this case is can is it possible for a homeless person to establish they were physically present in the united states what this judge wanted and what this judge asked for was a piece of paper that was created in one thousand nine hundred nine to prove that he was physically here and as it was in the possibility to provide such documentation but we did everything else we possibly could and i also want to point out in this case i want to go through a little bit about what the evidence is because the evidence presented i believe that there's no way that the court a reasonable person could proceedings the government trainer what was the first of those two documents with respect to the rest it's the i dash to thirteen which is created by the investigators prior to the time they issued the order to show cause when they're there was never there was never in inconsistent statement i mean there is no evidence in the record to support that he wasn't here at that time there's nothing to oppose this we don't have one person we don't have one piece of paper there's he had some time to talk to the person who was the head of the program operations for the washington democrats council or migrant council and he asked him specifically how do you know he was really here in one thousand nine hundred nine couldn't she be confused about those states and he said no i'm positive of those dates because we were in yakima and we had a new program i'm in charge of it expanded to seattle and it happened in one thousand nine hundred nine and that's when i met or that he met in the street or whatever and he have someone who's like this in charge of the sort of social work i guess it would be called for of like my migrant worker type it was a special program in washington in seattle they have a millionaire's club which we mentioned briefly and it talks about providing jobs for homeless and they were a special program they came to try and assist migrant workers and in finding jobs and that's what he came to seattle  understand that the government could advise me if i'm wrong and there's the immigration judge he had before the immigration court no evidence that said that he was somewhere else at that time that's right and if they didn't have any evidence by some witness testified i lived in some city in mexico and he was working at this job there and he wasn't he so he couldn't have been in the states that there is no evidence like that documentary proof and as i read the immigration judge he said well we've got documentary proof starting in a certain date forget when it was ninety or ninety one ninety one and so if we  got it for earlier if that you're telling the truth so how do you answer that it's hard for me to answer if a person's on the homeless and they're on the street they're not going to have that kind of information i judge and that's i mean isn't there a way like that people go there they can they register and others don't lease i thought there was some sign in process and there was no record that petitioner had satisfied had signed in and so are registered with the millionaire's club and someone so and i mean am i right that there is a way some people who go to the millionaires club but their name on something that's in a permanent record sure wasn't on the like also i guess your position is people work to get jobs from the millionaire's club who don't register is yeah i mean we're going outside the record but basically what the millionaire is there is a way to sign up to get jobs but obviously you have to have work authorization and be entitled to vote for the rest of the crew there's a long line outside the millionaire's club and people pull up and cars and people jump in and they go off and do their day labor and that's that's the way it's traditionally done and i think mr vieira testified and that's how he was able to secure work i mean and so there isn't a record of him because he didn't have permission to work he didn't have a fake green card or any other document that would allow him to grab you know and i thought that's because i i'm from seattle for you know twenty five years i thought that's how the millionaires club work that someone could be there and some there's very limited information about the millionaires club it was just that he i believe it says that he lined up outside the millionaires club and secured employment that way he said i'll tell you i went there and i got to work but you know back to what we do have i think we have a lot we have a whole lot for a homeless person we have shelter information from they are nine hundred eighty nine the statement in the and the testimony and i think it's critical that that the a washington state migrant counsel individual actually testified because the judge had an opportunity to really ask him how do you really know it was one thousand nine hundred nine and not another unless he believes that individual is lying or just was totally unclear as to dates he doesn't have the judge doesn't have any basis for jumping to his conclusion  says the testimony about the homeless does not have an ring of truth again why why because he came to the us an issue originally said and he didn't find work right away and he was homeless well there's another issue here we have a mentally ill man and he has been able to function in our society and function affectively at a level that i think is a mazing for somebody who is operating under the handicap that he's operating under right what we have is we have information from his medical records from his mental health records indicating that he had quite a long history of mental illness and at the time of the hearing th i think that we pretty much covered it except for one other thing and that is that when the judge was talking about the testimony of mr hernandez who was the i mean not mr her pro he said he thinks that pastor hernandez probably was unclear about the dates of when he knew fear of a legacy even though he slept in the van that he had for the homeless and even though mr hernandez even took him into his own home during that period of time and the reason he says is that he met hundreds of people like responded how could he possibly remember him and i think that's very telling and i think that's very telling because in my opinion in the evidence that we presented here there was no possible way we could have convince the judge no level of evidence we could have presented other than perhaps a driver's license from that time period to show that this individual was here he was a homeless man and as far as the judge was concerned he was one of hundreds and everyone remembers him because he's a unique individual and if you had an opportunity to look at this record you'll see that this this man is amazing and when i say i'm honored to represent him i mean i think he is an incredible person and we proved it and people remember him because of who he is and the  determination the very latest failed to establish the requisite seven years a physical presence in the united state now that inquiry is not whether there was evidence in the record to oppose his claim of litigation across the board and i trust suits contracts suits just about discrimination suits that people prove things that happened in the past by saying under oath that they have and if they don't have documents that we would expect to exist that goes to weight and and that can be relevant but there's no requirement universally that proof can only be made by documentary evidence and it would be kind of a tragedy for the legal system if we were to count as that's so why should we introduce that requirement on someone who was a homeless person when we wouldn't impose that you know i'm bill gates or or on credit card on some big company that comes before us and explains what they did by affidavits that said you know we did this and such and such and we don't have a record of it but this is what happened here matter the government doesn't disagree with that proposition but we don't read the immigration judge's decision as requiring or for closing the couple of days he's kind of the whole survey he was homeless because if you're even understand why somebody who wanted to come here and prosper would be homeless well your honor let's look at some of his specific evidence and you know judge pleasure is raised and the testimony of the witness miguel valencia you know he says they were homeless together and i guess it was the summer of well it was in one nine hundred ninety because valencia had not arrived in the united states in til honor we're not insisting upon him producing illegal evidence we're merely pointing to the lack of evidence where the issue is whether the evidence before the record before the saying observed the petitioner and when he was different you know he was in remaining air he was in tokyo at that time he was in mexico but he sure wasn't in seattle well you know and it's like that all there is is the immigration judge saying that sworn testimony of several witnesses is not sufficient in quality the only the issue is that the immigration judges that there wasn't sufficient documentary corroboration of the of the verbal declarations  compel a reasonable fact finder to find residency since february eighty nine so i remember one other point that i'd like to raise though part of the petitioners explanation for his pro protracted alleged state of homelessness you know is his mental illness and one matter in the record i'd like to point out is that his documentary evidence all his therapists testified that the clinic records date back to ninety two so what was it that happened in ninety one that suddenly you know he's getting washington state id he's  knowingly perjuring very careful not to say that would have made him look really like a lunatic to say that instead he tried to say well the minister didn't really remember which of the days left in his house in eighty something like eight years earlier with no documents nothing to reflash their recollection it is the type of testimonial evidence that i think any court would very closely scrutinized compared to what i normally see in immigration cases it's really remarkable that there are all these dedicated people who've been willing to come forward and do this he's put on a remarkable demonstration and this is a unique case i hope you and that is the ins went in the process of the hearing they weren't even contesting the residency issue that was brought up by the judge raised by the judge that was the judge's issue and yet this same requirement the factional allegation that had to be made about entry an illegal entry that was presented by mr vieira they didn't have independent evidence of how he entered and when he entered he found that when he when we conceded that part that that method standard of clear unequivocal and convincing issue that we had again and again and again and it is a particular problem with immigration cases as to what level of evidence they require whether they're requiring contemporaneous that this judge in particular always demanded it in order to satisfy this requirement