good morning i appreciate this opportunity to be heard on behalf of mr by own a we were advised to discuss the case of in a letter has and how it applies to mr viola's case i'm prepared to do that i have briefed other issues in my briefs and i would simply rely on those rates you may argue with every crime of attempted fraudulent use of a credit card on july eighth he pled guilty to that charge of attempted fraudulent use of a credit card he received a suspended sentence of one year and on november five an order to show cause under the existing law at that time which served on the most value on if your work and its subsequent times filed an application under section two forty four a the act as existed at that time commonly referred to as suspension of deportation on july twenty seven five relating to suspension of people taken into forty four a there were two ways that a person could qualify subsection one required seven years of continuous residence good moral character or an extreme hardship how it relates to repay purring the facts in that case are different and i think that makes it somewhat fatal to my client in that case the aircraft family placed themselves under proceedings a full fifteen for cancellation of removal under the new law showing ten years and trying to show exceptional hardships and perhaps that's of benefit to the harassed family however it does not benefit my client an alien in deportation proceedings before nine hundred ninety six continued to approve time to which satisfying to seven year residence requirement for suspension of deportation during the pendency of the proceedings now have both the seven years and the ten years since the commission of his offenses and there is no stop time rule that comes into play under section two forty four eight of the law that existed at the time there is no case had completed its processing before the emigration court and i believe that they made it to that three zero nine c related to cases that were pending before the immigration court cases that it started with orders to show cause but were still pending and had not had their their hearings yet you're saying everything everything here was completed before statute itself made reference to cases that were started before and still had not had their final hearings yet and in fact the d c i through nine  three relating to read papering specifically referred to those types of cases it was a off it was a safeguard measure for those individuals who were in proceedings under an old law but were found themselves caught by the passage of a new yes under two forty four a subsection two even though a person has a criminal act relating to that good moral character a criminal act let's say of ten years from the date that that act was committed there's a much more liberal law section why when that time he stopped again i don't know why when the time to stop by the stop time rule to stop   because of the you know the court's decision in reality which he made it clear that there was no problem with retroactively applying that new rule to convictions regardless of when those convictions occurred thought either of them for suspension let me go back to the stop time rule i thought before the argument started that rahm was controlling because we've got this case here and it seems to me that rahm saying that time rule applies to convictions predating the act but for the proceedings on this i thought he was experience here on the bench that all three of you are aware that unfortunately in the past there have been any lengthy delays of cases before the board of the board has been her period extremely overwhelmed turpitude that was the the law that was the practice that was in the foreign affairs manual and the reason is because there was no definition of conviction back then the definition of conviction did not come about until our