case number one two gas three seven five nine is sawn baazi vs eric holder to all argument fifteen minutes for the petitioner fifteen minutes for the respondent by telephone miss list for the petitioner may please the court my name is marius lists i would like to reserve three minutes for a bottle o your money but i am so nervous to me one second to get my act together that the celebrities brad pitt and angelina jolie may have secretly gotten married in the last week but for the purposes of this argument i will assume that they are not married and that angelina jolie is a foreigner my argument has four points and i plan to mostly discuss point one unless you have other ideas first the bouquet have no legal basis to support the notion that she i'm divorced is a valid concept despite the fact that i clearly raise that argument so i don't think it's an interesting case of i've never seen quite seen something like it but in get i get the point she i'm divorce those words aren't in the statute so that seems to be hopeful but fraud is in the statute right so why why not just forget the phrase for a sham divorce and just ignore it and just say that the problem from the government's perspective was fraud because exists i don't concede that or some now but just by me but well diplomatic front has special implications there's a statute that congress wrote they explain what it is they said that a person has a permanent bar if they have found to have done a marriage fraud and then they there are regulations issued saying how you can prove that a marriage is real so there's instructions for applications that counsel in this case am i right good the key word is not sham or diverse or even to me for it because fraud you're right has to apply to something the phrases unmarried person so in a sense isn't the question was the for claiming to be unmarried doesn't define divorce but the the word used is unmarried clearly they were married and so the question to me and tell me for if conceptually i'm wrong is how legitimate was is under marriage well you have to call it a divorce how did it how did he obtain the status of being married there's no there's no  supposition that there was a legal defect in the divorce or that the divorce is invalid the judge i think that a i one hundred three specifically said that the divorce is is is a valid divorce what but then he said that authorities the government can examine the meaning of i'm married person arrives asks for a visa for upset us on the proposition that i am i'm married right and it doesn't say that i have a certificate of diverse it says i am and married well and then the question is was there for him i mean for i took it but but if he had brought to the lebanese clerk to get the certificate it wouldn't make any difference from your point of view no i don't i think that there could be divorce fraud if he there was fraud in obtaining a divorce but i think that it's black and white if somebody is married or not married for example jolie just like my clients have six children they you know how to take lavish vacations together they have a charitable foundation with commingled fund to gather funds together they the family togetherness and yet brad can't sponsor angelina for a green card because they're not married so it's just it's not a lot of stuff about common law status and clear and beyond doubt to show he's in admissible there's no guidance and like the regulations have you know six different categories of evidence to prove bona fides of a marriage there's no guidance to say how you prove the guidance of an  so that you are my me something i just wanna make sure i'm grasping for the record you see you're making the point that it was a quote legitimate divorce in terms of the paperwork so just what exactly happened time zachary how the divorce became formalized stamp something and say you're now oh i don't know what the process is in lebanon so we have to accept this case that another country says they're divorced but they immigration judge said they were because they thought they had a valid  or whatever divorce just like if somebody had a marriage and they you know they went to a justice of the peace or they you know are clergy and they had a marriage license that was legally valid but then they could not prove that they were living together that they had joint funds that you know they didn't have children together they didn't have any third parties giving affidavits attesting to the realness of their marriage so they might have a real legal marriage but that it was a marriage entered into for the purpose of evading the immigration was i guess that what the judge was saying was that it was a legal divorce but it was a divorce entered into for the purpose of evading the immigration laws but we don't have any we don't have any documents we don't we don't even know what it what happened or what that means from lebanon's perspective just that i guess is just clear and said on its face it appears to have happened the in other words what the immigration judge found is just like you can was that the divorce that there wasn't a problem in the legality of the divorce in lambert than the problem was that it was entered into for the purpose of of a thing immigration laws for the purpose in other words of perpetrating a fraud exactly is that i understood that you really want to say exactly to that question do you think he's clarified i'm not saying he entered it for the purpose of it i'm saying that's what the judge found the judge found that and with respect to that i mean isn't that  to the extent that you were you were making some headway it was there's no such concept a sham divorce blah blah blah but to the extent that the question is did he enter into it for the purpose of evading the laws and make representation certainly made lots of other representations that may not have been true is that for the purpose of evading the laws what i'm saying is that the specific item of d is not is something that it's black and white either you're divorced or you're not divorced and that there's no such thing as a sham divorce there now but what's really strange is that there is a b i a president called out a corollary which the player doesn't even say to they're not relying on that so and the respondent doesn't rely on that but i am telling you that exists because i'm an officer of the court this would help me so why so in the in the sham marriage setting ok the way this time if this is the way it works you know two people can get married in a way that say lebanon recognizes or for that matter this country recognizes you if you get the paperwork right you know you do everything you're supposed to do so in the law you're married but if people find out that well yeah but you know you didn't do this because you love each other for the traditional reasons for getting married you you only did this to evade immigration laws you would agree with that area of the law it's fine to say you're not married for immigration p a statute that says that and even see that now answer judge box question i mean judge that's what leads to judge box question that well you know you had you said you had the status of on married but yet you tainted least according to the fact findings you obtained it not because of the traditional reasons for getting a divorce you don't love each other anymore whatever i know you are trying to  the immigration laws well i think that the the profit the i think that congress did not they could have said you can't have marriage fraud and you can't have divorce fraud they only said that you can't have marriage and i think the problem is how do you prove that your bill though divorce is really are you saying that because they didn't write regulations about the term married i mean there was absolute terms in the statute that ma e be defined by other regulations i'm just looking at sons and daughters into these days you know if you are the surrogate mother is this the son if you fraudulent claim to be a surrogate mother because they haven't made regulations about sons and daughters to define those you can't have  fraud regulations help i think there still are able to look at the words and see if you're for your lovely trying to get into that category i don't think i don't think that they're i don't purposes i mean this being only we're having real marriages and all these sort of yourself as with everything in the immigration law in some parts being married is better than being unmarried in other posts being under married is better than being married one was one published a decision that cited it was a lot of your article about anomalies an acquired naturalization that happens to mention it and the other was a fifth circuit case that was about employee benefits and they were seeking to invoke us and you immediately get a green card but for unmarried sons and daughters are over twenty one it's a tiny chronically backlog right now they're working on cases from two thousand and six and there's no great motivation to run out and get divorced and then wait ten is simply doing it to procure immigration status a barrier and the misrepresentations in doing so i mean at least so far i'm with you that the misrepresentations as to be married may be actionable i just w five years old has been living with his mistress in kuwait for ten years and is honestly unmarried they would still get the preference  would mean if he's left the family i mean because you're talking about well there's a purpose for family whatever you know he's got a different mistress every month there's nothing in the requirement you're talking legislative history you have a sham non marriage so i think that's a very in the question you just asked others you have two people that love each other they lived they did have children together they spent all their time together they vacation together now mr says they're known there's no nothing but they're just not getting married to exploit this hole in the immigration laws so it's a sham non marriage but but they actually but they didn't they really didn't get married i mean there is it's not like stay it's a it's a it's a it's a quote sham non marriage i mean everything about this couple indicates they would marry but for one thing they want to with fayed and they want to exploit the immigration law s shame versus for the purpose of seems to me can go either way in both ways let's take an example of a ma where you go and get the piece of paper but you never can she make you never live together you never provide any support all of those indeed should and you don't do it for immigration purposes but later on it turns out to be useful that probably still is a sham regardless of whether it's done for immigration purposes or not isn't it because it's not a marriage that for either the regulations or a reasonable definition of marriage is that a fair statement tie it to the immigration laws or regs somehow don't you i mean if the guy you know says i'm a i'm a military decorated combat pilot and it's got nothing to do with whether he's an unmarried physical conversation rebuttal well i guess the first thing i want to say is that i don't think that he that he misrepresented them and the material fact is that he is divorced and he didn't misrepresent the fact that he was divorce visit was twenty three years after the divorce and the agents themselves each of them and i left at one site in my brief i only have a r five thirty five in my brief but the the other agent also said i don't know if it's specific i don't know if it would specifically indicate whether or not a divorce was legal or share but it indicates that they still have a continuing relationship i mean let's say they had gotten back together reconciled you know that wouldn't mean that twenty three years ago they had a sham divorce i don't really think that there's any probative ness to the twenty three years later visit and the first agent also said i don't know that i can make a conclusion i really i really can't i can't assume he lives there or not from what i saw they take i can't make a conclusion so the agents are like the experts then vesta gaiters and both of them said that they can't make a conclusion that it was a  divorce and yet the board relies on that and that that and the reasonable try a fact would rely on something with the two agents investigating say that they don't they can't make the conclusion that the board is making you in these proceedings or in talking to the agents and all those things if they're lying through their teeth but they were telling the truth back it is real does that mean everything they do now is irrelevant that we really should look at of this data except in so far as it reflects on the truth back in eighty nine i don't think that any of the later data is relevant in any of the you know years he he he lived in new york and had a mistress for many years they never conceived for i might be five made a mistake i said they never had more children i meant they never conceived more children and the bedroom the word they were not sleeping together they were twin beds you know presumably they weren't sleeping in one bed in the twins and so i don't think that that i don't think that that is substantial evidence reflecting on the genuineness of the divorce that took place twenty three years ago  for an interesting case that case for being submitted we have a large number of cases on briefs so those remaining cases will be submitted and you may adjourn court time if you can hang up now