we'll hear argument next this morning in case sixteen three zero nine muslim york versus united states is to land out thank you mr chief justice i may please the court section fourteen twenty five day of the federal criminal code authorizes the government to strip a naturalized american of citizenship if it was procured contrary to law our position in this case is simple the words procured contrary to law require a causal link between the procurement of citizenship and the underlying violation of law at the government's urging the district court read such a causal link out of the statute instructing the jury that it could convict if petition obtained united states citizenship and violated at least one law governing naturalization the instructions didn't require the government to prove that the underlying violation of law had any effect whatsoever on the perfect because you can never predict what will actually happen in the end you can only talk about what might happen and we would be happy what we asked for was a materiality standard which i think is very much along the lines that your honor just suggested what's amazing here and i think what makes this case so extreme we're really at one end of the spectrum the district court specifically instructed the jury and here i quote even if you find that a false statement did not influence the decision to approve the defendant's naturalization the government need only prove that one of the defendant's statements was fault but just the sort of money or said it has since i mean sometimes we causality is known only after the fact you can have a statement that everyone thinks is immaterial it subjectively immaterial but it might have a causal connection at the end of the day well the government if it wants to strip an american of citizenship which is about the most grave thing it can do means fully understand that right that it is the idea of what material and what's immaterial and and what's a causal link and what is not in a sense can be understood and analyzed only after the fact well i think your honor the government has the burden if it wants to show that the petitioner or the defendant citizenship contrary to law the government has to show at the very least that the based on a false statement that the false statement was material our basic submission and why it wouldn't be harmless area you  he was trying to avoid military conscription when you factor in the service and in the unit that was committing atrocities under what circumstances would that be immaterial your honor we would like a chance to argue the materiality question to a jury which is the general decider of what is material under this court's decision in god we did not have the chance given prevailing six circuit law which said there was no materiality to contest this issue at trial and we very much i understand that what they were given refugee status based on a wel of persecution where and for what reason well this is the crux of the dispute your honor the government's position was that it was based on the perp fear of persecution by the serbs based on her husband's evasion of military service where and in bosnia in bosnia yes yes and so this is now they're out of bosnia that their american embassy in belgrade seeking refugee status right and this was in a sense the heart of the dispute at trial and in fact this i think relates also to justice ginsburg's question the jury sent a note but what was the refugee status based on a little bit confused as we see here a document that says that it was apparently based on ethnic persecution by the muslims in bosnia so i think this is really the heart of the factual dispute on what was the refugee status based on was it based on so that we don't know which it was based on no that's that that was the hardest that was that that that's the key issue that we would like to have an opportune well are they or mean if this isn't the issue that we that we took search to decide but it does raise the question whether there's really anything at stake here i assume that every serb in bosnia herzegovina is not int asylum in the united states that's correct i merely being a serb there were i think there are about thirty percent of the population would not be that is a russian no and in this case if you read the the naturalization me the refugee application which is  particular area this was a majority muslim area within bosnia it was as bosnia was a patchwork of ethnicities at this point and they were in a majority muslim area and they had to flee bosnia and i think this is really the crux of their argument that this is not that the whole issue about her husband's military service was really not the basis for it and this is what we would like the chance to argue this before properly instructed jury we may win or we may lose on that i mean that's law and there was more than one line in the application the the good moral character provision your honor which is eleven zero one f six eight us eleven elastics is our friend in this case because you are absolutely right we have conceded that she told a lie but eleven zero one f six does not make every lie precludes sieve of good moral character it only makes a particular kind of lie precludes there's a list of things that preclude good moral character and among them is a lie for the purpose of obtaining an immigration benefit that was one of the things that the government had to prove a trial and they charged her with that and if in fact she were convicted of that that would preclude the would disqualify her from naturalization because you cannot establish good moral character categorically if you have told that lie for that purpose but i think that underscores your honor that congress did not intend to make every lie on the form per se disqualifying to be sure they may be relevant to good moral character but were congress wanted to make a particular kind of lie for clues of good moral character in eleven zero one f six it did so specifically and so the applicant has the burden under section fourteen twenty seven a three of proving good moral character and so again i think that section is our friend here because it shows the anomaly of the government's position that basically any lie automatically makes you liable under section ten fifteen that section ten fifteen under their view of section fourteen twenty five as a pure look through statute to ten fifteen sucks up any violation of ten fifteen a which again has no materiality there for them has no materiality in fourteen twenty five a well that's that's the anomaly i'm stuck with and maybe you can help me with  fourteen twenty five doesn't contain an express materiality provision and it fourteen fifty one does in one provision one clause but not another right and then some of the predicate acts for fourteen twenty five do and others don't right so it seems like linguistically you have to do some somersaults to get where you want to go because no one would say that to violate fourteen twenty five you have to prove say a material genocide right i couldn't agree with you more so we have to it would be material we not only would have to add the word material to fourteen twenty five that isn't there we'd have to limit its impact to some predicate offenses and not others and you're right a statement based ones i think your position is that's a lot of linguistic somersaults to add to a statute isn't it i don't think so at all your honor i think i think you have to look again i think the contrast with for civil the naturalization provision eight u s c four hundred fifty one a is a very powerful point in our favor how is that because it says illegally prick you're right it talks about material misrepresentations in two separate clauses correct and if you're if your honor wanted to take eight that the most natural kind of textual reading you would say ok here in fourteen twenty five we only have the general one particular contrary to law so the most natural pure text rules approach would be to say well then that shouldn't cover statement offenses at all because they've been offenses were broken out and that would render the statement offenses in fourteen fifty one a reference to perforate has interpreted the language procure doing it illegally as anything in the course of the proceeding well right so that's the answer to that is no no but i think i think the point is your honor we nobody is includes things to which the word material wouldn't naturally apply which i think answers your question right there in the sense that it would have been nonsensical for congress to put in a general illegally procured statute the word material it just wouldn't fit there because it's a general one where they use the word material in fourteen fifty one that's because historically forty fifty one has had it legally procured the kind of a catch all and a separate statement one but what you can't do is say fourteen twenty five applies is a general match all but when it's applied to statements they're not material i mean i was struck i don't think it doesn't make sense hasn't the briefing in this case really clarified what the issue is and in a way it seemed to me that what was being debated in the district court was the wrong issue about whether to charge the jury on the to reality because materiality is not in this statute but as you have refined the argument the issue is the meaning of the term procure that which may or may not mean exactly the same thing as materiality i think you are absolutely correct you are that's one of the things i mean it's the same issue we've been arguing all along i think you put the point exactly right i think we have a textual basis for what had been a line of circuit court decisions going our way starting in puerto that went our way based on policy concerns which are very powerful but really didn't grapple with the text of the statute and i thought it within your brief you i think have possibly tried to read more into procurer than you can because of the number of spots you seemed you argued that it means but for causation now this morning you have said that's not your argument it's not you don't have to prove that but for  the false statement in the immigration proceeding the person would not have been naturalized your honor our position in this case was always relying on the line of circuit precedent going our way was that it was materiality i think if you didn't have any if we hadn't but for the way this case evolved where it was really based on materiality i think there is a good argument that the most natural reading of for sure contrary to law goes back to the general causation principles in our law which is this to buy or sell a scout's ticket within two hundred feet of the entrance of the stadium or a concert hall and i by knowingly buy a scout's ticket within one hundred ninety nine feet of the entrance of this facility and  now in order for me to have procured that ticket contrary to law would it be necessary to prove that i couldn't have purchased this from another scalp around the other side who was outside of the two hundred feet or i couldn't have gotten the ticket if i had which the court frankly fractured in congress and i think those are difficult questions that really haven't been briefed before you i think our position here is really at the very least it has to be material that you can't estab a causal link in this context where the statement doesn't even have the tendency if i could refer the court to the definition of materiality that was actually used by the majority in congress this is at five forty five us at seven seven to the same with a natural tendency to produce the conclusion that the applicant was qualified for citizenship please and finish i'm sorry your loss of that would mean my point really was there is some starch  in the standard of materiality and it really goes to qualifications for citizenship to judge the my friends on the other side seem to have a pretty watered down version of materiality that will anything that might launch an investigation as per se can i ask you m a different interpretation of the statute neither you nor the government supports it but it's raised briefly in the government's in footnote four of the government's brief which is this idea that  what we really i should be doing here is we should be interpreting fourteen twenty five in exactly the same way that we interpret the civil statute forty and fifty one which talks about illegally procuring something and that both are limited to failures to satisfy the prerequisites to naturalization and that's really what we should be thinking about when we interpret that i think that that you know i think that makes a lot of sense to that that this is really that's what it's about your stripping somebody of their citizenship so you kind of think the natural question is were they qualified for the citizenship in the first place i found footnote four and that would in in this case presumably be because of bad character is that right well i mean that knowing the will of the government i think thinks a lot more than that i mean they did not they try to prove but again we have a general verdict so we don't know whether they proved that her why was for the subjective purpose of obtaining an immigration benefit that's one way they could try to prove that if they did prove that we would agree she would not be qualified that there's no question that there's a causal link there if you can say the person wouldn't have been qualified so i haven't read this helps you and your our case look under ginsburg and their ass and that line of cases that right on from it relies on if it's a prerequisite to getting citizenship one of the their argument is that a prerequisite is not telling of fort hood it's an intentional fa say any false oath in the application process is enough to disqualify you it says any false oath for the purpose of obtaining a natural immigration benefit if they prove that then i think this was back to justice kagan's question they would prove that we were you should have an opportunity to present that jury on the facts that we have here how could you do it in material i tear well we would go back to get a witness to talk about you know how her two sisters got here for instance that they were victims of ethnic persecution by the muslims in bosnia and that she would have gotten the refugee status regardless of the point about the husband's military service that that was not the trucks that there was this was in a sense the issue i think the jury know and pet ad ninety really nicely points out that the jury in this very case asked the judge a question what was her refugee status based on was it based on fear of persecution by the muslims on ethnic persecution or was it based on fear of persecution by the ethnic serbs based on his avoiding military service we can see that that is a fair question to debate but we would like an opportunity to debate that in front of a jury that is properly instructed and that necessary i don't know how you can view that answers only a part of the material issue if she lied to get her husband a benefit that's an integration benefit that she was seeking well she had to lie about his military service otherwise he would have been disqualified well but they didn't do that  ledge and this is exactly right your honor that was one of the predicate offenses they allege here that one was section ten fifteen a which we discussed in our brief the other one is that she didn't have good moral character because she lied to obtain an immigration benefit but we have a general verdict here we have no finding here that the jury actually agreed with the government that in fact she lied to obtain an immigration bed is there any way they could have found otherwise well i think i i i don't  why we don't know why she said that we that's that you know one would have to speculate to say people lie for many different reasons they lie because they are embarrassed about certain things or i mean i think it would be speculative to say basically as a matter of law we can say there's only one reason she could have lied i you know i don't think we are basically in the practice of directing verdicts in criminal cases do you think this well this will instruct the jury would be entitled to hear evidence about srebrenica and about  her husband's military service i think you know that that raises some interesting questions and i don't know how well you're going to do in front of this well you're right and you're on a dry again i am not here thrown roses in the government's path in the lower courts to allow them specifically to get a criminal conviction to strip her of her citizenship without even proving that the statement is material there is nothing in it you can you can come up with a chart that goes from ten fifteen a which they say has no materiality to fourteen twenty five a which they say adds nothing is a pure look through statute and leads to the direct consequence of the naturalization so under their view any lie leads can lead to automatic the naturalization congress could have come up with that regime but it didn't because i think congress recognizes that not all lies are created equal they come in different shapes and sizes and that's why when congress wanted to make one kind of lied particularly significant it did so in eleven zero one f six by saying it has to be life for the purpose of obtaining an immigration benefit if they prove that why their gold then they actually did then they would the problem is in this case my client could have been convicted without that finding we just don't know that and so i guess i think part of the problem is here the government's fundamental conception of fourteen twenty five a is wrong they really do look at it basically as nothing more than a sentence in hansard for the underlying convictions but it is its own distinct provision of the criminal code with its own distinct statute of limitations and its own very distinct penalties for instance and ten fifteen a the maximum imprisonment term is five years under section fourteen twenty five a you can go to prison for up to twenty five years plus automatic the naturalization which flows as a result of fourteen fifty one easy so fourteenth you know that and the essence of that fourteenth at that distinct fourteen twenty five a crime is the unlawful procurement you're taking the unlawful predicate act and you're using it to procure citizenship and so our basic position is if the government wants to strip you of citizenship on the ground that you were not qualified for citizenship  procured country law it's very important for them to show that you would have been qualified if the trial would have been disqualified if the truth had been known and going back to your point justice kagan just to round out on footnote for i found that footnote in comprehensible because the government basically starts out with talking about a standard that we actually like which is the disqualification standard for causation essentially but then they go on to say well that would have been met here i think the most they can say is that could have been met here and you know that they can't possibly prove that as a matter of law that we did this was the contested issue at trial so we were ok with the legal standard there but the inference they draw in the next sentence i think they use the wrong verb tense that that particular  think if you focus on that that can answer the case in a sense but failing to meet the qualifications for naturalization sounds to me like but for causation well what is that your argument or is it something lost for a while you know you can you can say it should be but for  win if it's anything right i like what is your do you have a firm position are we if we were starting this on top and we had not argued materiality below i would say that it's but for i think that is the best interpretation of this as i mean that's awfully hard because then you have to go back and determine even if somebody says something that has real potential to affect the naturalization decision but you still would have to go back and show that in this case it actually did make the difference and your honor tha speaking through justice scalia defined materiality i think in a way that is pretty darn close to but for it said it is not quite there but it said a natural tendency to produce the conclusion that the applicant was qualified for citizenship so again i think the real crux here is not just might this have led to an investigation it really has to go to the qualifications for citizenship because that's what this whole thing is about we're trying to figure out did we naturalize somebody who shouldn't have been naturalized  if that's the case how do we distinguish between fourteen twenty five a and b a says that it has to be procured contrary to law be says you know procured it when it's not when you're not entitled to it seems to me that b does the work you can you're describing it that lie or the the illegal act has something to do with the underlying entitlement as opposed to a lie or something illegal in the process chief justice and may it please the court naturalization is the highest privilege the united states can bestow upon an individual it fundamentally changes the relationship between the government and the individual and congress has required that individuals who seek that high privilege must scrupulously comply with every rule governing the naturalization regular sleep i looked at on the naturalization form there's a question number twenty two have you ever and they've got ever in vote for committed assisted in committee or attempted to commit a crime or offense for which you were not arrested some time ago outside the statute of limitations i drove sixty miles an hour in a fifty five an hour  e i'm sorry because i was i was not arrested now you say that if i answer that question no twenty years after i was naturalized as a citizen you can knock on my door and say guess what you're not an american citizen after all well right if i would i would see two things first that is how the government would interpret that that it would require you to disclose those sorts of you're saying that on this form you expect everyone to list every time in which they drove over the speed limit no step when they were arrested but what i think that what i think that particular question demonstrates is and i will readily acknowledge number one that is a very broad question and number two i think that there is a great deal of ambiguity in what exactly is meant by crime and offense and well but just it's worse if you look at blacks in black's law dictionary i looked up what's an offense and this is what it says it says it's a violation of the long a crime often a minor one so you really are looking for the listing of every time somebody drove over the speed limit but here's here is what i think is important though what you would have to show to denaturalized someone at least under section fourteen twenty five would be that number one they were aware but that is what the question was asking for i knew a move over fifty five right you were aware that that happened you were aware that a truthful answer to that question would require you to disclose that and yet notwithstanding the fact that you had taken an oath to truthfully answer that question you chose to deliberately lie and if if all of those things could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt and that's an awful lot of ifs and i think knocks out a lot of ifs i knew that i drove over sixty i understand the question i saw that even says ever i researched it in black's law dictionary and it said in a fancy no matter how minor the conditions that you set forth were fully satisfied and i would say fully satisfied in everybody's case who don't who drives it any time and your position is still you answer their question no we can take away your citizenship if we can prove that you deliberately lied in answering that question then ye s how do they let me give you another example one of the requirements is that you list any explain that you've ever had all right when i was a child not me but some in terms of gender identity he's not never was or is and disclosed it in another part of the application but that word in battersea him continues to embarrass him and it has no importance to the decision making process is that failure to disclose the use of a childhood nickname that he is in barassi that has no relationship to anything whatsoever which could you prosecute that person know well i i think that you may be over reading that particular question i think what the but that question is request in our names that you yourself have gone by and the reason that is requested is because the f b i conducts a background check on all of these individuals and it needs to know if there are other names that you may be known by that that would  mean i don't mean to push back against my pathetically i only think that what you are suggesting is that this is something that other people called you in childhood and i don't think that that would be asked about the question it is but point the point is that i think of all these questions the same thing read you read the briefs the questions are unbelievably broad we can think of a thousand examples not a thousand but maybe only five hundred of the kind that the chief justice gave and  it's to me rather surprising that the government of the united states thinks that congress is interpret in this statute and wanted to interpret it in a way that would throw into doubt the citizenship of  percentages of all naturalized citizens i mean isn't that you explain you explain to me why that is so i don't think that it would throw in today i want to fifteen more examples such as the one that the chief justice ga well but really shocked by the what he gave by the way but but so what is the answer you want to fight that you want to say no i don't have listed on the page in front of me fifteen such examples and the briefs didn't l twenty three and we couldn't think of a hundred others i think that we can't look at i would readily agree with you that there are a number of questions on this form that taken in isolation would appear to be if if you gave an untruthful answer to one of those questions would you yeah i walked into the immigration hearing with a pocket knife in a government building because boy scout knife i carry on my key chain by the way no one ever saw it no one ever saw him it was there the whole time and then i walked up ok subject to deportation no i i don't there was i knew i wasn't supposed to do it but i thought oh so what there it's been on my key chain for thirty years no i actually think that think there are a couple of questions there right i could just very briefly address the last one i don't think that the crime that you just got in my last examples look to the general example and if you've read through the ones in the brig i don't want to repeat it it's the same underlying question there are a number of answers that could be given in the naturalization process that could be false and might seem to be in isolation immaterial completely immaterial  example i mean you could you know lie about your weight but say you're embarrassed that you weigh one hundred seventy pounds and so you claim that you weigh one hundred fifty the point though is congress has specifically attended to all false statements under oath in these types of proceedings it has specifically provided that it is a crime to lie under oath in the naturalization process even about an immaterial matter and it is provided that certain of those immaterial lines are categorical bars to naturalization mr purdie yes these i'm safe and i was just going to say that there are a number of reasons why i congress did not want to require that the government prove that a particular lie is material or immaterial in this context and i think it's important to understand what those are the first is when an individual lines even remember this has to be a lie under oath after you've sworn that you will tell the truth and you are deliberately lyin under oh yeah can i just ask you can i ask you because to take you through a few says parts of your brief because i guess i felt a little bit confused on reading it what you were standard is so on page fourteen when you say that the question is whether petitioner violated the law in the course of procuring naturalization in the course of procuring naturalization then on page nine and page seventeen you say that the question is whether the person procure is naturalization in a manner that violates very that violates other laws which are we talking about is it in the course of war in a manner that violates other laws well i might my apologies for that wasn't clear i think we're just saying two ways of saying exactly the same thing and that is exactly how the jury was instructed in this case yeah i mean it seems sort of different to me in the course of it is what creates the hypotheticals that justice breyer was talking about at the back the pen knife or the gun or something like that but what so what you're saying but i can just choose you  tell me your standard is in a manner that violates other laws so i think that's right and i think what that means is the same as what the jury was instructed in this ok so let's then i mean it makes me want to say ok what does it mean to procure naturalization in a manner that violates other laws and then you talk about that and you talk about that on the this is the only time i found in the brief where you actually suggest what it means to procure naturalization in a way that in a manner that violates other laws and you say on page eighty in but that means is by violating those various laws by violating those various laws and that made me think that's a causal requirement you know what i mean what you procure were naturalization this is again on page eighteen a person who knowingly procures naturalization in an unlawful manner and then you clarify that that means by violating the laws congress has enacted so when you say that you procure naturalization by violating the laws congress as an acted all you're saying is that is that the naturalization results from the violation of those laws well i and i guess if that's not what you meant to say and i don't mean to trick you here if that's not what you meant to say in this brief or though it suggests it did i think it is what you say but if it's not what you meant to say well how could it be anything else well i think it is not in my apologies if that sentence is unclear i think it's actually described in more detail on the preceding page in page seventeen our our interpretation of that provision is that it means that you have to park your naturalization in violation of the laws that govern the naturalization process these are laws that address naturalization and number one where is that in the statute well i one issue but but that's a different issue from the one on talking about whatever laws it is whether it's all laws or whether it's was relating to the naturalization process when you describe what you mean in when you say in a manner that violates the laws that when you say you say it's by you particular naturalization by violating the law as you very naturally i think it's a totally naturally natural construction of the language and very naturally say you've got the naturalisation by violating those laws meaning that the naturalization is the result of those that violation because what else could you mean when you say when you when you have a naturalization and you have these violation of laws well again that the violation led to the naturalization well again i mean just with respect to the sentence that you're quoting i think what we were what we were  is by violating the laws we're trying to describe what it means to act in an unlawful manner i don't think we were trying to say that i know i'm sort of suggesting that in trying to the describe that you ended up using the petitioner's formulation and that seems quite natural to me because i don't know whether the formulation you could use why don't you describe what it means i don't say in a manner that violates those laws i don't think that it is natural and let me explain why the statute says procure contrary to law naturalization we know what procure naturalization means that means to obtain naturalization and then the phrase is contrary to law well the question then is contrary to what laws i think the law has to be interpreted consistent with the two words i think that the the that's such a shorter statement of my question it's perfect i think the answer is we have please don't read the statute to require that the statement material matter meaning that a truthful answer would be more likely to get them naturalization than an untruth one or as petitioner has also said several times that it would be the but for cause getting that naturalization but what congress was a as the petitioner has argued is that it has to be something that where you either could not get it or be much less likely to get it if you did y instead of x i think one example might be you know you  g that you had the money you could just as easily have purchased it and i think that is the difference the thing that was done there stealing the paintings certainly had the potential to help the thief get the painting that's true it was the means by which they walked away with the painting but i don't think that it is that there was any causal relationship there of the sort that we've been talking about what about what sort would you accept that is you heard to right there forget the word materiality from your point of view you don't ok and i take it but for condition you don't and i take it the proximate cause you don't but what about how to tendency four to effect a reasonable immigration officer in his judgment what about but what about the one you just used it was a means towards getting that's tougher than you usually accepting well which ones were here i'd have us about five influence the decision it had the possibility or tendency to influence the decision you say all those are wrong i think they are but the reason is that congress which one do you accept i don't think i would accept any of them i think that the problem here is that congress has said well i know i know you say congress said that but the question of course for us is whether congress said and we have some words so i want to know if those words in your mind are capable of any interpretation that suggests any kind of tendency of the on lawful act to move an immigration judge if not this one some other one towards a plus decision i don't think so because congress has said for example that even and this was the court's decision in countries that even an immaterial false statement about the most immaterial of matters can be a categorical bar to the abilities per ability of the person to be naturalized in that the point there is that it would be very odd i think to read the statute to say that if a person procures naturalization despite having done that that somehow that was not done properly contrary to law because materiality or something some other formulation would be required in addition in order to them establish let me let me try this another way if you take this phrase which is a kind of stilted phrase because the country the law comes in between and the but it all it really means is peculiar includes illegal acts that have no effect on naturalization or on procuring naturalization it's just not how we use language how could it be that that is true but it's not well my disagreement there is that it is not that it has no effect the effect though is the fact that the person lied it is not what the person wanted it has but it has no effect on the decision to naturalize whether a truthful answer would have had an effect on the decision to naturalize versus an untruthful one i think that congress has said quite clearly that that is not the relevant consideration for purposes of these apply in their status and i dispute that we just don't think that it's a hostile now it should tell us what that relationship is that that relationship in our view is that the laws have to be the laws governing naturalization and what that means is there are laws governing who may be naturalized and there are laws governing how they must do so if that's one of them mr parker what do you do with fifteen fourteen twenty five b with the difference between a and b the government's account a says you procure a contrary to law naturalization pieces you put your naturalization you're not entitled to why i think that the reference to being entitled in subsection b reinforces our point that contrary to law doesn't necessarily mean that you weren't entitled to the naturalization it means that you violated the rules that congress has set forth in governing who can be naturalized and housing assumes you would be you were you were not entitled to begin with and as you may have been entitled but you lied in the process of i think that's a fair reading i mean i would note that that be also sweeps more broadly than any because it includes things like obtaining a certificate of naturalization rather than the actual procurement of naturalization  government the congress doesn't have the power to do you naturalize least so far we haven't let them do that as punishment for a criminal act so how go back to justice keegan's question about footnote for you and your adversaries position that if it's a prerequisite to naturalization that's what this means that that's the only time congress can deprive you of citizenship is when something actually would have barred you from getting well are the only point that we were trying giving them this power should we be reading it there really or broad well i don't think that there is a i think that it shouldn't necessarily be read broadly but i think that any fair reading of the statute would include this would work in this context let's say that somebody makes a false statement in their naturalization process and that false statement is discovered one of two things will happen either the false statement is of the sort that is mentioned if it is not that let's say it's a violation of section ten fifteen but it didn't involve oral testimony and in countries this court held that eleven on one of six requires world testimony then what happens is it would have to be analyzed under the residual provision of eleven no one after which says the fact that we have enumerated certain grounds above does not mean that those are exclusive and there are other grounds on which the persons good moral character may be denied what happens at that point is either the person could be denied because they are actually ineligible based on that statement or they could be denied naturalization because at every stage the alien bears the burden of persuasion and it could be concluded that they did not satisfy their burden of establishing eligibility what they have to do in order to obtain naturalization not withstanding having made a false statement is do what what the regulations refer to as  demonstrating extenuating circumstances and this is a whole i'm sorry demonstrating what extenuating circumstances so this would be a whole record evaluation by the agency of all of the circumstances involved in the alien bears the burden of doing that in here which of those processes has there ever been the kind of in the serious statement that the chief justice gave lying about a traffic immaterial state i'm not aware of a particular case in which that has occurred these are not published decisions so i i couldn't say but i would note however that if the alien if that lie is not discovered and the alien manages to procure naturalization not withstanding that the government's position would be that at that point that person has procured naturalization in a circumstance in which they are not eligible because  a factual matter they had lied and because they lied they were then it was incumbent upon them to show extenuating circumstances they did not do that and so they would be ineligible i would also like to know that interpretation and on your interpretation of fourteen twenty five and the words that say in fourteen fifty one shall be deprived of his citizenship given the seriousness of the out your interpretation would raise a pretty serious constitutional question wouldn't it i don't so no it's not a serious constitutional question of whether an american citizen can be have his citizenship taken away because forty years before he did not deliberately put on paper what his nickname was or what or what  is speeding record was thirty years before that which was in fact totally immaterial that's not a constitutional question well i i don't think so because congress has number one specified that immaterial false statements are grounds for  denying naturalization but i also would note that there are a few responses one is the criminal provision at least as a ten year statute of limitations so it wouldn't be forty but i think that it's important to remember that the naturalization is not like a lifetime bar on on citizenship all the naturalization does is it returns you to the status of a lawful permanent resident you then have to wait five years and if after the end of those five years you can demonstrate that you're in that you know you are entitled to citizenship you can be re naturalized i don't it also doesn't problem of the constitution of stature but it is certainly a problem of prosecutorial abuse if you take the position that refusing to not answering about the speeding ticket or the nickname is enough to subject that person do d naturalization the government will have the opportunity to deem naturalized anyone they want because everybody is going to have a situation where they didn't put in something like that or at least most people and the government can decide we're going to be naturalized you for other reasons then what might appear on your naturalization form or not and that to me is troublesome to give that extraordinary power which essentially is unlimited power at least in most cases to the government well strikes me as a serious problem i certainly understand your concern mr chief justice all i can say is i don't think that the statute says anything that would necessarily prevent status that's not what our cases say that's not what citizenship me i arguing for the government of the united states talking about what's the sense there is and ought to mean right and i well we would readily agree that it is a priceless treasure we are not disputing that at all one of the consequences of the priceless nature of citizenship is that congress has surrounded it with a number of protections to ensure that the individual seeking it square every corner and are absolutely and completely honest i do want to point out though that there are a number of other protections built into the system that would prevent the sort of problems that the chief justice has raised and one of those is that we would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that that this was a deliberate lie i think that convincing a unanimous jury of that is very difficult i also would note that there are seven hundred eighty thousand no because we believe that the language illegally procured in the civil provision is effectively synonymous with procurement contrary to law it would only be that in the criminal provision you have to satisfy the statute of limitations and  reasonable doubt standard in the mens rea requirement thank you thank you counsel of five minutes mr landau thank you mr chief justice like to make three quick points if i might first to go back to justice course which is a question that he asked both sides about the relationship with fourteen twenty five a and b i think they are largely overlapping it is true that to be cover some more things that a doesn't cover b uses the language intitled that may inform exactly the nature of the causal link that one would infer in a but i think it doesn't in any way affect our first central argument here which is there has to be some causal link that it's absolutely you cannot predict you're something contrary to law based on an immaterial false statement which by definition is the kind of thing that doesn't even have the tendency to do that again to go back to conscious the natural tendency to produce the conclusion that the applicant was qualified for citizenship second the government said a number of times oh yeah it's not it's not a big deal we you know the government under conscious it said you don't need material false statement and it said in wells also that one in response to another statute where that was true in both wells and conscious and we make this point in the ten fifteen section of our brief the the court made the point of addressing the concerns that taking out materiality would open up the defendant to an incredible of ray of sanctions based on something that you know presumably congress doesn't mean to criminalize minor offenses but it said there's a purpose requirement in both both of those and that's what gave the court comfort in saying you didn't need materiality in addition to that purpose requirement so it is not true when the government saying oh immaterial false statements are a basis for the naturalization under eleven o one of six that is only as conscious stress because there is a ready a for the purpose of requirement in that very provision and the same exact thing is true on in wells which is based on conscious the government has identified no case in the history of american law where this court has upheld a statute without a materiality requirement if there wasn't some functional equivalent to materiality such as a purpose requirement and i think some of the hypotheticals that were posed here show just how drastic this would be and how extreme the government's position is here the third and final point i'd like to make is that i think as some of justice kagan's questions pointed out the most natural requirement i think it's it basically says for the purpose of we even bigger knows the falsity of what he says and intends to influence the is correct i think that that's basically that's why i think it's functionally the equivalent of materiality so i think the court felt some comfort in wales the court didn't just say oh we are fine with you know we're dispensing with de minimus knock you out like that is the background norm against which all of our laws are enacted because we have to assume that this the government you have to look at how the harshest prosecutor in the land will apply this and i think the questioning today makes it chillingly clear that the government's position in this case would subject all naturalized americans to potential d naturalization at the hands of an aggressive prosecutor that is not what congress intended that is not what is in the language of the statute nothing in the statute compels this court that this would be breaking entirely new ground and we urge this court not to go there thank you very much thank you counsel the case is submitted