United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Argued July 8, 2020

Decided July 13, 2020

Before

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge

AMY C. BARRETT, Circuit Judge

AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge

No. 19-3460

EUGENIUSZ WOJCIECHOWICZ,

Petitioner,

v.

WILLIAM P. BARR,

Attorney General of the United States,

Respondent.

Petition for Review of an Order of the 

Board of Immigration Appeals.

No. A 029-604-552

O R D E R

Eugeniusz Wojciechowicz, a 62-year-old citizen of Poland who moved to the 

United States more than three decades ago, sought a waiver of inadmissibility under 

8 U.S.C. § 1182(h) after he was denied admission in 2019 for having been convicted of a 

crime involving moral turpitude. The immigration judge denied Wojciechowicz’s 

application because he did not show extreme hardship and he failed to demonstrate 

that he merited a favorable exercise of discretion. The Board of Immigration Appeals, 

without reaching the question of hardship, upheld the decision to deny his application 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
No. 19-3460 Page 2

as a matter of discretion. Because we lack jurisdiction to review Wojciechowicz’s 

challenge to the Board’s discretionary determination, we dismiss his petition. 

I. Background

Wojciechowicz came to the United States in 1987 on a tourist’s visa and has lived 

here ever since, working in construction. He married Irena Anchim in 1999 and became 

a lawful permanent resident in 2004. After the financial crisis in 2008, while working as 

a subcontractor for companies that sell windows (which he installed), Wojciechowicz 

double-billed for his work, stealing at least $100,000. In 2011, he pleaded guilty to two 

counts of theft by deception, 720 ILCS § 5/16-1(a)(2), (b)(6); theft by unauthorized 

control, 720 ILCS § 5/16-1(a)(1), (b)(6); and forgery, 720 ILCS § 5/17-3(a)(1), (d)(1). The 

court sentenced him to two years of probation and paid $87,000 in restitution. 

In March 2019, after returning from a trip to Poland for his sister’s funeral, 

Wojciechowicz was stopped at O’Hare International Airport and deemed inadmissible 

for having been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude. 8 U.S.C. 

§ 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(I). He then sought a waiver of inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. 

§ 1182(h). Under § 1182(h)(1)(B), the Attorney General may waive the ground of 

inadmissibility applicable to Wojciechowicz (the crime of moral turpitude) if denial of 

admission would result in extreme hardship to a lawfully resident family member. 

See Palma-Martinez v. Lynch, 785 F.3d 1147, 1149 (7th Cir. 2015).

At a hearing before the immigration judge in June 2019, Wojciechowicz and his 

wife (a United States citizen) testified about his application for a waiver of 

inadmissibility, describing the extreme hardship that she and their two children (also 

United States citizens) would suffer if he were removed. Wojciechowicz testified that he 

was the sole income-earner for his family. Irena had stopped working when she 

married him in 1999, choosing to raise their children, manage the family’s finances, and

care for her physically and mentally disabled brother who lived nearby. She also 

suffered depression, for which she took medication. Wojciechowicz, who paid for his 

daughter’s college tuition, opined that her studies “would be over” if he were removed. 

Also, his family could not follow him to Poland because his children do not speak 

Polish. Indeed, the family had “nothing” in Poland; he had only one surviving sister 

there and no property. 

After a hearing, an immigration judge denied Wojciechowicz’s application for a 

waiver. The judge explained first that, although she was sympathetic to 
No. 19-3460 Page 3

Wojciechowicz’s concerns, neither a “change in the family’s standard of living” nor the 

emotional hardship commonly experienced by separated families rose to the requisite 

level of “extreme hardship.” The judge added that she had “considered all of the 

proposed hardship factors in Respondent’s case in aggregate.” In the alternative, the 

judge also denied the waiver as a matter of discretion based on the seriousness of 

Wojciechowicz’s financial crime. She acknowledged his positive equities—his lengthy 

stay in the United States, the hardship that his three United States citizen family 

members would experience, and the fact that he had completed his criminal sentence—

but found these “heavily” outweighed by the seriousness of his scheme that lasted at 

least three years and bilked a construction company of more than $100,000. See 8 C.F.R. 

§ 1212.7(d) (“[D]epending on the gravity of the alien’s underlying criminal offense,” 

even extreme hardship might not warrant a favorable exercise of discretion.).

The Board of Immigration Appeals upheld the immigration judge’s decision to 

deny Wojciechowicz’s application as a matter of discretion and dismissed the appeal. 

Like the immigration judge, the Board noted the considerations that weighed in his 

favor (his 30 years living in the United States, his business ownership, his marriage to a 

United States citizen and their two United States citizen children, as well as the sentence 

he already had served and the $87,000 in restitution he had paid) but found these 

outweighed by his years-long fraudulent scheme that ended only when he was 

confronted by the construction company’s owner. This was a “very serious adverse 

factor.” The Board did not reach the issue of hardship.

II. Analysis

In this petition, Wojciechowicz challenges the denial of his application for a 

waiver on two bases. First, he argues that the immigration judge’s decision, as 

supplemented by the Board’s,1 was flawed because she failed to apply “required” 

discretionary factors in denying his application as a matter of discretion. Second, he 

argues that the immigration judge failed to weigh cumulatively the hardship factors, 

including his age, his clean postconviction record, his family’s ties to the United States, 

and his wife’s depression. 

As a threshold matter, we lack jurisdiction to consider the agency’s discretionary 

denial of a request for a waiver of inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(h). Id.

1 When, as here, the Board dismisses an appeal from an immigration judge’s decision and supplements 

that decision, this court reviews both decisions together. Simental-Galarza v. Barr, 946 F.3d 380, 383 (7th 

Cir. 2020) (per curiam).
No. 19-3460 Page 4

§ 1252(a)(2)(B)(i); Cisneros v. Lynch, 834 F.3d 857, 861–62 (7th Cir. 2016). Indeed, unless a 

constitutional or legal question is present, we lack authority to review the Attorney 

General’s discretionary denial of this waiver. Simental-Galarza, 946 F.3d at 383; Cisneros, 

834 F.3d at 861–62. 

Neither of Wojciechowicz’s arguments raises a legal question. First, his argument 

that the Board did not apply requisite discretionary factors boils down to an argument 

that just one factor weighs against him and many weigh in his favor, and that is 

tantamount to asking this court to reweigh the discretionary factors. See Papazoglou 

v. Holder, 725 F.3d 790, 794–95 (7th Cir. 2013); Khan v. Mukasey, 517 F.3d 513, 517 

(7th Cir. 2008); see also Quito v. Barr, 948 F.3d 83, 93–94 (2d Cir. 2020). 

Second, Wojciechowicz cannot manufacture a legal argument by asserting that 

the immigration judge (and the Board, by not reaching the question) failed in the 

hardship analysis to consider certain material facts—such as his rehabilitation and 

restitution or his wife’s depression. Although Wojciechowicz tries to cast this issue as a 

legal error, it is in essence a challenge to the agency’s exercise of discretion and thus one 

that the panel may not review. Cisneros, 834 F.3d at 866. An immigration judge (or the 

Board for that matter) is not required to evaluate each factor in checklist fashion. Id. 

While a “wholesale failure to consider evidence” would be a legal error, id. (citations 

omitted), the immigration judge did not ignore “wholesale” his evidence of hardship. 

And even though the Board declined to reach the issue of hardship (having found the 

overall discretionary determination dispositive), it highlighted several of the factors that 

Wojciechowicz insists it should have considered—his residence in the United States 

since 1987, his longstanding business ownership, his 20-year marriage to a United States 

citizen, his two United States citizen children, and his payment of $87,000 in restitution. 

For these reasons, we DISMISS the petition for lack of jurisdiction.