In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________

No. 05-2070

ABDALLA ALSAGLADI,

Petitioner,

v.

ALBERTO R. GONZALES, Attorney General

of the United States,

Respondent.

____________

Petition for Review of an Order of the

Board of Immigration Appeals

____________

ARGUED APRIL 19, 2006—DECIDED JUNE 13, 2006

____________

Before COFFEY, EASTERBROOK, and MANION, Circuit

Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Abdalla Alsagladi, a citizen

of Yemen, arrived in the United States on a visa issued by

the Embassy in Saudi Arabia. Alsagladi told the consular

staff that he wanted to come as a tourist; the visa he

received was so limited. His representations were false;

Alsagladi now concedes that his plan was emigration. He

did not depart when the visa expired. After 10 months in

the United States he applied for asylum, contending that

Yemen had persecuted him for his socialist politics. He

testified at a removal hearing that thugs in the employ of

Yemen’s government repeatedly tried to kill him. An
2 No. 05-2070

immigration judge disbelieved his story, observing that

Alsagladi had been a responsible public official (Yemen’s

equivalent of a clerk of court with a joint appointment as a

magistrate judge), and that it is hard to understand why a

nation would employ someone in a high-ranking position

while trying to bump him off because his politics were

repugnant. Yemen recognizes the Socialist Party as legitimate. It operates openly and publishes a newspaper; some

of its members are serving in that nation’s parliament. The

immigration judge added that, even if Alsagladi were

eligible for refugee status, his use of deceit to obtain a visa

would lead to an adverse exercise of discretion. The Board

of Immigration Appeals affirmed summarily, making the

IJ’s opinion the agency’s final word.

Status as a victim of persecution makes an alien eligible

for asylum but does not compel an exercise of discretion

in his favor. An alien who enters the United States by fraud

must show strong equities to merit a favorable exercise of

that discretion. See Matter of Pula, 19 I.&N. Dec. 467

(1987). This is so not only because the United States seeks

to encourage candor in visa applications but also because

someone who concedes willingness to lie in order to obtain

residence in this nation (as Alsagladi does) may well be

trying to pull the wool over the agency’s eyes in support of

his application for asylum as well as in his application for

a visa. We limit our attention to this subject because, when

an agency is entitled to deny relief as an exercise of discretion, it is always unnecessary and often inappropriate for a

court to discuss the eligibility issue. See INS v.

Bagamasbad, 429 U.S. 24 (1976) (holding this with respect

to judicial review of a decision denying an alien’s application for relief on the ground that the alien’s fraud in

obtaining a visa justified an adverse exercise of discretion).

Alsagladi does not deny that immigration officials are

entitled to remove refugees who entered the United States

by fraud. Fraud in obtaining a visa renders any alien

inadmissible, see 8 U.S.C. §1182(a)(6)(C); it requires a
No. 05-2070 3

favorable exercise of discretion to relieve the alien of this

bar and allow a grant of asylum. The immigration judge

decided not to exercise discretion in Alsagladi’s favor. He

maintains that discretion was abused, see 8 U.S.C.

§1252(b)(4)(D), because the IJ’s supposed errors in evaluating his credibility (the ground on which asylum was denied

on the merits) influenced the weight given to the equities on

his side. This amounts to little more than a plea that we

disregard Bagamasbad and adopt a rule that full treatment

of entitlement issues precede any exercise of administrative

discretion. The Supreme Court held, however, that immigration judges and federal courts are entitled to pretermit

comprehensive treatment of the merits if they have decided

to deny relief on discretionary grounds in any event.

The sort of countervailing equities that the Board of

Immigration Appeals discussed in Pula are limited to the

circumstances of the alien’s escape from persecution and

entry into the United States. Until Pula the Board had

deemed “the fraudulent avoidance of orderly refugee

procedures to be an extremely adverse factor which could

only be overcome with the most unusual showing of countervailing equities.” 19 I.&N. Dec. at 472. Pula changed that

approach to one in which fraudulent entry is a “serious

adverse factor” that should be considered in light of “the

totality of the circumstances and actions of an alien in his

flight from the country where he fears persecution” (id. at

473). In other words, the Board now asks whether fraud

was employed to escape from persecution (which it deems

“not a significant adverse factor”, id. at 474) or was gratuitous. In Pula itself the alien endured persecution not only

in his native land (Albania) but also in the nation to which

he initially fled (Yugoslavia). He came to the United States

with the aid of a purchased identity card, fearing that

display of an Albanian or Yugoslavian passport would have

led to his immediate return before he could seek asylum.

After crediting both this story and Pula’s statement that he
4 No. 05-2070

did not know that the United States issues visas to declared

refugees, the Board concluded that the alien’s deceit was

justifiable.

Alsagladi has no similar excuse. He had left Yemen and

was living in Saudi Arabia, which he does not accuse of

persecution. His brother, with whom he stayed in Saudi

Arabia, had been granted permanent residence in that

nation. He could have asked for a U.S. visa as a refugee but

did not. Alsagladi, unlike Pula, has never claimed ignorance

of that option; he is too well educated and aware of legal

niceties to make such an argument credibly. Yet instead of

telling the consular staff honestly that he wanted to enter

the United States as a refugee—a claim that could have

been examined by officials who had access to contacts in

Yemen that could have verified or refuted his

story—Alsagladi swore falsely about the purpose of his visit

and his intentions after reaching the United States. The

immigration judge stated that even this deceit would have

been excusable had the Saudi government been preparing

to return Alsagladi to Yemen. Because Alsagladi had been

allowed to stay in Saudi Arabia indefinitely, however, there

was no need for him to take a quick (but perjurious) route

to a more hospitable destination.

Alsagladi chastises the immigration judge for suggesting that he could have sought permanent residence (or at

least refugee status) in Saudi Arabia; his lawyer rightly

observes that the United States does not require refugees to

remain in the first nation they reach after their escape,

unless they have become firmly settled there, 8 U.S.C.

§1158(b)(2)(A)(vi); 8 C.F.R. §208.15, or a treaty so provides.

8 U.S.C. §1158(a)(2)(A). (We do not have such a treaty with

Saudi Arabia.) Unlike Alsagladi, however, we do not

understand the IJ to have made the legal error of insisting

that aliens stay in the first nation they reach following

escape from persecution. The point, rather, was that Saudi

Arabia was neither persecuting Alsagladi nor insisting that
No. 05-2070 5

he depart; that respite eliminated any urgent need for him

to dissemble his way into the United States. The visa fraud

was worse, in the IJ’s eyes, because it was gratuitous.

Aliens who take the easy but dishonest path when a more

honorable if more difficult one is open cannot insist on

administrative lenity. The agency did not abuse its discretion here, and Alsagladi’s petition for review is denied.

A true Copy:

Teste: 

 ________________________________

Clerk of the United States Court of

Appeals for the Seventh Circuit 

USCA-02-C-0072—6-13-06