Source: http://www2.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/Scialabba_v_Cuellar_de_Osorio_No_12930_2014_BL_158583_US_June_09_
Timestamp: 2014-07-24 02:19:06
Document Index: 252273470

Matched Legal Cases: ['§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1181', '§1153', '§1182', '§1182', '§1182', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§204', '§204', '§204', '§1154', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§204', '§204', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§204', '§1153', '§1154', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153', '§1153']

Scialabba v. Cuellar De Osorio, 134 S. Ct. 2191 (2014), Court Opinion
Scialabba v. Cuellar De Osorio, 134 S. Ct. 2191 (2014) [2014 BL 158583]
Respondents, principal beneficiaries who became LPRs, filed petitions for their aged-out children, asserting that the newly filed petitions should receive the same priority date as their original petitions. Instead, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) gave the new petitions current priority dates. The District Court granted the Government summary judgment, deferring to the Board of Immigration Appeals' (BIA's) determination that only those petitions that can be seamlessly converted from one family preference category to another without the need for a new sponsor are entitled to conversion under §1153(h)(3) . The en banc Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that the provision unambiguously entitled all aged-out derivative beneficiaries to automatic conversion and priority date retention.
(a) Because §1153(h)(3) does not speak unambiguously to the issue here, a court must defer to the BIA's reasonable interpretation. See Chevron U.S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 , 844. The first clause of §1153(h)(3) states a condition that encompasses every aged-out beneficiary of a family preference petition. The second clause, however, does not easily cohere with the first. It prescribes a remedy that can apply to only a subset of the beneficiaries [**2] described in the first clause. This remedial prescription directs immigration officials to take the alien's petition and convert it from a category benefitting a child to an appropriate category for adults, without any change in the petition, including its sponsor, or any new filing. Moreover, this conversion is to be "automati[c]"-that is, one involving no additional decisions, contingencies, or delays.
On the above account, §1153(h)(3) 's second clause provides a remedy to those principal and derivative beneficiaries who had a qualifying relationship with an LPR both before and after they aged out. In contrast, aliens like respondents'
The ambiguity created by §1153(h)(3) 's ill-fitting clauses left the BIA to choose how to reconcile the statute's different commands. It reasonably opted to abide by the inherent limits of §1153(h)(3) 's remedial clause, rather than go beyond those limits so as to match the [*2195] sweep of the first clause's condition. When an agency thus resolves statutory tension, ordinary principles of administrative [**3] deference require this Court to defer.
Beyond that, Congress did not speak clearly to which petitions can be automatically converted. The BIA's reasonable interpretation of §1153(h)(3) is consistent with the ordinary meaning of the statutory terms, with [**4] the established meaning of automatic conversion in immigration law, and with the structure of the family-based immigration system. Pp. 1-4.
But even with that provision, the beneficiary may age out solely because of the time he spent waiting in line for a visa to become available.
An alien needs an immigrant visa to enter and permanently reside in the United States. [**5] See §1181(a) .
The sponsor (otherwise known as the petitioner-we use the words interchangeably) must provide U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Such a date may benefit not only the principal beneficiary of a family preference petition, but also her spouse and minor children. Those persons, labeled the petition's "derivative beneficiar[ies]," are "entitled to the same status, [**6] and the same order of consideration" as the principal. 8 U.S.C. §§1153(d) , (h) .
(1)(A) (alien may not have serious health problems); §1182(a)(2)(A) (alien may not have been convicted of certain crimes); §1182(a)(3)(B) (alien may not have engaged in terrorist activity). Notably, one necessary showing involves the U.S. citizen or LPR who filed the initial petition: To mitigate any possibility of becoming a "public charge," the visa applicant (whether a principal or derivative beneficiary) must append an "affidavit of support" executed by that sponsoring individual. §§1182(a)(4)(C)(ii) , 1183a(a)(1) .
And the middle is the worst. After a sponsoring petition is approved but before a visa application can be filed, a family-sponsored immigrant [**7] may stand in line for years-or even decades-just waiting for an immigrant visa to become available.
And as the years tick by, young people grow up, and thereby endanger their immigration status. Remember that not all offspring, but only those under the age of 21 can qualify as an "immediate relative" of a U.S. citizen, or as the principal beneficiary of an LPR's F2A petition, or (most crucially here) as the derivative beneficiary of any family preference petition. See supra, at 3, 5. So an alien eligible to immigrate at the start of the process
The first paragraph, §1153(h)(1) , contains a formula for calculating the age of an alien "[f ]or purposes of subsections (a)(2)(A) and (d) "-that is, for any alien seeking an immigrant visa directly under F2A or as a derivative beneficiary of any preference category. The "determination of whether [such]
Taken [**8] together, those two paragraphs prevent an alien from "aging out" because of-but only because of-bureaucratic delays: the time Government officials spend reviewing (or getting around to reviewing) [*2201] paperwork at what we have called the front and back ends of the immigration process. See supra, at 6-7. The months that elapse before USCIS personnel approve a family preference petition ("the period during which the applicable petition described in paragraph (2) was pending") do not count against an alien in determining his statutory "age."
The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) addressed the meaning of §1153(h)(3) in Matter of Wang, 25 I. & N. Dec. 28 (2009); its interpretation there is what we review in this case. Wang was the principal beneficiary of an F4 petition that his sister, a U.S. citizen, filed in 1992.
USCIS approved that petition, with a priority date corresponding to the date of Wang's filing. Wang contended that under §1153(h)(3) , his daughter was instead entitled to "retain the original priority date" given to his sister's old F4 petition, because that petition could "automatically be converted" to the F2B category.
The Board [**9] rejected that argument. It explained that "the language of [§1153(h)(3) ] does not expressly state which petitions qualify for automatic conversion and retention of priority dates." Id., at 33 . Given that "ambiguity," the BIA looked to the "recognized meaning" of "the phrase 'automatic conversion' "
In each suit, the District Court deferred to the BIA's interpretation of §1153(h)(3) in Wang, and accordingly granted summary judgment to the Government. See Zhang v. Napolitano, 663 F. Supp. 2d 913 , 919 (CD Cal. 2009); Costelo v. Chertoff, No. SA08-00688, 2009 WL 4030516 (CD Cal., Nov. 10, 2009). After consolidating the two cases on appeal, a panel of the Ninth Circuit [**10] affirmed: Like the lower courts, it found §1153(h)(3) ambiguous and acceded to the BIA's construction. 656 F. 3d 954 , 965-966 (2011). The Ninth Circuit then granted rehearing en banc and reversed in a 6-to-5 decision. 695 F. 3d 1003 (2012). The majority concluded that "the plain language of the CSPA unambiguously grants automatic conversion and priority date retention to [all] aged-out derivative beneficiaries," and that the Board's contrary conclusion "is not entitled to deference." Id., at 1006 .
And §1153(h)(3) does not speak unambiguously to the issue here-or more precisely put, it addresses that issue in divergent ways. We might call the provision Janus-faced. Its first half looks in one direction, toward the sweeping relief the respondents propose, which would reach every aged-out beneficiary of a family preference petition. But as the BIA recognized, and we will further explain, the section's second half looks another way, toward a remedy that can apply to only a subset of those beneficiaries-and one not including the respondents' offspring. The two faces of the statute do not easily cohere with each other: Read either most naturally, and the other appears to mean not what it says. That internal tension makes possible alternative reasonable constructions, bringing into correspondence in one way or another the section's different parts. And when that is so, Chevron dictates that a court defer to the agency's choice-here, to the Board's expert judgment about which interpretation fits best with, and makes most sense of, the statutory scheme.
(a)(2)(A) and (d) ") as the principal beneficiary of an F2A petition or the derivative beneficiary of any family preference petition. On its own, then, §1153(h)(3) 's opening clause encompasses [**11] the respondents' sons and daughters, along with every other once-young beneficiary of a family preference petition now on the wrong side of 21. If the next phrase said something like "the alien shall be treated as though still a minor" (much as the CSPA did to ensure U.S. citizens' children, qualifying as "immediate relatives," would stay forever young, see supra, at 7-8), all those aged-out beneficiaries would prevail in this case.
And so the aliens who may benefit from §1153(h)(3) 's back half are only those for whom that procedure is possible. The clause offers relief not to every aged-out beneficiary, but just to those covered by petitions that can roll over, seamlessly and promptly, into a category for adult relatives.
Similarly, when a U.S. citizen's adult son married, his original petition migrated from F1 to F3, see §204.2(i) (1)(i) ; when, conversely, such a person divorced, his petition converted from F3 to F1, see §204.2(i)(1)(iii) ; and when a minor child's LPR parent became a citizen, his F2A petition became an "immediate relative" petition, see §204.2(i)(3) -all [**12] again with their original priority dates. Most notable here, what all of those authorized changes had in common was that they could occur without any change in the petitioner's identity, or otherwise in the petition's content. In each circumstance, the "automatic conversion" entailed nothing more than picking up the petition from one category and dropping it into another for which the alien now qualified.
(That opt-out mechanism itself underscores the otherwise mechanical nature of the conversion.) Once again, in those cases, all that is involved is a recategorization-moving the same petition, filed by the same petitioner, from one preference classification to another, so as to reflect a change in either the alien's or his sponsor's status. In the rest of the CSPA, as in the prior immigration regulation, that is what "conversion" means.
(f )(1)(D) ; supra, at 5. Immigration officials cannot assume away all those potential barriers to entry: That would run counter to the family preference [**13] system's insistence that a qualified and willing sponsor back every immigrant visa. See §§1154(a) -(b) .
The beneficiary's parent, on the day a "visa number became available," cannot yet be an LPR or citizen; by definition, she has just become eligible to apply for a visa, and faces a wait of at least several months before she can sponsor an alien herself. Nor, except in a trivial number of cases, is any hitherto unidentified person likely to have a legally recognized relationship to the alien. So if an aged-out beneficiary has lost his qualifying connection to the original petitioner, no conversion to an "appropriate category" can take place at the requisite time. As long as immigration law demands some valid sponsor, §1153(h)(3) cannot give such an alien the designated relief.
Such an alien is identically situated to the aged-out principal beneficiary [**14] of an F2A petition; indeed, for the price of another filing fee, he could just as easily have been named a principal himself. He too is now the adult son of the original LPR petitioner, and his petition can also be instantly relabeled an F2B petition, without any need to substitute a new sponsor or make other revisions. In each case, the alien had a qualifying relationship before he was 21 and retains it afterward;
Now that the respondents' children have turned 21, and they can no longer ride on their parents' coattails, that lack of independent eligibility makes a difference. For them, unlike for the F2A beneficiaries, it is impossible simply to slide the original petitions from a (no-longer-appropriate) child category to a (now-appropriate)
All that said, we hold only that §1153(h)(3) permits-not that it requires-the Board's decision to so distinguish among aged-out beneficiaries. That is because, as we explained earlier, the two halves of §1153(h)(3) face in different directions. See supra, at 14. Section 1153(h)(3)'s first part-its conditional phrase-encompasses every aged-out beneficiary of a family preference petition, and thus points toward broad-based relief. But as just shown, §1153(h)(3) 's second part-its remedial prescription-applies only to a narrower class of beneficiaries: those aliens who naturally qualify for (and so can be "automatically converted" to) a new preference classification when they age out. Were there an interpretation that gave each clause full effect, the Board would have been required to adopt it. But the ambiguity those ill-fitting clauses create instead left the Board with a choice-essentially of how to reconcile the statute's different commands. The Board, recognizing the need to make that call, opted to abide by the inherent limits of §1153(h)(3) 's remedial clause, rather than go beyond those limits so as to match the sweep of the section's initial condition. On the Board's reasoned view, the only beneficiaries entitled to statutory relief are those capable of obtaining the remedy designated. When an agency thus resolves statutory tension, ordinary principles of administrative deference require [**15] us to defer. See National Assn. of Home Builders v. Defenders of Wildlife, 551 U.S. 644 , 666 (2007) (When a statutory scheme contains "a fundamental ambiguity"
immigration category, if only immigration officials try hard enough.
And a further problem follows-this one concerning the date of automatic conversion. The respondents need that date to come at a time when the [**16] derivative beneficiaries' parents
[*2209] Yet there is more-because even after substituting a new petitioner and delaying the conversion date in a way the statute does not contemplate, the respondents must propose yet further fixes to make "automatic" conversion work for their sons and daughters. The respondents' next problem is that even on the conversion date they propose, most of them (and other derivatives'
scheme still cannot succeed, because however long a visa adjudication is postponed, [**17] a derivative's parent may never become able to sponsor a relative's visa-and immigration officials cannot practicably tell whether a given parent has done so. We have noted before the potential impediments to serving as a petitioner-including that a parent may not immigrate, may not qualify as a sponsor, or may not be able to provide the requisite financial support. See supra, at 17-18. The respondents offer no way to deal with those many contingencies. Require the parent to submit a new petition? But the entire point of automatic conversion (as the respondents themselves agree) is to obviate the need for such a document. See Brief for Respondents 30, 42. Investigate [*2210] the parent's eligibility in some other way? But even were that possible (which we doubt) such an inquiry would not square with the essential idea of an automatic process. Disregard the possibility that no legal sponsor exists? But then visas would go, inevitably and not infrequently, to ineligible aliens. And so the workarounds have well and truly run out on the respondents' argument.
But the conjunction "and" does not necessarily disjoin two phrases in the way the respondents say. In some sentences, no doubt, the respondents have a point. They use as their primary example: "[I]f the boat takes on water, then you shall operate the bilge pump and you shall distribute life jackets." Brief for Respondents 39; see also post, at 10 (offering further examples). We agree that "you shall distribute life jackets" functions [**18] in that sentence as an independent command. But we can come up with many paired dictates in which the second is conditional on the first.
Were their theory correct, an aged-out alien could hold on to a priority date for years or even decades while waiting for a relative to file a new petition. Even if that filing happened, say, 20 years after the alien aged out, the alien could take out his priority-date token, and assert a right to spring to the front of any visa line. At that point, USCIS could well have [*2212] a hard time confirming the old priority date, in part because the names of derivative beneficiaries need not be listed on a visa petition. And the possibility of such leap-frogging from many years past would impede USCIS's publication of accurate waiting times. As far as we know, immigration law nowhere else allows an alien to keep in his pocket a priority [**19] date untethered to any existing valid petition. Without some clearer statement, we cannot conclude Congress intended here to create such a free-floating, open-ended entitlement to a defunct petition's priority date. See Wang, 25 I. & N. Dec., at 36 .
(i.e., "automatic") conversion they have done for decades-moving a petition from one box to another to reflect a given status change like aging out. See Wang, 25 I. & N. Dec., at 36 . The respondents, as we have shown, would transform conversion into a managed, multi-stage process, requiring immigration and consular officials around the world to sequence and delay every aged-out alien's visa adjudication until they are able to confirm that one of his parents had become a qualifying and willing F2B petitioner. And according to the Government's
If such aliens received relief under §1153(h)(3) , they would jump over thousands of others in the F2B line who had a qualifying relationship [**20] with an LPR for a far longer time. That displacement would, the Board reasonably found, scramble the priority order Congress prescribed.
And second, even when the derivative qualified as such for all the time his parent stood in line, his status throughout that period hinged on his being that parent's minor child. If his parent had obtained a visa before he aged out, he would have been eligible for a visa too, because the law does not demand that a prospective immigrant abandon a minor child. But if the parent had died while waiting for a visa, or had been found ineligible, or had decided not to immigrate after all, the derivative would have gotten nothing for the time spent in line. See supra, at 5-6. Similarly, the Board could reasonably conclude, he should not receive credit for his parent's wait when he has become old enough to live independently. In the unavoidably zero-sum world of allocating a limited number of visas, the Board could decide that he belongs behind any alien who has had a lengthier stand-alone entitlement to immigrate.
Ante, at 14. For the plurality, the first clause looks "toward the sweeping relief the respondents propose, which would reach every aged-out beneficiary of a family preference petition," while the second [**21] clause offers narrower relief that can help "only a subset of those beneficiaries." Ibid. Such "ill-fitting clauses," the plurality says, "left the Board with a choice-essentially of how to reconcile the statute's different commands."
I see no conflict, or even "internal tension," ante, at 14, in section 1153(h)(3) . See FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U.S. 120 , 133 (2000) (we must "interpret the statute 'as a symmetrical and coherent regulatory scheme,' and 'fit, if possible, all parts into a[ ] harmonious whole' " (citation omitted)).
"If the age of an alien is determined under [section 1153(h)(1) ] to be 21 years of age or older for the purposes of subsections (a)(2)(A) and (d) of this section, the alien's petition shall automatically be converted to the appropriate category and the alien shall retain the original priority date issued upon receipt of the original petition."
The particular benefit provided by section 1153(h)(3) is found exclusively in the second clause-the only operative provision. There we are told what an aged-out beneficiary (from whatever preference category) is entitled to: His petition "shall automatically be converted to the appropriate category and the alien shall retain the original [**22] priority date." §1153(h)(3) . But automatic conversion is not possible for every beneficiary in every preference category, as the plurality convincingly demonstrates. Ante, at 15-19. Automatic conversion requires, at minimum, that the beneficiary have his own sponsor, who demonstrates that he is eligible to act as a sponsor, and who commits to providing financial support for the beneficiary. Ante, at 18. Some aged-out children will not meet those prerequisites, and they cannot benefit from automatic conversion even under respondents' interpretation of the statute.
As I see it, the question before us is whether there is or is not an "appropriate category" to which the petitions for respondents' children may be converted. If there is, the agency was obligated by the clear text of 8 U.S.C. §1153(h)(3) to convert the petitions and leave the children with their original priority dates. Any such conversion would be "automatic," because the agency's obligation to convert the petitions follows inexorably, and without need for any additional action on the part of either respondents or their children, from the fact that the children's ages have been calculated to be 21 or older.
By the time respondents became legal permanent residents and filed new petitions for their children (if not sooner), there existed an appropriate category to which the original petitions could be converted. That is because at that [**23] point the children all qualified for F2B preference status, as unmarried, adult children of legal permanent residents. Accordingly, the agency should have converted respondents' children's petitions and allowed them to retain their original priority dates.
Ante, at 21. The Court nevertheless holds that the BIA was free to ignore this unambiguous text on the ground that §1153(h)(3) also offers aged-out derivative beneficiaries a type of relief-automatic conversion-that it thinks can apply only to one of the five categories. The Court thus perceives a conflict in the statute that, in its view, permits the BIA to override §1153(h)(3) 's initial eligibility clause.
In reaching this conclusion, the Court fails to follow a cardinal rule of statutory interpretation: When deciding whether Congress has "specifically addressed the question at issue," thereby leaving no room for an agency to fill a statutory gap, courts must "interpret the statute 'as a . . . coherent regulatory scheme' and 'fit, [**24] if possible, all parts into [a] harmonious whole.' " FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U.S. 120 , 132-133 (2000) (citation omitted). Because the Court and the BIA ignore obvious ways in which §1153(h)(3) can operate as a coherent whole and instead construe the statute as a self-contradiction that was broken from the moment Congress wrote it, I respectfully dissent.
This case arises from a common problem: Given the lengthy period prospective immigrants must wait for a visa, a principal beneficiary's child-although younger than 21 when her parent's petition was initially filed-often will have turned 21 by the time the parent's priority date comes up in line. Such a child is said to have "aged out" of derivative beneficiary treatment under §1153(d) . By way of example, respondent Norma Uy was the principal beneficiary of an F4 family-preference petition filed by her U.S. citizen sister in February 1981. That petition listed Norma's daughter, Ruth, who was then two years old, as a derivative beneficiary. If Norma had reached the front of the visa line at any time before Ruth's 21st birthday, §1153(d) would have enabled Ruth to accompany Norma to the United States. Unfortunately, it took more than two decades for Norma's priority date to become current, by which point Ruth was 23 and thus too old for derivative beneficiary status under §1153(d) . Norma therefore immigrated alone to the United States, where she filed a new F2B petition
Congress responded to [**25] this problem by enacting §1153(h)(3) , a provision entitled "[r]etention of priority date." It states: "If the age of an alien is determined under [the formula specified in]
for the purpose of §1153(d) . As the plurality concedes, this clause "states a condition that every aged-out beneficiary of a preference petition satisfies"-that is, it makes eligible for relief aged-out children within each of the F1, F2A, F2B, F3, and F4 categories. Ante, at 14.
of . . . [§1153](d) ," the provision governing derivative beneficiaries. And that provision also unambiguously covers all five family-preference categories. See §1153(d) (a minor child is "entitled to the same status" as a parent who is the principal beneficiary of a petition filed under §1153(a) ); §1153(a) (setting forth the five family-preference categories).[**26] In short, §1153(h)(3) 's eligibility clause answers the precise question in this case: Aged-out beneficiaries within all five categories are entitled to relief. "[T]he intent of Congress is clear," so "that is the end of the matter."
In rushing to find a conflict within the statute, the plurality neglects a fundamental tenet of statutory interpretation:
(or even difficult) for the agency to obey both clauses, traditional tools of statutory [**27] construction reveal that §1153(h)'s clauses are entirely compatible.
The plurality's conclusion is wrong because its premises are wrong. For one, §1153(h)(3) is naturally read to confer priority date retention as an independent form of relief to all aged-out children, regardless of whether automatic conversion is separately available. And even if that were wrong, the plurality's supposition that only F2A beneficiaries can receive automatic conversion is incorrect on its own terms. Because either of these interpretations would treat §1153(h)(3) as a coherent whole, the BIA's construction was impermissible. 1
The plurality responds with a series of examples in which the word "and" is used to join two commands, one of which is-as the plurality asserts here-dependent on another. Ante, at 28, and n. 15. But as the plurality recognizes, ante, at 28, that is hardly the only way the word can be used. For example: "If today's baseball game is rained out, your ticket shall automatically be converted to a ticket for next Saturday's game, and you [**28] shall retain your free souvenir from today's game." Or: "If you provide the DMV with proof of your new address, your voter registration shall automatically be converted to the correct polling location, and you shall receive in the mail an updated driver's license."
With the text unavailing, the plurality turns to a policy argument. The plurality worries that if automatic conversion and priority date retention are independent benefits, aged-out beneficiaries will be able to "hold on to a priority date for years . . . while waiting for a relative to file a new petition," [*2222] which might hamper U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) operations.
see also Home Builders[*2223] , 551 U.S., at 666 (" 'It is a "fundamental canon of statutory construction that the words of a statute must be read [**29] in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme" ' ").
All aged-out beneficiaries can have their petitions automatically converted under this definition. Perhaps most sensibly, all five categories of petitions may be converted to an appropriate category, without any further decision or contingency, upon a logical predicate event: when USCIS receives confirmation that an appropriate category exists. To see how this would work, recall the case of Norma Uy, and her daughter, Ruth. Norma was the principal beneficiary of an F4 petition filed by her U.S. citizen sister; Ruth was a derivative beneficiary of the same petition. Because Ruth had aged out of derivative beneficiary status prior to Norma's reaching the front of the visa line, Norma immigrated to the United States without Ruth. Once Norma became an LPR, however, she also became eligible to file a new petition on Ruth's behalf under the F2B category (unmarried adult children of LPRs), §1153(a)(2)(B) . Thus, once Norma provides confirmation of that eligibility to sponsor Ruth (i.e., that she is an LPR, that Ruth is her daughter, and that she has not committed disqualifying criminal conduct, see ante, at 4), Ruth's original F4 petition can automatically be converted to an F2B petition, with no additional decision or contingency.
[*2224] Indeed, this is how USCIS already applies automatic conversion in other contexts. For example, when an LPR has filed an F2A petition on behalf of a spouse or child, and the LPR subsequently becomes a U.S. citizen, a provision entitled "[a]utomatic conversion of preference classification," 8 CFR §204.2(i) , permits the [**30] F2A petition to be automatically converted to an "immediate relative" petition, §204.2(i)(3) . See ante, at 16. Significantly, the predicate event that triggers this conversion is the agency's receipt of proof that the petition's sponsor has become a U.S. citizen-proof, in other words, that there is an appropriate category into which the petition can be converted.
But Congress could not have intended conversion to occur at that point for a glaring reason: The date on which a visa becomes available for an aged-out child's parent occurs before the point at which the child is determined to have aged-out under §1153(d) -the very requirement §1153(h)(3) prescribes for the aged-out child to be eligible for automatic conversion in the first place. As the plurality explains, ante, at 5-6, such age determinations occur when an immigration official reviews the child's derivative visa application, which invariably happens after a visa became available for the child's parent as the principal beneficiary. At best, then, the plurality's interpretation requires USCIS to convert petitions at a time when it does not know which petitions are eligible for conversion; at worst, it requires the automatic conversion of petitions benefiting immigrants who will never even qualify for such relief (i.e., aged-out immigrants who, for any number of reasons, [*2225] never file a visa application and so are never determined by officials to be older than 21).
Faced with this fact, the plurality falls back to the position that automatic conversion must merely be viewed as having occurred "as of th[e] . . . date" when a parent's visa becomes available, although the actual "assess[ment]" of the conversion [**31] will necessarily occur at some future point in time. Ante, at 24, n. 13. That approach, however, introduces precisely the kind of "additional decisions, contingencies, and delays" that the plurality regards as inconsistent with the ordinary meaning of "automatic," ante, at 15. For even under the plurality's view, automatic conversion cannot actually be "assesse[d]"
until and unless the aged-out child decides to apply for a visa and officials assessing the child's application deem her to have aged out (events which may themselves be contingent on the child's parent first filing her own successful visa application, see ante, at 6). The far simpler approach is for conversion to occur automatically upon the most logical moment suggested by the statute: the moment when USCIS confirms that an "appropriate category" exists, §1153(h)(3) . Indeed, the plurality fails to explain why this cannot be the proper predicate; it simply dismisses such an approach as supported "only" by "a single-minded resolve . . . to grant relief to every possible aged-out beneficiary." Ante, at 25, n. 13. But that criticism is revealing: The "single-minded resolve"
The plurality points to nothing in the plain meaning of "conversion" that supports this distinction. It instead argues that a "conversion" cannot entail a change to the identity of a petition's sponsor because that is "the exclusive way immigration law used the term when Congress enacted the CSPA." Ante, at 16. But immigration law has long allowed petitions to be converted [**32] from one category to another in contexts where doing so requires changing the sponsor's identity. In 2006, for example, the Secretary of Homeland Security promulgated a regulatory provision entitled "automatic conversion of preference classification," 8 CFR §204.2(i)(1)(iv) , which allows the automatic conversion of a petition filed by a U.S. citizen on behalf of her spouse to a widower petition if the citizen dies before the petition is approved. That conversion requires changing the sponsor from the citizen to the widower himself. The fact that the agency used the word "conversion" to refer to a process in which the petition's sponsor was changed, just a few years after 8 U.S.C. §1153(h)(3) was enacted, strongly suggests that the term did not have the exclusive meaning that the plurality suggests. Similarly, §1154(a)(1)(D)(i)(III) , a provision enacted two years before §1153(h)(3) , see Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, 114 Stat. 1522 , provides that a petition filed by a battered spouse on behalf of her child "shall be considered" a self-petition filed by the child herself if the child ages out-a conversion that obviously requires changing the identity of the sponsor from the battered spouse to the aged-out child. And §1153(h)(4) confirms that such "self-petitioners"
The concurrence identifies no case in which we have deferred to an agency's decision to use ambiguity in one portion of a statute as a license to ignore another statutory provision that is perfectly clear. To the contrary, "[a] provision that may seem ambiguous in isolation is often clarified by the remainder [**33] of the statutory scheme . . . because only one of the permissible meanings produces a substantive effect that is compatible with the rest of the law." United Sav. Assn. of Tex., 484 U.S., at 371 .
The concurrence justifies its conclusion only by treating the eligibility clause as a nullity. The concurrence is quite candid about its approach, arguing that §1153(h)(3) 's relief clause is its "only operative provision" and that the eligibility clause does not "grant anything to anyone." Ante, at 3. Yet "[i]t is our duty 'to give effect, if possible, to every clause and word of a statute.' " United States v. Menasche, 348 U.S. 528 , 538-539 (1955). And there is an easy way to give meaning to the eligibility clause: The clause identifies who is entitled to the benefits specified in the ensuing relief clause.
Congress made a choice. The plurality's contrary view-that Congress actually delegated the choice to the BIA in a statute that unambiguously encompasses aged-out children in all five preference categories and commands that they "shall retain the[ir] original priority date[s]," §1153(h)(3) -is untenable.
In the end, then, this case should have been resolved under a commonsense approach to statutory interpretation: Using traditional tools of statutory construction, agencies and courts should try to give effect to a statute's clear text before concluding that Congress has legislated in conflicting and unintelligible terms. [**34] Here, there are straightforward interpretations of §1153(h)(3) that allow it to function as a coherent whole. Because the BIA and the Court ignore these interpretations and advance a construction that contravenes the language Congress wrote, I respectfully dissent.
had a qualifying relationship with the initial petitioner-that is, only if he fell within the group that the BIA in Wang thought entitled to relief. See 25 I. & N. Dec., at 34-35. And the other provisions the dissent cites
See Dept. of State, If You Were an LPR and Are Now a U. S. Citizen: Upgrading a Petition, online at http://travel.state.gov/visa/immigrants/##8204;types/types_2991.html#5