Case Name: Naim BUTROS, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE, Respondent
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1993-04-09
Citations: 990 F.2d 1142
Docket Number: No. 91-70372
Parties: Naim BUTROS, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE, Respondent.
Judges: Before: WALLACE, Chief Judge, CANBY, REINHARDT, BEEZER, HALL, BRUNETTI, NOONAN, O’SCANNLAIN, LEAVY, TROTT and FERNANDEZ, Circuit Judges.
Reporter: Federal Reporter 2d Series
Volume: 990
Pages: 1142–1153

Head Matter:
Naim BUTROS, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE, Respondent.
No. 91-70372.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Argued and Submitted Jan. 21, 1993.
Decided April 9, 1993.
Paul R. Hribernick, Black Helterline, Portland, OR, for petitioner.
David M. McConnell, Office of Immigration Litigation, Washington, DC, for respondent.
Lauri Steven Filppu, Deputy Director, Office of Immigration Litigation, Washington, DC, for respondent.
Before: WALLACE, Chief Judge, CANBY, REINHARDT, BEEZER, HALL, BRUNETTI, NOONAN, O’SCANNLAIN, LEAVY, TROTT and FERNANDEZ, Circuit Judges.

Opinion:
NOONAN, Circuit Judge:
Naim Butros petitions for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (Board) dismissing his motion to reopen a denial of waiver of deportation. We grant the petition for review and remand for further proceedings.
BACKGROUND
Naim Butros entered the United States in February 1975. He was six years old. His status at the time of entry was that of a lawful permanent resident, that is, one having the "status of having been lawfully-accorded the privilege of residing permanently in the United States as an immigrant in accordance with the immigration laws, such status not having changed." 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(20) (1988).
Since the date of his entry, Butros has lived continuously in the United States. His mother, father, brothers, and sister also live in the United States, and he presently resides at home with his family and is gainfully employed.
In 1987 he was convicted of a drug offense in Oregon, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) moved to deport him. At the hearing he conceded de-portability and moved for discretionary relief under section 212(c) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(c), which reads as follows:
Aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence who temporarily proceeded abroad voluntarily and not under an order of deportation, and who are returning to a lawful unrelinquished domicile of seven consecutive years, may be admitted in the discretion of the Attorney General....
Under case law discretionary relief may be extended not only to aliens seeking to return to the United States but also to resident aliens. Tapia-Acuna v. INS, 640 F.2d 223, 224 (9th Cir.1981); Francis v. INS, 532 F.2d 268, 272-73 (2d Cir.1976); Matter of Silva, 16 I & N Dec. 26 (BIA 1976).
In an oral decision May 26, 1988, the immigration judge found that Butros had not been rehabilitated and denied discretionary relief. He entered an order "that the respondent be deported from the Unit-, ed States to Syria." An appeal to the Board was filed on the same day.
On November 7, 1990, Butros's appeal was summarily dismissed by the Board pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 3.1(d)(l-a)(i). The Board observed that it had received no written brief or statement of any kind from Butros although he was represented by counsel. The Board concluded that it had not been meaningfully informed of the basis of his appeal. Under the invoked regulation the Board was entitled to dismiss summarily whenever "the party concerned fails to specify the reasons for his appeal on Form I 290A."
Butros got a new lawyer and applied for a stay of deportation with the district director. The application was denied on January 3, 1991.
On January 9,1991, Butros filed with the Board a motion styled "Motion to Reopen and Reconsider." This motion's opening sentence stated that he moved the Board "to reopen his deportation proceeding and to reconsider summary dismissal" of his appeal. He offered new evidence and also claimed ineffective assistance of counsel. He asked for a stay of deportation.
The Board denied the stay on January 23, 1991. Butros then filed a petition of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon. On April 23, 1991, the court reversed the district director and the Board and ordered the INS to continue Butros on his existing bond. The district court observed that it could readily see that Butros's claim was "not frivolous." By refusing to grant the stay, the Board and the district director had acted "to effectively foreclose petitioner's right under 8 C.F.R. § 3.2, 3.8 to move to reopen this case." The district court concluded that the denial of the stay was an abuse of discretion.
On May 29, 1991, the Board gave its decision on Butros's motion to reopen and to reconsider. The Board held that the deportation order against Butros "became administratively final at the time of our November 7, 1990, decision in this case." The Board continued: "At that point the respondent lost his status as a lawful permanent resident of the United States. He is therefore no longer eligible for a section 212(c) waiver." The Board cited Gonzales v. INS, 921 F.2d 236 (9th Cir.1990) as controlling. According to this decision, Butros no longer fitted the statutory description of an immigrant whose status had not changed.
Butros petitioned this court for review. The assigned panel requested an en banc hearing, which the court then voted to grant.
ANALYSIS
"We review de novo the Board's determination of purely legal questions regarding the requirements of the Immigration and Nationality Act." Abedini v. INS, 971 F.2d 188, 190-91 (9th Cir.1992). Interpretation of the language "such status not having changed", found in the definition of lawful permanent residence, 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(20) (1988), is a purely legal question. It was the question decided by the Board. We review the Board's answer de novo.
The Board has issued a regulation on motions to reconsider or to reopen, 8 C.F.R. § 3.2, set out below in a footnote. Most pertinent for our purposes are the title, "Reopening or reconsideration," followed by the provision that the Board on its own motion may "reopen or reconsider any case," and the provision for "reopening or reconsideration at the request of the Commissioner or any affected party." Also relevant is the explicit statement denying an opportunity to reopen "for any form of discretionary relief" if it "appears that the alien's right to apply for such relief was fully explained to him and an opportunity to apply therefor was afforded him at the former hearing unless the relief is sought on the basis of circumstances which have arisen subsequent to the hearing." 8 C.F.R. § 3.2 (1992). An absolute barrier to moving to reopen or reconsider is created only as to "a person who is the subject of deportation proceedings subsequent to his departure from the United States." Id. The Board could, no doubt, alter this regulation to meet the uncertainties the dissent envisages.
The salient aspect of the present regulation is that the right to move to reconsider or to reopen is in nowise limited by reference to the administrative finality of the Board's initial decision. If the Board's original decision were final as to the status of the petitioner for discretionary relief, then of course there would be no such thing as reconsideration or reopening for the petitioner who lost on the first round. But to say, as the Board's regulations do say, that you may have a second round and at the same time to say, as the Board says here, you may not have a second round, is to engage in contradiction.
The genesis of the Board's present self-contradictory position appears to be Matter of Lok, 18 I & N Dec. 101 (BIA 1981). In that case an alien who began to qualify for permanent lawful residence in 1971 was convicted of narcotic offenses in 1973 and ordered deported in 1976. Subsequent petitions travelled twice to the Second Circuit. In its 1981 decision the Board, understandably a little vexed, recast the question it had received on remand from the Second Circuit and decided that the petitioner, once he was found deportable by the Board, could not accumulate time that counted as lawful permanent residence. Id. at 104-05. Once the Board had decided that he was deportable, his status changed and he no longer fit the definition of one "lawfully admitted for permanent residence" inasmuch as that definition specified "such status not having changed." Id.; 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(20) (1988).
The Board noted that to let an alien retain his status as a lawful permanent resident "throughout the judicial proceedings" would "encourage spurious appeals to the courts, made solely for the purpose of accumulating more time toward eligibility for § 212(e) relief." The Board also noted that to hold that an alien under a final order of deportation was still a lawful permanent resident led to results that were "inherently incongruous" such as the alien having the right to accord a designated relative a visa preference so long as the alien remained in this country. Finally, the Board noted that "in those relatively rare instances where the court determines that the Board erred," the reversal of the Board nullified its order and therefore restored the alien's lawful permanent resident status.
Matter of Lok was affirmed by the Second Circuit, Lok v. INS, 681 F.2d 107 (2d Cir.1982), but, as the Second Circuit later noted, "on narrow grounds." Vargas v. INS, 938 F.2d 358, 361 (2d Cir.1991). "[W]e ruled that, for purposes of calculating the seven-year requirement, Lok's status as a permanent resident ended when he failed to appeal the Immigration Judge's finding of deportability." Id. at 361.
In our own Gonzales case, however, we expanded the reasoning of the Board's decision in Lok and held that the Board was right in denying Gonzales's motion to reopen a § 212(c) application for relief because she was statutorily ineligible once the Board had decided her initial appeal against her and upheld the Immigration Judge's order of deportation. Gonzales, 921 F.2d at 238. We did so although the issue of finality did not relate to the accumulation of credit as a resident, since Gonzales had entered the country when she was seven years old and had satisfied the seven-year requirement long before deportation proceedings began. Id. at 239. We emphasized as a policy reason that "if Section 212(c) were available to persons after an order of deportation is made final, then such applications would never end. An alien who was a lawful permanent resident for seven years and is then deported would, if Gonzales's argument is adopted, be eligible for 212(c) waiver indefinitely, even after being deported." Id. at 240.
We now overrule Gonzales. The fallacy of Gonzales is the belief that what is final for certain administrative purposes is final for all purposes. The Board itself in Matter of Lok implicitly conceded that such a comprehensive notion of finality was untenable because it conceded that if a circuit court reversed the Board, the petitioner's status of lawful permanent residence would return. Matter of Lok, 18 I & N Dec. at 107. In other words, the Board recognized that when appellate review exists, what looks like a final status can well turn out not to be a final status.
It is equally evident that the same conclusion must be reached when a right to move for reconsideration or a right to move for reopening with the Board exists. The Board may, in fact, reopen or reconsider. It has done so. See Vargas, 938 F.2d at 362. Since the Board's own practice, as well as its own regulation, establishes that for purposes of another look by the Board the status is not final, there can be no pretense of anything so simple as one all-embracing notion of finality. What is crystal-clear is that as long as the Board may reconsider or reopen the case, the status of the petitioner in that case for purposes of section 212(c) relief has not been finally determined for purposes of action by the Board. See id. at 361. The Board erred in determining that the statutory language on change of status applies to an alien whose case may be appealed, reconsidered, or reopened. The Board's regulations on reconsideration and reopening do not construe the statute, but the existence of these regulations creates the situation on which the statute, which we construe, operates.
As to the concern expressed by Gonzales that there will be no end to applications for discretionary relief, that concern is effectively met by the Board's regulation that no petition for reconsideration or reopening may be made "by or in behalf of a person who is the subject of deportation proceedings subsequent to his departure from the United States." 8 C.F.R. § 3.2 (1992).
Because the case before us concerns only the status of a petitioner before the Board, acting under the Board's own regulations and asking for reconsideration or reopening of his case, we have no quarrel with Matter ofLok as it was affirmed and interpreted by the Second Circuit. We are not deciding when an alien ceases to accumulate credit toward seven years of lawful permanent residence. By the same token we are not deciding the status of an alien subject to a deportation order for purposes of giving visa priority to a relative.
We do not reach the issues presented by Butros for reconsideration and/or reopening. Rather, we remand to the Board for its determination of these questions.
The Petition is GRANTED and the case is REMANDED for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
. The Board may on its own motion reopen or reconsider any case in which it has rendered a decision. Reopening or reconsideration of any case in which a decision has been made by the Board, whether requested by the Commissioner or any other duly authorized officer of the Service, or by the party affected by the decision, shall be only upon written motion to the Board. Motions to reopen in deportation proceedings shall not be granted unless it appears to the Board that evidence sought to be offered is material and was not available and could not have been discovered or presented at the former hearing; nor shall any motion to reopen for the purpose of affording the alien an opportunity to apply for any form of discretionary relief be granted if it appears that the alien's right to apply for such relief was fully explained to him and an opportunity to apply therefor was afforded him at the former hearing unless the relief is sought on the basis of circumstances which have arisen subsequent to the hearing. A motion to reopen or a motion to reconsider shall not be made by or in behalf of a person who is the subject of deportation proceedings subsequent to his departure from the United States. Any departure from the United States of a person who is the subject of deportation proceedings occurring after the making of a motion to reopen or a motion to reconsider shall constitute a withdrawal of such motion. For the purpose of this section, any final decision made by the Commissioner prior to the effective date of the Act with respect to any case within the classes of cases enumerated in § 3.1(b)(1), (2), (3), (4), or (5) shall be regarded as a decision of the Board. 8 C.F.R. § 3.2 (1992).