Opinion ID: 795965
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Matter of Jean standard

Text: 14 An alien who commits a crime of moral turpitude generally may not be admitted to the United States. 1 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(I). But Congress has given the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security permissive discretion to waive a refugee's inadmissibility for humanitarian purposes, to assure family unity, or when it is otherwise in the public interest. 8 U.S.C. § 1159(c). In Matter of Jean, 23 I. & N. Dec. 373, 2002 WL 968631 (2002), the Attorney General declined to waive inadmissibility for a Haitian refugee who pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter after beating and shaking a nineteen-month old child to death. Matter of Jean, 23 I. & N. Dec. at 374-75. The Attorney General articulated a heightened standard for waiving the inadmissibility of refugees who have been convicted of violent or dangerous crimes. Under the Matter of Jean standard, aliens convicted of violent or dangerous criminal acts will not be allowed to adjust their status under § 1159(c) except in extraordinary circumstances, such as those involving national security or foreign policy considerations, or cases in which an alien clearly demonstrates that the denial of status adjustment would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship. Matter of Jean, 23 I. & N. Dec. at 383. 15 Ali argues that the heightened standard established in Matter of Jean for waiving the inadmissibility of refugees who commit violent crimes is inconsistent with and unauthorized by § 1159(c). He contends the BIA should have evaluated his request for a waiver of inadmissibility by looking at the totality of the circumstances in his case, including his family's experiences in Somalia, his posttraumatic stress disorder, his victim's previous attack against him, and his ties to family in the United States. He asserts that § 1159(c) spells out a three-part test for inadmissibility waivers that the BIA was required to follow. 16 We think Ali reads too much into the statute and overstates the scope of the Matter of Jean standard. First, § 1159(c) does not contain a three-part test, nor does it direct the Attorney General to conduct a totality of the circumstances analysis when deciding whether to grant an inadmissibility waiver. The statute says the Attorney General or Secretary of Homeland Security  may waive a refugee's inadmissibility for humanitarian purposes, to assure family unity, or when it is otherwise in the public interest. 8 U.S.C. § 1159(c) (emphasis added). Nowhere does the statute require the Attorney General to waive any refugee's inadmissibility; the language is completely permissive, giving the Attorney General the discretion to decide on a case-by-case basis whether to grant relief for any of the three listed reasons. 17 After we heard oral argument in this case, two other federal courts of appeals considered similar challenges to the Matter of Jean standard and rejected them in published opinions. In the first of these decisions, Rivas-Gomez v. Gonzales, 441 F.3d 1072 (9th Cir.2006), the Ninth Circuit observed that the Attorney General possesses broad discretion to grant or deny waivers and may establish general standards governing the exercise of such discretion `as long as these standards are rationally related to the statutory scheme.' Id. at 1078 (quoting Ayala-Chavez v. INS, 944 F.2d 638, 641 (9th Cir.1991)). The court approved Matter of Jean's heightened waiver standard for refugees who commit violent crimes because it found the standard was rationally related to the national immigration policy of not admitting aliens who would be a danger to society. Rivas-Gomez, 441 F.3d at 1078. 18 The Fifth Circuit reached the same conclusion in Jean v. Gonzales, 452 F.3d at 396-98. This was petitioner Jean's appeal from the Attorney General's decision in Matter of Jean. Jean argued, as Ali does here, that the Attorney General's heightened standard for refugees who commit violent crimes was not authorized by 8 U.S.C. § 1159(c). The Fifth Circuit disagreed because the Attorney General did not add a class of aliens to those who are statutorily inadmissible for waiver, nor did he instruct the BIA to ignore statutory considerations of family unity, humanitarian concerns, and public interest. Jean, 452 F.3d at 397 (citing Togbah v. Ashcroft, 104 Fed.Appx. 788, 794 (3d Cir.2004) (unpublished)). Because Matter of Jean's heightened waiver standard for violent criminal refugees was rational and connected to the statutory scheme, the Fifth Circuit held the Attorney General permissibly exercised the broad discretion conferred upon him by § 1159(c). Id. 19 We agree with our sister circuits that the Attorney General did not exceed his statutory authority when he articulated the heightened waiver standard in Matter of Jean. The Matter of Jean standard is not like the regulation successfully challenged in Succar v. Ashcroft, 394 F.3d 8 (1st Cir.2005), a case on which Ali relies. Succar held that where 8 U.S.C. § 1255(a) lists categories of aliens who may apply to the Attorney General for a discretionary adjustment of immigration status, the Attorney General—in the exercise of that discretion—may not promulgate a regulation that effectively amends the statute by completely barring subcategories of aliens from applying for adjustment. Succar, 394 F.3d at 21. The court found such a regulation would contradict the statute because § 1255(a) did not give the Attorney General the discretion to decide who could apply for adjustment, it only gave him the discretion to decide who should be granted adjustment. Id. at 28. 20 But in Matter of Jean the Attorney General did not categorically exclude violent or dangerous criminal refugees from applying for an inadmissibility waiver, nor from being granted such a waiver. Matter of Jean simply says the Attorney General will, in the exercise of his statutorily conferred discretion, require a more compelling showing of hardship from refugees who make themselves inadmissible by committing violent crimes. Jean, 23 I. & N. Dec. at 383. Succar itself spells out this distinction: Congress's eligibility determinations do not limit the considerations that may guide the Attorney General in exercising his discretion to determine who, among those eligible, will be accorded grace. Succar, 394 F.3d at 29 n. 28 (quotation marks and citations omitted). See also Jean, 452 F.3d at 397 ([T]he Attorney General did not add a class of aliens to those who are statutorily inadmissible for waiver. . . . He left open the possibility that even the most violent and dangerous immigrants could be granted relief in an appropriate case.). The Attorney General acted within the discretion conferred by § 1159(c) when he established the heightened waiver standard for violent or dangerous criminal refugees in Matter of Jean. 21