Opinion ID: 793141
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Government's Objection to Our Review

Text: 13 The government, citing 8 U.S.C. § 1105a(c) (1994) (repealed, effective 1997), asserts petitioner did not properly raise his change-in-law argument before the IJ and BIA, and therefore did not exhaust his administrative remedies and preserve the issue for our review. To the contrary, we note that Wu raised his change-in-law argument before both the BIA and IJ. In his brief in support of his appeal to the BIA of the denial of his motion to reopen, Wu expressly stated that after the IJ's decision ordering him deported in absentia, the law had been amended to allow an alien whose spouse was forcibly sterilized or compelled to have an abortion to establish persecution on that basis and therefore qualify for asylum. Petitioner repeated this argument in his motion to reopen and reconsider the BIA's initial dismissal of his appeal for untimeliness, and he repeated it again in his September 23, 1999 motion to reconsider. We therefore conclude that Wu exhausted his administrative remedies.