Opinion ID: 220190
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Counsel's Incompetent Advice on Adjustment of Status

Text: It is unclear whether the BIA even considered whether Avagyan exercised due diligence with respect to her adjustment of status claim. Though the BIA recognized that Avagyan claimed Spence, Martinez, and Gevorg gave her incorrect advice on adjustment of status, its discussion of Avagyan's diligence focused almost exclusively on the lapse of time between when Avagyan should have known about the Spence's deficiencies in preparing her asylum claim for hearing and when she filed a motion to reopen. The BIA abuses its discretion when it denies petitioner's claim with no indication that it considered all of the evidence and claims presented by the petition. See Mohammed, 400 F.3d at 792. Even if we assume that some of the BIA's more general statements about Avagyan's diligence relate to her adjustment of status claim, the BIA's conclusions are unsupported by the record and contrary to law. The BIA's conclusion that Avagyan failed to explain the delay in seeking present counsel is wholly unsupported by the record. As the BIA recognized, Avagyan declared that, after the removal hearing, she retained Gevorg (whom she believed was an attorney), asked him about whether she could become a United States citizen as Vartanyan's relative, and worked with him to file a petition for an immediate relative visa. Gevorg told her that she had to wait until the petition he filed was approved before taking any further action. Avagyan had no reason to doubt Gevorg's advice about the proper procedure for seeking an immediate relative visa and adjustment of status, and no reason to become suspicious that he failed to render competent advice in this respect. See Sun v. Mukasey, 555 F.3d 802, 805-06 (9th Cir.2009) (holding that petitioner, who was told by counsel in 2003 that the courts could afford no relief and she should wait for her VAWA petition to be approved, was entitled to equitable tolling until she retained new counsel in 2006). Specifically, the BIA's denial of her appeal in no way put Avagyan on notice of the fact that she received bad advice about adjustment of status, or that, if she failed to timely reopen her removal proceedings, she would be precluded from applying for adjustment of status. See id. at 805. Indeed, a lay person reading the BIA's denial of Avagyan's appeal would not know that a final order of removal had issued, and would certainly not know that such an order rendered all efforts to seek adjustment of status ineffectual. Cf. Socop-Gonzalez, 272 F.3d at 1182-83 (noting that a letter instructing petitioner to report for deportation on a specific date put him on notice that his attempts to adjust his status after being ordered removed had been unsuccessful). Avagyan asserts that, until she met with current counsel, she was unaware that prior counsel gave her bad advice on adjustment of status. The question is, therefore, whether Avagyan made reasonable efforts to pursue relief until she learned of counsel's ineffectiveness. Ghahremani, 498 F.3d at 996-97. We conclude that she did. Avagyan diligently filed a visa petition, and, on counsel's advice, waited approximately a year for it to be approved. Waiting was reasonable under the circumstances. [9] Given the long delays in our immigration system, a year-long wait for adjudication of a visa application does not evidence a lack of diligence. See Mejia-Hernandez, 633 F.3d at 824-25 (holding that petitioner's seven-year long wait for his wife's NACARA claim to be adjudicated was reasonable under the circumstances and did not show lack of due diligence). Once Avagyan learned from her current counsel that Spence, Martinez, and Gevorg were ineffective with respect to her adjustment of status, she acted diligently to obtain and review her file, and comply with the requirements of Lozada, 19 I. & N. Dec 637. She did not obtain the vital information bearing on the existence of her claim until she reviewed her file with competent counsel, so the limitations period should be tolled until January 17, 2006. Because Avagyan filed her motion to reopen within ninety days of that date, her motion to reopen to apply for adjustment of status was timely. To the extent that the BIA concluded to the contrary, its decision was unsupported by the record, contrary to the law, and an abuse of discretion.