Court Opinion

ID: 9481213
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:11:28.73465+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:09.692884
License: Public Domain

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The Republic of Transkei is an unrecognized pariah state within the Republic of South Africa. To advance its diplomatic and commercial interests in the United States, it formed a non-profit corporation, the Republic of Transkei Washington Bureau, now headed by Chief Jeremiah Moshoeshoe. It applied to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to issue the Chief an L-l visa, which is available for executives or managers whose firms transfer them to the United States. 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(15)(L). Despite the seemingly executive or managerial character of all the duties Chief Moshoeshoe performs as Transkei’s quasi-ambassador,1 the INS has denied the petition, with no explanation intelligible to me. I would reverse and remand.
The INS’s decision here appears almost impossible to square with its preambular explanation of its regulations (set forth in the majority opinion at 176-177) defining “managerial” and “executive” capacity. Two portions of that explanation must be reconciled. On the one hand, the agency excluded certain activities from qualifying as executive or managerial:
In addition, individuals who primarily perform the tasks necessary to produce the product(s) or provide the service(s) of an organization are not employed in an executive or managerial capacity. ... The test is basic, [sic] to ensure that a person not only has requisite authority, but that a majority of his or her duties relate to operational or policy management, not to the supervision of lower level employees, performance of the duties of another type of position, or other involvement in the operational activities of the company, such as doing sales work or operating machines, or supervising those that do. This does not mean that the executive or manager cannot regularly apply his or her technical expertise to a particular problem.
52 Fed.Reg. 5738, 5739/1-2 (1987) (emphasis added).
On its face the emphasized language destroys the statute, limiting its availability to those whose role is purely decorative. The succeeding sentences, however, with their reference to those who operate machines or supervise people who do, indicate that the author was merely concerned to limit L-l availability to the higher ranks. Another passage confirms that construction, identifying a specific class of duties that the INS viewed as executive or managerial:
It was the Service’s intention to include in the duties of a manager or executive activities that are normally done by persons in these positions, such as cus*180tomer and public relations and lobbying and contracting.
Id. at 5739/1 (emphasis added).
As head of the Washington Bureau, the Chief lobbies, conducts trade negotiations, lures investments, studies trade potential, prepares reports on development of trade policy — and supervises others who do so. Letter of January 15, 1988, Administrative Record at 33, 34. He controls the Bureau’s $550,000 budget, has ultimate decisionmak-ing authority with respect to all issues, and has authority to hire and fire members of the Bureau’s understandably small staff (four or five persons). Id.
In finding that his duties were neither managerial nor executive, the INS parroted the exclusionary language quoted above:
Similarly, the petitioner has not established the beneficiary’s duties in the United States will be primarily executive or managerial in nature. Several of the duties enumerated by counsel on appeal are clearly tasks necessary to provide the service of the organization. Among these are: “direct the preparation of and presentation of all cultural, economic, and trade information disseminated by the Washington Bureau,” “supervise the conduct and strategy of meetings between Washington Bureau officials and representatives of foreign governments and international organizations,” and “initiate and maintain contacts with international organizations and foreign governments.”
INS Decision at 2 (emphasis added). But it omitted any reference to the language that classifies as “executive” those activities that a firm head would commonly perform directly with outside parties, such as lobbying and developing valuable contacts. And it evidently assumed a literal reading of the phrase “necessary to ... provide the service^)”, a reading that completely torpedoes the statute.
Thus, although Chief Moshoeshoe’s activities appear to consist entirely of (1) supervising staff who are engaged in professional activities, and (2) performing direct executive functions, the agency denied the visa by invoking the literal reading of its exclusive language and by ignoring its inclusion of direct executive functions.
I can imagine several possible constructions of the INS’s regulatory preamble. The most obvious is that the inclusive language recognizes that real executives spend a good deal of their time not supervising others but actually being the representative of their firm. Accordingly, while a purported executive who spent his time working a lathe or collecting bills would properly fall under the INS’s exclusion of those who “perform the tasks necessary to produce the produces) or provide the service^) of an organization”, an executive who spent his time in “customer and public relations and lobbying and contracting”, or “such” activities, would be eligible. The inclusive language, in other words, would thus shore up the non-literalist reading of the “necessary to ... provide the service^)” phrase, limiting its exclusive effect to the lower echelons. This would comport with the ordinary understanding that specific language controls general. Under this reading, it seems inescapable that Chief Moshoeshoe is an executive.
A second reading is that although the inclusive language says that such activities as lobbying are included among executive duties, it means only that their performance does not count against eligibility. On such a view, one would look at all of a person’s activities other than these and determine whether his or her remaining duties were “primarily” executive or managerial. Counsel for the agency appeared to press this view at oral argument, though the INS’s written decision in the matter contains not a hint of it. See SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 92, 63 S.Ct. 454, 461, 87 L.Ed. 626 (1943). Under this reading it seems equally inescapable that Chief Moshoeshoe qualifies, as removal of his direct executive functions seems to leave only fairly high-level supervisory ones — not the excluded sort of “supervision of lower level employees” such as lathe operators or bill collectors. At least the INS decision does not identify any ac*181tivity of Chief Moshoeshoe that it views as neither “lobbying”, etc., nor as high-level executive supervision. Moreover, the INS itself found that at least some of the Chiefs subordinates were themselves “executive/managerial employees”, INS Decision at 2; it is unclear how one who supervises such workers could fail to be “executive/managerial” himself.
A third possibility is that the INS has simply thought better of its inclusive language on lobbying, etc. It might have come to believe that even though real executives perform those functions, it is free to read Congress’s instructions as permitting it to withhold the L-l visa from all but classic managers of personnel. This view would seem to undo Congress’s use of the word “executive”, but might conceivably be permissible under Chevron U.S.A. v. NRDC, 467 U.S. 837, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984).
A fourth reading, offered by the majority, is that the inclusive treatment of direct executive functions does not “apply to a corporation whose very business is public relations and lobbying.” See Maj. Op. at 178. The first difficulty with this is that it assumes a literal meaning for the “necessary to ... provide the serviee(s)” phrase, thereby confining the statute’s benefits to executive or managerial drones.
Even if we surmount that hurdle, the majority reading is in tension with the general purpose of the statute and regulations to permit transfers within an entire corporate family without regard to the assignment of tasks as between parent and subsidiary.2 Absent that focus on the overall entity, in fact, Chief Moshoeshoe would be completely ineligible, as Transkei’s Washington Bureau is a different legal entity from Transkei itself. But the statute reaches intercorporate transfers as well as intracorporate ones, and the INS extends this embracing attitude to government corporations and even to non-corporate ecclesiastical institutions.3 It seems natural to extend that attitude to the word “organization” in the phrase rejecting executive status for an employee who performs tasks “necessary ... to provide the service(s) of the organization”. If instead one construes it narrowly, the L-l visa will be unavailable to the executives of any small US subsidiary that performs primarily high-level duties for a larger corporate complex, seemingly the opposite of the commonsensical reading of the phrase. On the broad reading, there is no problem for Chief Moshoeshoe, as the business of the Republic of Transkei is plainly far broader than lobbying and trade promotion. In any event, because the INS appears never to have dreamed of the majority’s theory, it offered no interpretation of “organization” (except insofar as a view may be implicit in the outcome here), and certainly no explanation of its view.4
*182In fact the INS has not offered any reading that would harmonize the two strains in its explanation of its L-l visa regulations. Thus it has maximized its freedom of maneuver. It can hop from case to case, offering each applicant as little explanation as it accorded this one, and deciding each case on whatever notion may catch its fancy. This is reasoned deci-sionmaking?
The INS’s call for more facts adds nothing. As Holmes liked to say, “A fact taken in its isolation ... is gossip.” 1 Holmes-Laski Letters 129 (1953). Without some coherent interpretation by the INS of its own prior statements, it is impossible to tell how additional facts might alter the picture; there is no point in an applicant’s shovelling facts at the agency if it declines to reveal by what principle it will assess them.
As the majority regards the agency’s conduct here as quite consistent with the Administrative Procedure Act's ban on arbitrary or capricious actions, 5 U.S.C. § 706, it appears that no judicially enforced law requires the INS to develop a coherent view of the language by which it once explained these regulations. This dissent can only raise the interpretive issue; some conscientious INS officer will perhaps consider it and thereby edge the agency toward the rule of law.

. The controlling statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(15)(L), authorizes a visa for:
(L) an alien who, immediately preceding the time of his application for admission into the United States, has been employed continuously for one year by a firm or corporation or other legal entity or an affiliate or subsidiary thereof and who seeks to enter the United States temporarily in order to continue to render his services to the same employer or a subsidiary or affiliate thereof in a capacity that is managerial, executive, or involves specialized knowledge, and the alien spouse and minor children of any such alien if accompanying him or following to join him.
See also 8 CFR § 214.2(l)(ii)(A) (1990) (definition of intracompany transferee).

. The Service regards the Delaware subsidiary of a Hungarian government corporation as adequately affiliated for L-l purposes, Matter of Barsai, 18 I. & N. Dec. 13, 1981 BIA Lexis 10 (Regional Commissioner), and would evidently find the necessary affiliation even for a Delaware corporation owned directly by the Hungarian government, see id. at 14. More generally, where stock ownership is absent, the agency looks to control relationships. See Matter of Church [of] Scientology, Interim Decision #3052, 1988 BIA Lexis 12 (Commissioner).

.Of course, once we recognize that lobbyists in a primarily lobbying organization (e.g., the Washington Bureau) can qualify for the L-l visa, see Maj. Op. at 178 n. 5, the chief lobbyist in that organization would surely deserve the title, especially if his underlings themselves are “executives" or "managers”, see p. 181 above.