Court Opinion

ID: 9462844
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:51:34.431614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:48.862419
License: Public Domain

STERN, District Judge
(concurring).
I agree with both the reasoning and the result of Judge Weis’ opinion. I write only to observe that, in deciding whether to grant relief under § 241(f), the Board of *780Immigration Appeals ought to consider whether petitioner’s remarriage after receiving a final notice of deportation created the sort of family relationship which Congress intended to protect in enacting the forgiveness provision.
In INS v. Errico, 385 U.S. 214, 220, 87 S.Ct. 473, 17 L.Ed.2d 318 (1966), Mr. Chief Justice Warren analyzed the legislative history of § 7 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1957, the predecessor of the present § 241(f):
The intent of the Act is plainly to grant exceptions to the rigorous provisions of the 1952 Act for the purpose of keeping family units together. Congress felt that, in many circumstances, it was more important to unite families and preserve family ties than it was to enforce strictly the quota limitations or even the many restrictive sections that are designed to keep undesirable or harmful aliens out of the country.
(Footnote omitted; emphasis added) Petitioner’s first notice of the proceedings against him was an “order to show cause, notice of hearing and warrant for arrest of alien” issued by the INS on June 13, 1974. A hearing was held on July 24, 1974 and August 13, 1974, and on August 13, 1974 petitioner was ordered deported. A thirty-day voluntary departure date was set, with extensions of time until the resolution of a pending private bill for petitioner’s relief. The private bill was not passed, and on April 11, 1975 petitioner was notified that arrangements had been made for his departure to Trinidad and Tobago on May 15, 1975. It was not until April 22, 1975, eleven days after receiving this final notice and about three weeks before his scheduled deportation, that petitioner again married an American citizen.
I have substantial doubt whether Congress intended § 241(f) to apply to marriages made, as it were, on the way to the deportation dock. These, it seems to me, are not the sort of “family units” or “family ties” that this humanitarian provision was designed to preserve.
Since we need not reach these issues here, I concur fully in the opinion and judgment of the Court.