Court Opinion

ID: 9573941
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:00:45.546136+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:43:46.240278
License: Public Domain

JON O. NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the Court’s opinion and judgment, but add these brief additional thoughts. Rotimi’s case is not an unsympathetic one. He entered the country lawfully (although that lawfulness has long since expired), he has been here now for 14 years, he is married to a United States citizen, and the basis for his removal, a conviction for forgery in the second degree, seems rather minor in significance. Perhaps he is a candidate for a private bill.1 Or perhaps the Government, wholly apart from the statutory waiver provision of section 212(h), might simply exercise its discretion to permit Rotimi to remain here along with the millions of others who are not removed despite their lack of a lawful status, some of whom are still here ten or more years after a removal order. See, e.g., Chion Yin Kong v. Holder, 326 Fed.Appx. 621 (2d Cir.2009) (adjudicating denial of petition to reopen filed twelve years after issuance of removal order); Khatun v. Filip, 307 Fed.Appx. 582 (2d Cir.2009) (same, ten years); Bao Li Xu v. Mukasey, 277 Fed.Appx. 66 (2d Cir.2008) (same, twelve years).
Whether or not the political branches can or will permit Rotimi to remain in this country, the judicial branch has no authority to render him eligible for section 212(h) relief by rejecting the reasonable statutory interpretation that the BIA made in this case when it concluded that the intervals in which his two applications for lawful status were pending did not count toward lawful residence.

. See Congressional Research Service, Private Immigration Legislation (Aug. 9, 2005), available at http://www.ilw.com/immigdaily/ news/2005,0819-crs.pdf (last visited June 16, 2009).