Laith Bijan v. USCIS

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
• Decided: August 20, 2018
• Docket: 17-3545
• Status: Published

Opinion

In the

United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 17‐3545 LAITH WILLIAM MURAD BIJAN, Petitioner‐Appellant, v.

UNITED STATES CITIZENSHIP & IMMIGRATION SERVICES, Respondent‐Appellee. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 15 C 10636 — Charles R. Norgle, Judge. ____________________

ARGUED JULY 5, 2018 — DECIDED AUGUST 20, 2018 ____________________

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and SCUDDER and ST. EVE, Cir‐ cuit Judges. WOOD, Chief Judge. Five years after entering the United States, ostensibly as the unmarried son of a lawful permanent resident, Laith Bijan applied to become a naturalized citizen. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) denied his application, concluding that Bijan actually had been married when he entered the country and had thus mis‐ represented his eligibility for lawful permanent residence and 2 No. 17‐3545

citizenship. Bijan sought judicial review of that decision. Re‐ viewing USCIS’s decision de novo, the district court concluded that Bijan had misrepresented his marital status and lied un‐ der oath during a naturalization interview when he denied giving “false or misleading information” while applying for an immigration benefit. We affirm on the alternate ground that Bijan previously had given the agency false information when he failed to disclose on his visa application that he had two children and later lied about that omission. Claiming that he was the unmarried son of a lawful per‐ manent resident, Bijan (a citizen of Iraq) entered the United States in 2004. His authorization for doing so dated back to 1991, when his mother, already a lawful permanent resident, filed an I‐130 petition (“Petition for Alien Relative”) on his be‐ half. On the petition, she identified Bijan as unmarried. Twelve years later, in 2003, after fleeing Iraq for Jordan with his two children and their mother, Bijan sought to enter the United States based on his mother’s previously approved pe‐ tition. On his visa application, consistent with his mother’s petition, Bijan stated that he was unmarried and had no chil‐ dren. He was granted lawful permanent residence and en‐ tered the United States in January 2004. Bijan and the mother of his children, Nahrain Shaoul, re‐ mained apart for several years. In 2006 Bijan traveled to Jor‐ dan, where Shaoul still lived, and, according to Bijan, the cou‐ ple were married. Upon returning to the United States that same year, Bijan filed I‐130 petitions for his children. USCIS denied these applications because Bijan had made conflicting statements in communications with the agency and had not previously identified his children on his 2003 visa application. (The children were born in 1997 and 1999.) No. 17‐3545 3

In 2009 Bijan applied for naturalization. USCIS inter‐ viewed Bijan and denied his application, concluding that there was evidence he had been married when he entered the U.S. in 2004 under a status for unmarried sons or daughters of lawful permanent residents. The agency also noted that Bijan had omitted from his 2003 visa application the fact that he had children. Bijan requested a hearing and was interviewed again in November 2012, under oath. During that interview, he testi‐ fied that he had never “given false or misleading information to any U.S. government official while applying for any immi‐ gration benefit[.]” USCIS denied his application a second time. The agency determined again that there was evidence suggesting that Bijan had married Shaoul before he became a lawful permanent resident in January 2004, and therefore he had not established that he was eligible for naturalization. And the agency reiterated that Bijan had falsely omitted his children from his 2003 visa application. Bijan then petitioned the district court under 8 U.S.C. § 1421(c) for relief from the denial of his application for natu‐ ralization. He focused primarily on whether he had been mar‐ ried in 2004 when he became a permanent resident. He sub‐ mitted a marriage certificate showing that he did not marry Shaoul until 2006, and a church certificate showing that he had not been “bound to any previous engagement or mar‐ riage” as of October 2003. USCIS responded by submitting a set of marriage records from a church in Baghdad, Iraq. These records were accompanied by the affidavit of the church’s bishop, who explained that the records reflected the marriage of “Laith William Murad” and “Nahrain Boutros Shaoul” on 4 No. 17‐3545

September 21, 1996. Bijan countered that these records con‐ flicted with another certificate, signed by the same bishop, that gave a marriage date of “1990” for “Laith W. Bijan” and “Nahrain P. Shaoul.” The court granted summary judgment for USCIS. It found no tenable dispute of fact about Bijan’s marital status at the time he entered the United States in 2004 as an “unmarried son” of a permanent resident: the court thought it clear that he was already married at that point and that he had not been truthful about this fact during his naturalization interviews. Bijan had lied further during those interviews, the court added, when he denied giving false information to immigra‐ tion officials: he had given false information when, among other things, he had omitted from his 2003 visa application the fact that he had two children. The court thus found that Bijan was ineligible for naturalization for two reasons: first, he had not been lawfully admitted for permanent residence as an “unmarried son” of a lawful permanent resident, see 8 U.S.C. § 1427(a)(1); 8 C.F.R. § 316.2(a)(2); and second, he had lied under oath and thus not shown “good moral charac‐ ter,” see 8 U.S.C. § 1427(a)(3); 8 C.F.R. §§ 316.2(a)(7), 316.10(b)(2)(vi). On appeal Bijan argues that genuine issues of fact exist re‐ garding his marital status when he became a lawful perma‐ nent resident in 2004 and the truthfulness of the information that he gave the government. He is entitled to pursue these arguments because “Congress specifically calls for de novo re‐ view in naturalization cases.” O’Sullivan v. USCIS, 453 F.3d 809, 811–12 (7th Cir. 2006). They are thus not subject to the rules governing typical immigration cases, in which we are No. 17‐3545 5

bound by an immigration judge’s factual and credibility de‐ terminations. Further, although it is Bijan’s burden to estab‐ lish eligibility for naturalization, see Berenyi v. Dist. Dir., INS, 385 U.S. 630, 636–37 (1967), he needs only to raise a fact ques‐ tion to survive summary judgment. See Injeti v. USCIS, 737 F.3d 311, 315 (4th Cir. 2013). We turn first to the question of Bijan’s marital status in 2004, when he became a lawful permanent resident. Bijan was admitted for permanent residence under 8 U.S.C. § 1153(a)(2)(B), the provision for unmarried sons and daugh‐ ters of permanent residents; no visa category exists for married sons or daughters of permanent residents. See id. § 1153(a)(1)–(4). Thus if, as USCIS contends, Bijan got married after his mother’s 1991 petition but before he became a per‐ manent resident in 2004, then his mother’s petition would have been revoked automatically and he would have been in‐ eligible for permanent residence. 8 C.F.R. § 205.1(a)(3)(i)(I). Bijan’s mother did become a citizen in 2000, before Bijan be‐ came a permanent resident, and she could have repetitioned for him at that time under the visa categories for either mar‐ ried or unmarried children of U.S. citizens, 8 U.S.C. § 1153(a)(1), (3). But she did not do so. This means that the only way Bijan could have been “lawfully admitted for per‐ manent residence” is if he was, in fact, unmarried at the time of his 2003 visa application. His eligibility for naturalization in 2009, see 8 U.S.C. § 1427(a)(1); 8 C.F.R. § 316.2(a)(2), de‐ pends on the same thing. We conclude that genuine questions of material fact exist with regard to Bijan’s marital status in 2003–04. It is possible that, as Bijan testified, his children were born out of wedlock 6 No. 17‐3545

and that he and Shaoul did not tie the knot until 2006. Fur‐ thermore, even if we were to ignore the 2006 marriage certifi‐ cate, which the district judge found inadmissible, other evi‐ dence supports Bijan’s contention that he was unmarried as of 2004. The bishop who attested to the accuracy of the 1996 marriage records had previously given conflicting infor‐ mation about Bijan’s marriage date and other details. This constitutes specific impeachment evidence. See Outlaw v. Newkirk, 259 F.3d 833, 838 (7th Cir. 2001). In addition, Bijan explained that they did not marry until 2006 because Shaoul’s parents did not consent to their marriage, and even after they had children he did not tell his own family about Shaoul be‐ cause he feared that the news would upset his ailing father. Bijan is competent to testify to his own experiences, and that testimony may raise an issue of fact. See McKinney v. Office of the Sheriff of Whitley Cnty., 866 F.3d 803, 814 (7th Cir. 2017); Payne v. Pauley, 337 F.3d 767, 771 (7th Cir. 2003). Fi‐ nally, Bijan’s mother and brother corroborated Bijan’s story that he did not tell them about Shaoul or the children until after his father died in 2004. If this case were exclusively about marital status, we would have to remand for further proceedings. But it is not. The district court also concluded that Bijan had lied under oath when he said he had “never given false or misleading information to any U.S. government official while applying for any immigration benefit[.]” The government highlights two examples of false information: allegedly fraudulent bap‐ tismal certificates that Bijan submitted for his children’s visa petitions, and Bijan’s assertion that he had simply lost contact with his children at the time he filled out his own visa appli‐ cation. No. 17‐3545 7

We need not address the baptismal certificates. A more ob‐ vious example of falsification stands out to us—Bijan’s failure to disclose on his 2003 visa application that he had any chil‐ dren, anywhere. Given that glaring omission, Bijan’s testi‐ mony in 2012 that he had never given “false or misleading in‐ formation” while “applying for any immigration benefit” was plainly false. True, the government did not spotlight this omission in its brief, but our review is de novo, and an appellee need not raise all possible alternative grounds for affirming the district court’s decision. Thayer v. Chiczewski, 705 F.3d 237, 247 (7th Cir. 2012). The district court specifically found that Bijan’s omission in his visa application of any reference to his children, followed by his denial of having lied in any immi‐ gration application, demonstrated that Bijan lacked good moral character and thus was ineligible for naturalization. It found unpersuasive Bijan’s effort to explain the omission by saying that he had lost contact with his children when he filled out his own visa application. (Losing contact with one’s children in no way implies their nonexistence.) The Sixth Cir‐ cuit has observed that lying about previous lies, as Bijan has done, “reveal[s] a lack of good moral character,” United States v. Haroon, 874 F.3d 479, 483 (6th Cir. 2017), cert. denied, 138 S. Ct. 1576 (2018). We concur. The undisputed facts show that Bijan was aware of the misrepresentation on his visa application and thus that he in‐ tended to obtain an immigration benefit—naturalization—by denying that he had made it. See Kungys v. United States, 485 U.S. 759, 779–80 (1988). During oral argument, Bijan’s counsel questioned whether Bijan knew he had omitted his children from his visa application in 2003, given his limited English and the fact that someone else had filled out the application 8 No. 17‐3545

on his behalf. But what matters for purposes of Bijan’s natu‐ ralization application is his false testimony with USCIS in 2012. See 8 C.F.R. § 316.10(b)(2)(vi). Even if Bijan was unaware of the omission at the time it was made, he was certainly aware of it by the time USCIS brought it up—first, when the agency denied visas for his children in 2006, and second, when it ini‐ tially denied his naturalization application in April 2012. By the time Bijan testified in November 2012 that he had “never given false or misleading information,” he had to have known his statement was false. Because of this, Bijan cannot meet his burden of establishing eligibility for naturalization. We therefore AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.