Filed: Jul. 29, 2014
Latest Update: Mar. 02, 2020
Summary: spouse's having obtained conditional permanent resident status.jointly with the citizen spouse.into the marriage with Silva in good faith.the evidence in support of his waiver request.1, Lamim separately filed a motion to stay removal pending, resolution of his petition for review.
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 13-2451
ALEXON NASSARALLA LAMIM,
Petitioner,
v.
ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., ATTORNEY GENERAL,
Respondent.
PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER OF THE
BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS
Before
Thompson, Kayatta and Barron,
Circuit Judges.
Walter J. Gleason, Jr. on brief for petitioner.
Karen L. Melnik, Office of Immigration Litigation, United
States Department of Justice, Stuart F. Delery, Assistant Attorney
General, Civil Division, and Douglas E. Ginsburg, Assistant
Director, on brief for respondent.
July 29, 2014
BARRON, Circuit Judge. Petitioner Alexon Nassaralla
Lamim, a native and citizen of Brazil, seeks review of a decision
of the Board of Immigration Appeals that denied his request to
alter his permanent resident status so that it would no longer be
conditional. Lamim was accorded that status by virtue of his
marriage to a citizen of this country. To succeed in his request,
Lamim was required to show that he entered into his marriage in
good faith. Because substantial evidence supports the Board's
finding that he did not make that showing, we deny Lamim's petition
for review.
I.
Lamim lawfully entered the United States on a tourist
visa in February 2001. He married Tracie Marie Silva, a United
States citizen, on May 24, 2004. The government therefore granted
him conditional permanent resident status. See 8 U.S.C.
§ 1186a(a)(1). That status applies to non-citizens like Lamim who
marry citizens of this country. Because the permanent resident
status is conditional, however, immigration authorities may later
revoke it -- and then institute removal proceedings -- on the
ground that the underlying marriage was a sham. See id.
§ 1186a(b)(1)(A)(I); id. § 1227(a)(1)(D)(I).
To protect against this possibility, a married couple may
take steps to render the non-citizen spouse's status no longer
conditional. In particular, they may jointly petition the
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Secretary of Homeland Security for this change in status during the
ninety-day period before the second anniversary of the non-citizen
spouse's having obtained conditional permanent resident status.
See id. § 1186a(c)(1)(A), (d)(2)(A). If no petition is filed in
that time period, the non-citizen spouse may still succeed in
securing the change in status. To do so, the spouse must seek what
is known as a "hardship waiver." See
id. § 1186a(c)(4). If the
pair have divorced, the request for the waiver need not be filed
jointly with the citizen spouse. Instead, the non-citizen spouse
may file singly. To qualify for the waiver, however, the non-
citizen spouse must show that he was not at fault in failing to
file by the deadline and that "the qualifying marriage was entered
into in good faith by the alien spouse."
Id.
Lamim and Silva did not seek to convert Lamim's status by
the deadline, and, in November 2007, their marriage ended. When
Lamim filed for a hardship waiver in January 2008, therefore, he
did so on his own. See
id. § 1186a(c)(4)(B).
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Service
denied Lamim's waiver request on August 6, 2010. The Department of
Homeland Security served Lamim with a Notice to Appear in removal
proceedings that same day. See id. § 1227(a)(1)(D)(I). Lamim
renewed his waiver request in the immigration court, but the
outcome was the same. The Immigration Judge found that Lamim had
failed to make the showing necessary to justify a hardship waiver.
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Lamim appealed, but the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed. In
doing so, the Board concluded that Lamim had failed to establish
that he entered into the marriage with Silva in good faith. See
id. § 1186a(c)(4)(B). Lamim now seeks review of that decision.
II.
The burden of proof is on Lamim to show that he entered
into the marriage with Silva in good faith. McKenzie-Francisco v.
Holder, 662 F.3d 584, 587 (1st Cir. 2011). He can satisfy that
burden by introducing "evidence relating to the amount of
commitment by both parties to the marital relationship." 8 C.F.R.
§ 1216.5(e)(2).
While Lamim makes some effort to argue that the record
shows that he in fact met his burden, his central challenge to the
denial of his waiver request is that it rests on a legal error.
Lamim roots that error in the oral decision of the Immigration
Judge, which the Board affirmed. Lamim contends that the
Immigration Judge, and thus the Board, erroneously relied on the
fact that, during his marriage to Silva, he had an affair that
resulted in a child with the other woman. According to Lamim,
therefore, the denial of his request rested on an improper moral
judgment regarding his adultery rather than on a fair analysis of
the evidence in support of his waiver request.
But Lamim's characterization of the basis for the denial
of his request is wrong. The Board did affirm the Immigration
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Judge, but it did not adopt its opinion. Accordingly, "[t]he
Board's determination . . . is the final agency decision under
review." Martinez v. Holder, 734 F.3d 105, 111 n.15 (1st Cir.
2013). And while the Board did mention the affair and the
resultant child in reaching its conclusion, it did so only in the
course of scrutinizing Lamim's evidence in light of the Justice
Department's guidance about what may constitute "evidence relating
to the amount of commitment by both parties to the marital
relationship." 8 C.F.R. § 1216.5(e)(2). That guidance instructs
immigration authorities to evaluate "good faith" on the basis of
documentation concerning the couple's cohabitation, the degree to
which the couple's finances were commingled, any children born to
the marriage, or other pertinent evidence.
Id. § 1216.5(e)(2)(i)-
(iv). And that was precisely the evidence the Board looked for in
evaluating Lamim's waiver request.
With regard to documentation relating to financial
commingling, id. § 1216.5(e)(2)(I), the Board found that Lamim did
submit tax returns for 2005 and 2006, but it concluded that those
returns did not help Lamim because they showed that he filed as
"married filing separately." And while the Board determined that
Lamim had shown that he and Silva did have a joint bank account, it
noted that Lamim admitted on cross-examination that the account was
joint in name only: Silva neither drew from nor deposited into the
account. With regard to documentation concerning cohabitation,
id.
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§ 1216.5(e)(2)(ii), the Board noted that the rent receipts Lamim
submitted for the properties he claimed to have shared with Silva
were in his name only. The Board further pointed out that Silva's
name was absent from the deed to the house Lamim purchased in
December 2005. With regard to "birth certificates of children born
to the marriage,"
id. § 1216.5(e)(2)(iii), the Board noted that
although the record revealed no children born to Lamim and Silva,
Lamim did have a child in September 2005 with another woman. The
Board added that Lamim had not listed this child on his waiver
request form, even though it asks applicants to do so. Finally,
the Board found that the three letters Lamim submitted in support
of his application shed little light on the marital relationship.
Contrary to Lamim's characterization, therefore, the
decision to deny his waiver request placed no special emphasis on
the affair or the child it produced. Rather than having focused
unduly on the affair or basing its finding on a moral judgment
about infidelity, as Lamim claims, the Board instead analyzed the
waiver request on the basis of the very considerations it should
have examined.
III.
Having addressed Lamim's objection about the extent of
the Board's reliance upon the affair, we are left with only one
final question: whether the record provides us with a basis to
affirm the Board's finding that Lamim failed to meet his burden of
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showing he entered into his marriage with Silva in good faith? We
have no doubt that we should.
In the context of a waiver request, a Board's judgment
about whether a marriage was entered into in good faith is a
factual one. Jing Lin v. Holder, ___ F.3d ___, ___ (1st Cir. 2014)
[No. 12-2134, slip op. at 5]. Accordingly, we must uphold the
Board's finding on that point so long as it is "'supported by
reasonable, substantial, and probative evidence on the record
considered as a whole.'" Reynoso v. Holder, 711 F.3d 199, 205 (1st
Cir. 2013) (quoting INS v. Elias–Zacarias,
502 U.S. 478, 481
(1992)).
Considered as a whole, the record accords with the
Board's conclusion. The record lacked, in the Board's words, any
documentation "evidencing commingling" of the couple's finances,
contained only "limited" evidence of cohabitation, and "lack[ed]
detail." The Board thus found that "the record lacked the type of
memorabilia that marriages typically produce." Without such
evidence, the Board could not say that Lamim had met his burden of
showing that he entered into his marriage with Silva in "good
faith." Because we cannot say on this record that "a reasonable
factfinder would have to" reach a contrary conclusion, id., we must
deny the petition.1
1
Lamim separately filed a motion to stay removal pending
resolution of his petition for review. Given our resolution, we
deny that motion as moot.
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