This week brought two moral turpitude decisions from two courts of appeals, Ortega-Lopez v. Lynch in the Ninth Circuit  and Arias v.  Lynch in the 7th Circuit. Moral turpitude is important in immigration law. Getting convicted of two crimes involving moral turpitude can lead to deportation. INA § 237(a)(2)(A)(ii). Committing one and being punished with a jail sentence of more than 180 days (even if you don’t actually serve it!) leads to inadmissibility. Admitting to committing one without even being…

Today I write again on a technical matter, discussing the case, Matter of Silva-Trevino, again. As you may recall from writings  here and here  and here, in this case, the then-attorney general, Michael Mukasey, issued a decision deviating from the prevailing law regarding what an immigration judge may consider in determining whether someone committed a crime of moral turpitude. This is important because depending on the number of such crimes, when they were committed, and the severity of the sentence,…

When I was a kid, I remember watching an interview with the then-current crop of Nobel Prize winners on television. The concept was that these men and women were the world’s brightest people and their insights on things outside of their professional expertises would be valuable. The Physics prize winner kept saying all kinds of non-mainstream things that made him seem odd compared the others whose views were within the norm, at least to my then-child’s mind.  One thing he…

It is not an understatement to term “stunning” a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision on July 8, 2011, in Hernandez-Cruz v. Holder. The court held that Cal. Penal Code § 459, burglary, is not a theft offense and thus not a crime of moral turpitude as a theft offense or a basis to conclude that someone is an aggravated felon for commiting a theft offense if the person did not break the law when entering the building or structure that led to the …