It has finally happened. The Ninth Circuit ruled in the case of Almanza-Arenas v. Holder. The case at the Ninth Circuit was on review from the Board of Immigration Appeals. It stood for the proposition that when a record of conviction is ambiguous as to whether a crime makes one ineligible for relief, then the person seeking relief fails to meet the burden of eligibility, which is on the applicant, and therefore cannot be granted the relief. The issue arises…

I have written previously about how the Board of Immigration Appeals, the courts of appeal, and the Supreme Court have been struggling over how to determine whether an individual’s crime is a crime or moral turpitude or an aggravated felony. I wrote  three years ago about the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ en banc adventure in creating a missing element rule in trying to determine if a particular crime was a crime of moral turpitude or an aggravated felony in…

In immigration law, there are certain crimes an alien can be convicted of that can lead to removal. The immigration statutes, found in the Immigration and Nationality Act, do not list the state crimes and usually not the federal crimes that lead to removal. Rather, the Immigration and Nationality Act names certain types of crimes – such as a “crime of moral turpitude,” or a “theft offense,” or a “crime of violence,” or “sexual abuse of a minor,” or “domestic…

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…