In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 19-2175 BENJAMIN N. OMORHIENRHIEN, Petitioner, v. WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. ____________________ Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. No. A200-381-476 ____________________ ARGUED JANUARY 8, 2020 — DECIDED MARCH 13, 2020 ____________________ Before FLAUM, ROVNER, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge. Benjamin Omorhienrhien is a Ni- gerian citizen who received conditional permanent resident status based on his marriage to a United States citizen. The two later divorced, and Omorhienrhien sought to remain in the country by submitting a petition to remove the conditions on his residency. An obstacle loomed—the petition must or- dinarily be jointly filed by the non-citizen and his spouse, but Omorhienrhien’s former spouse was no longer in the picture. 2 No. 19-2175 To sidestep the roadblock, Omorhienrhien requested a discre- tionary waiver of the joint-filing requirement, which is avail- able to non-citizens who entered their failed marriages in good faith. After hearing all the evidence, an immigration judge was not persuaded that Omorhienrhien married his wife in good faith and denied him the waiver. The Board of Immigration Appeals agreed and dismissed the appeal. Omo- rhienrhien now asks us to step in. Because our review is lim- ited to legal errors and we find none, we decline to do so. I A Benjamin Omorhienrhien came to the United States as a visitor from Nigeria in 2008. Not long after arriving, he began a relationship with Linda Harris, a citizen whom he met through friends. The two exchanged vows a few months later. The following year, Harris filed Form I-130 (Petition for Alien Relative), which would allow Omorhienrhien a path to resi- dency based on their marriage. U.S. Citizenship and Immigra- tion Services denied the petition upon discovering that Omo- rhienrhien had been legally married to another woman in Ni- geria when he tied the knot with Harris, though the Nigerian marriage had since ended. Omorhienrhien and Harris remar- ried and then submitted a new petition. That effort succeeded, and Omorhienrhien received conditional permanent resi- dency in January 2011. For an immigrant like Omorhienrhien who relies on his marriage to a United States citizen for permanent residency, the status comes with conditions, the greatest of which is that it lasts for only two years. See 8 U.S.C. § 1186a(a)(1). To re- move the conditions, Omorhienrhien had to do two things— No. 19-2175 3 submit, together with his citizen-spouse, Form I-175 (Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence), and then appear with his spouse for a personal interview. See id. § 1186a(c)(1). If Omorhienrhien did not check both boxes, the Department of Homeland Security would terminate his permanent resident status two years after he received it. See id. § 1186a(c)(2). The problem for Omorhienrhien was that he and Harris had already parted ways by the time he filed the petition to remove the conditions on his residency. Their divorce became final in July 2011, about six ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals