PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT ____________ No. 19-1427 ____________ WASEEM AHSAN KHAN, Petitioner v. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Respondent ____________ On Petition for Review of a Decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals [Agency No. 047-698-921] Immigration Judge: Daniel A. Morris ____________ Argued July 8, 2020 Before: KRAUSE, MATEY, and RENDELL Circuit Judges (Opinion Filed: November 3, 2020) Eric M. Mark [ARGUED] 201 Washington Street Newark, NJ 07102 Attorney for Petitioner Surell Brady United States Department of Justice Office of Immigration Litigation Room 5044 P.O. Box 878 Washington, DC 20044 Sunah Lee [ARGUED] Andrew N. O’Malley United States Department of Justice Office of Immigration Litigation P.O. Box 878 Washington, DC 20044 Attorneys for Respondent David A. Isaacson Cyrus D. Mehta & Partners One Battery Park Plaza 9th Floor New York, NY 10004 Attorney for Amici Curiae American Immigration Lawyers Association, National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, and Immigrant Defense Project ____________ 2 OPINION OF THE COURT ____________ KRAUSE, Circuit Judge. The decision of some states to decriminalize the possession of personal-use quantities of marijuana has had collateral consequences well beyond the vacatur of thousands of convictions. We deal today with a consequence for noncitizens whose commission of this type of offense, under applicable immigration laws, would normally “stop time” on the accrual of the years of continuous residence required to be eligible for cancellation of removal. See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1229b(a)(2), 1229b(d)(1). The question is whether that “stop-time rule” still applies if, post-conviction, the offense has been decriminalized and the conviction vacated as a result. Because we hold that a vacatur in this context does not affect the operation of the stop-time rule, we agree with the Board of Immigration Appeals that Petitioner in this case did not satisfy the continuous-residence requirement for eligibility for cancellation of removal, and we will deny his petition for review. I. Background Petitioner Waseem Ahsan Khan was admitted to the United States as a legal permanent resident (LPR) in 2000 and pleaded guilty to possession of less than one-half ounce of marijuana, in violation of Conn. Gen. Stat. § 21a-279(c), in 2006. He was not subject to removal for that conviction because it was “a single offense involving possession for one’s own use of 30 grams or less of marijuana,” 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i), but that was not his only tangle with the Connecticut criminal code. 3 In 2010, Khan was convicted for two counts of larceny in the third degree under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53a-124, and those offenses did subject him to removal as “convict[ions] of two or more crimes involving moral turpitude, not arising out of a single scheme of criminal misconduct.” 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(ii). He was eventually served with a Notice to Appear in 2017, leading to the order of removal that is the subject of this petition. At each step along the way, Khan sought cancellation of removal, a discretionary form of relief that permits an otherwise ...
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