PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _______________ No. 16-4199 _______________ GORDON NDOK TIMA, Petitioner v. ATTORNEY GENERAL, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Respondent _______________ On Petition for Review of a Decision of the United States Department of Justice Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA-1: A072-378-036) Immigration Judge: Rosalind K. Malloy _______________ Argued April 30, 2018 Before: JORDAN, BIBAS, and SCIRICA, Circuit Judges (Filed: September 6, 2018) _______________ Matthew J. Archambeault, Esq. [ARGUED] Corpuz & Archambeault 1420 Walnut Street Suite 1188 Philadelphia, PA 19102 Counsel for Petitioner Chad A. Readler, Acting Assistant Attorney General Douglas E. Ginsburg, Assistant Director Karen L. Melnik, Trial Attorney [ARGUED] United States Department of Justice Office of Immigration Litigation Room 2308 P.O. Box 878 Ben Franklin Station Washington, D.C. 20044 Counsel for Respondent _______________ OPINION OF THE COURT _______________ BIBAS, Circuit Judge. In the Immigration and Nationality Act, a waiver-of-re- moval provision is limited to waiving some grounds of removal without waiving all others that flow from the same facts. Here, a nonimmigrant student committed marriage fraud. His fraud made him inadmissible and was a crime involving moral turpi- tude. So he was removable based on his inadmissibility as well as his conviction, and was ordered to be removed. 2 Under the Act, some removal charges are based on grounds of inadmissibility and others are not. The Attorney General may waive a removal charge that is based on inadmissibility for misrepresenting a material fact to gain admission. If he does so, the Act automatically extends that fraud waiver to other re- moval provisions based on “grounds of inadmissibility directly resulting from such fraud or misrepresentation.” 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(H). But a removal charge based on a post-admis- sion crime is not based on a “ground of inadmissibility.” So the fraud waiver does not reach it. We will thus deny the petition for review. I. BACKGROUND Gordon Ndok Tima, a native and citizen of Cameroon, en- tered the United States in 1989 on a nonimmigrant student visa. That visa expired. To stay past his student-eligibility period, he entered into a sham marriage with Sandra Marr. Law enforce- ment got wind of the fraud, and Marr confessed. Tima then pleaded guilty to a felony charge of making false statements, admitting to the sham. But the government did not promptly issue a notice to appear. So Tima moved on with his life. In 1997, he married Florence Fomundam, who is now a natural- ized citizen. They have three children, all of whom are U.S. citizens. The government issued Tima a notice to appear in 2003 and amended it in 2005 and 2010. It charged that he was removable for marriage fraud (8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(G)(ii)), for termina- tion of conditional-permanent-resident status (§ 1227(a)(1)(D)(i)), and for a moral-turpitude conviction (§ 1227(a)(2)(A)(i)). 3 The immigration judge sustained all three charges. Tima applied for a fraud waiver under § 1227(a)(1)(H). The judge ruled that the fraud waiver could extend to the marriage-fraud charge but not to the moral-turpitude or termination-of-condi- ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals