Filed 5/2/19 See Concurring and Dissenting Opinion CERTIFIED FOR PARTIAL PUBLICATION* IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT DIVISION TWO THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. E067578 SARA ARCELIA SALCIDO, (Super.Ct.No. INF1501474) Defendant and Appellant. OPINION APPEAL from the Superior Court of Riverside County. John G. Evans, Judge. Affirmed. Susan L. Ferguson, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant. * Pursuant to California Rules of Court, rules 8.1105(b) and 8.1110, this opinion is certified for publication with the exception of parts III and IV. 1 Xavier Becerra, Attorney General, Julie L. Garland, Senior Assistant Attorney General, and Michael Pulos, Britton B. Lacy, and Michael D. Butera, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent. Defendant Sara Salcido was in the business of providing immigration services — typically, obtaining visas for her clients that would allow them to stay in the United States legally. Under the Immigration Consultant Act (Bus. & Prof. Code, §§ 22440- 22449) (Act), with certain exceptions, it is illegal for a person to act as an “immigration consultant” (as defined in the Act) unless he or she has complied with a host of consumer protection requirements, such as passing a background check and filing a bond. Defendant failed to comply with these. As a result, in a bench trial, defendant was convicted on one count of unlawfully engaging in the business of an immigration consultant, a misdemeanor. (Bus. & Prof. Code, §§ 22440, 22441.) The People argued, however, that each time defendant took money from a client in exchange for providing immigration services, she was committing theft by false pretenses, because she was not a legally qualified immigration consultant under state law. The trial court agreed; thus, it also convicted her on six counts of grand theft (Pen. Code, §§ 484, 487, subd. (a)) and two counts of petty theft (Pen. Code, §§ 484, 488). It dismissed two additional counts of grand theft as time-barred. Defendant was placed on probation for five years. 2 In the published portion of this opinion, we will hold that federal law does not preempt the application of the Act to defendant. In the unpublished portion, we will reject defendant’s other contentions. Accordingly, we will affirm. I FACTUAL BACKGROUND A. Count 2: Rigoberto S. In September 2012, Rigoberto S. paid defendant $4,480 to obtain a work permit and some kind of visa. He had seen an ad saying that she provided immigration services. He met with her in her office. However, he never received any documentation from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) or from defendant. He contacted defendant, but she had no explanation, so he sued her in small claims court. Defendant testified that she spent some 14 to 20 hours, across some six months, on Rigoberto S.’s case. Nine months after he first contacted her, she discovered that he had previously been deported. She did not file anything with the USCIS, because if she had, he would have been ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals