Arriving Alien Adjustment of Status

On October 28, 2009, the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) issued a precedent decision in Matter of Yauri, 25 I. & N. Dec. 103 (BIA 2009). Our colleague, Nadine Wettstein, wrote a great article on this case on the website for Immigration Impact, that we thought was important to share with our readers.

This new BIA decision allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport people based upon old exclusion, deportation, or removal orders even when a legitimate application for adjustment of status is pending before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The BIA concluded that because arriving aliens can only adjust status before the USCIS, and because the application would be pending with the USCIS and not the BIA, there is no jurisdiction for the BIA to reopen an old exclusion, deportation, or removal case.

Interesting, in Matter of Yauri, the USCIS had already approved the adjustment of status application before the BIA issued the precedent decision on October 28, 2009. So the BIA could have easily just not addressed this issue altogether. However, because it did and because of what it said, other people risk deportation.

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Ruchi Thaker

Ruchi Thaker is New York City-based immigration attorney with extensive experience and excellent reputation for effective legal representation in simple and difficult immigration cases. I have experience in areas of deportation defense (criminal and non-criminal), federal court litigation, representation on appeals and motions with the immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals, family-based immigration, asylum, naturalization, and consular processing.