Mr.Al Southner...
False claim to US Citizenship has been address on here many times before, please read below. There is relief for people in this situation.
http://www.nilc.org/immsemplymnt/ircaempverif/irca058.htm
9TH CIRCUIT VACATES NONCITIZEN’S CRIMINAL CONVICTION FOR FALSE CLAIM TO U.S. CITIZENSHIP ON I-9 FORM
Immigrants' Rights Update, Vol. 18, No. 7, November 8, 2004
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently vacated the criminal conviction of a worker who had been convicted of falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen because, in the process of completing an I‑9 employment eligibility verification form, he had checked the box next to the statement, “I attest, under penalty of perjury, that I am . . . [a] citizen or national of the United States.”
Ali Abdulati Karaouni, a Lebanese national who entered the U.S. in 1992 and whose authorization to stay and work here expired in Jan. 1994, had been arrested in Sept. 2002 by an agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, who also seized documents belonging to Karaouni and interrogated him. Subsequently, Karaouni was arraigned on charges relating to an I‑9 form he had filled out in July 1998 when he was hired by St. Agnes Medical Center in Fresno, CA, on which he had attested to being a citizen or national of the U.S. The count that Karaouni was tried for and ultimately convicted of was willfully making a false claim to being a U.S. citizen in violation of 18 USC sec. 911. In June 2003, after a two-day trial, the court sentenced him to three months in prison. Because Karaouni had been incarcerated since his arrest, the court credited him for the time he had served, and he was immediately deported to Lebanon.
Karaouni appealed his criminal conviction to the Ninth Circuit, contending that the evidence that had been presented against him was insufficient to support his conviction because no rational juror could find beyond a reasonable doubt that, by checking the box on the I‑9 form, Karaouni had made a claim to be a U.S. citizen, as opposed to a U.S. national.
In its decision, the Ninth Circuit noted that there are three essential elements of a sec. 911 violation. In Karaouni’s case, the government had the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt (1) that Karaouni had made a false claim of U.S. citizenship, (2) that his misrepresentation was willful (i.e., voluntary and deliberate), and (3) that it was conveyed to someone with good reason to inquire into his citizenship status. The issue on appeal concerned the first element.
It was undisputed that Karaouni was not a U.S. citizen in July 1998, when he filled out the I‑9 form and checked the attestation box. However, Karaouni pointed out that the statement printed on the I‑9 form next to the box he checked is phrased in the disjunctive and that therefore no rational juror could find beyond a reasonable doubt that he was claiming to be a U.S. citizen and not a U.S. national.
The court found the syntactic structure of the phrase to be critical, because the legal definitions of a U.S. national and a U.S. citizen are distinct. The court also found that the plain language of 18 USC sec. 911 provides only that a false claim to U.S. citizenship is a crime. Therefore, the court concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support Karaouni’s conviction. In doing so, it found that the trial court “violated a basic principle of criminal law by allowing the government to prove that an individual committed the charge offense by showing that he committed either that offense or some other act.” The court reversed Karaouni’s conviction, holding that his answer on the I‑9 form cannot constitute an offense under sec. 911 because Karaouni merely attested that he was a U.S. citizen or a U.S. national, and a claim to U.S. nationality, even if false, does not violate sec. 911.
U.S. v. Karaouni, 379 F.3d 1139 (9th Cir. 2004).
