Irvine, CA man may lose U.S. citizenship for lying in his N400

You're right, but it doesn't sound to me like that's the case. Does anybody know which crimes he was convicted of?
 
Huracan said:
You're right, but it doesn't sound to me like that's the case. Does anybody know which crimes he was convicted of?
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They must have been serious enough since the article in link states:

"...because the respondent committed some of his crimes when he was a lawful permanent resident (which meant that he was removable at the time he committed those crimes"

Meaning that the crimes he committed while a LPR would have deported him. I wonder why the background checks during the naturalization process didn't pick up on his previous history.
 
Bobsmyth said:
I wonder why the background checks during the naturalization process didn't pick up on his previous history.
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I wondered about that too - if, as the FBI is eager to point out, the delays in name check are due to "thorough and accurate" checks of all applicants, why didn't the convictions get flagged during the fingerprint check or name check?

It may be that prior to 2001 only indices for main files were checked. But fingerprints and IBIS checks should have caught the problem.

AP
 
tabaliya said:
I wondered about that too - if, as the FBI is eager to point out, the delays in name check are due to "thorough and accurate" checks of all applicants, why didn't the convictions get flagged during the fingerprint check or name check?

It may be that prior to 2001 only indices for main files were checked. But fingerprints and IBIS checks should have caught the problem.

AP
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The reason why he didn't get flagged is because someone with a similar sounding name got flagged instead. It's happened before.
 
tabaliya said:
I wondered about that too - if, as the FBI is eager to point out, the delays in name check are due to "thorough and accurate" checks of all applicants, why didn't the convictions get flagged during the fingerprint check or name check?
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The convictions were after he naturalized, but the crimes that led up to those convictions were committed as an LPR. Deportability is based on when the crimes were committed, not when the court convicts the criminal.
 
The way I see it, there is nothing (under the present laws) that prevents the uscis from stripping you off your citizenship and initiating removal proceedings against you at any time if they so wish. You don't even have to have committed a serious crime! All uscis needs is an excuse.

If the uscis is out to get you, even those who think their applications were/are "perfect" would be surprised if not shocked at some of the things that the uscis can come up with. Fine, you can defend your innocence in court and file appeals and all that, but imagine the amount of resources you would have to spend to be successful. That does not include the emotional, mental, and financial distress that this can cause.

I therefore agree that there should be a SOL when it comes to citizenship (I'd say 5 years). After that, if an individual is arrested, charged with an offense, or accused of something, even if it happened before naturalization, the judicial process should take its own course and the individual accorded the same rights and treatment as any other citizen.

Otherwise, naturalized citizenship will gradually become so diluted that it will eventually become meaningless. And I don't buy the argument that naturalized citizens should forever lay low, live humble lives, and make sure their morals are always 'perfect', just because they are naturalized. Whatever happened to the "land of the free".
 
nyc_newbie said:
naturalized citizenship will gradually become so diluted that it will eventually become meaningless. And I don't buy the argument that naturalized citizens should forever lay low, live humble lives, and make sure their morals are always 'perfect', just because they are naturalized. Whatever happened to the "land of the free".
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Just the fact that a naturalized citizen can be denaturalized and deported for just about any reason the USCIS can come up with already puts a big dent in the validity of naturalized citizenship. If such is the case, it's not much more than a glorified green card with a couple of extra perks (voting, visa-free travel to most of the world) thrown in.

Just abut everyone I know (myself included) have gotten into fights in school. Technically, it's an assault, which could range from a Class D misdemeanor or a Class A felony. In the majority of cases, there are no legal consequences for schoolyard fights. What's to stop the USCIS from digging into someone's school records and denaturalizing them for answering "NO" to "Have you ever committed a crime for which you were not arrested?". Where exactly do we draw the line?
 
Weren't you a minor then?

Vorpal said:
Just abut everyone I know (myself included) have gotten into fights in school. Technically, it's an assault, which could range from a Class D misdemeanor or a Class A felony. In the majority of cases, there are no legal consequences for schoolyard fights. What's to stop the USCIS from digging into someone's school records and denaturalizing them for answering "NO" to "Have you ever committed a crime for which you were not arrested?". Where exactly do we draw the line?
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Vorpal said:
Just the fact that a naturalized citizen can be denaturalized and deported for just about any reason the USCIS can come up with already puts a big dent in the validity of naturalized citizenship. If such is the case, it's not much more than a glorified green card with a couple of extra perks (voting, visa-free travel to most of the world) thrown in.
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Exactly. Naturalized US citizenship is just a glorified green card with some travel benefits. It's not full citizenship.

And for those who feel so sure the government won't go after them ... don't forget that they actually tried to denaturalize thousands of people back in the 1990's, many for nothing more than minor discrepancies on their N-400. The only thing that stopped them was the court saying that the denaturalizations had to be done in court and not administratively. The court didn't say that the passage of too much time or the minor nature of the alleged discrepancies would bar them from proceeding.
 
Jackolantern said:
Exactly. Naturalized US citizenship is just a glorified green card with some travel benefits. It's not full citizenship.

And for those who feel so sure the government won't go after them ... don't forget that they actually tried to denaturalize thousands of people back in the 1990's, many for nothing more than minor discrepancies on their N-400. The only thing that stopped them was the court saying that the denaturalizations had to be done in court and not administratively. The court didn't say that the passage of too much time or the minor nature of the alleged discrepancies would bar them from proceeding.
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Does this have anything to do with the incidents that took place in Seattle a few years ago? There were numerous cases where IOs were denying applications for minor offenses (traffic tickets, etc.), citing lack of good moral character. The denials were overturned in court and, I believe, a law was passed that an applicant can't be denaturalized for failing to report traffic tickets and other minor offenses that wouldn't normally result in denial of an application.
 
Vorpal said:
Does this have anything to do with the incidents that took place in Seattle a few years ago? There were numerous cases where IOs were denying applications for minor offenses (traffic tickets, etc.), citing lack of good moral character. The denials were overturned in court and, I believe, a law was passed that an applicant can't be denaturalized for failing to report traffic tickets and other minor offenses that wouldn't normally result in denial of an application.
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The mass denaturalization drive in the late 1990's is a separate thing from that spate of mass denials for minor offenses that happened a few years ago, although it may have been motivated by the increased difficulty of denaturalization that came about from the mass denaturalization being blocked by the court.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950CE4DB113BF937A15756C0A961958260
The Clinton Administration will seek to strip the citizenship of nearly 5,000 immigrants who were wrongly naturalized in an immigration drive last year, Federal officials said today.

Revoking that many citizenships at any given time is without precedent for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and it poses enormous legal and logistical challenges for the Federal Government. Until now, the agency has never dealt with more than about two dozen revocations a year.
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http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19980715&slug=2761343
A federal judge in Seattle has dealt a blow to the U.S. government's controversial campaign to denaturalize hundreds - and possibly thousands - of people who authorities say were wrongly granted citizenship despite histories of criminal convictions or arrests.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein slapped an injunction on the Immigration and Naturalization Service barring the agency "from initiating or continuing" denaturalization cases under a new procedure that speeds the process. The order was issued July 9, but representatives of both sides said they learned of it this week.

INS officials were seeking additional information on the extent to which the ruling would stifle its unprecedented denaturalization effort.

Scholars call it the largest citizenship-stripping push in U.S. history, eclipsing past initiatives targeting criminals, Nazis, communists and others alleged to be disloyal to the United States.
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It was a court ruling (the Kichul Lee case) that stopped those denials for trivial reasons, not an actual change in the law.
 
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nyc_newbie said:
The way I see it, there is nothing (under the present laws) that prevents the uscis from stripping you off your citizenship and initiating removal proceedings against you at any time if they so wish. You don't even have to have committed a serious crime! All uscis needs is an excuse.
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Then you're paranoid. Please enlighten us by finding out how many denaturalization processes DOJ initiates and for what. I'll give you a hint - it's INCREDIBLY difficult to denaturalize someone. DOJ doesn't do it just for the heck of it.

After that, if an individual is arrested, charged with an offense, or accused of something, even if it happened before naturalization, the judicial process should take its own course and the individual accorded the same rights and treatment as any other citizen.
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If one commits a crime after naturalization, the 14th Amendment guarantees equal treatment. If one committed the crime before naturalization and concealed the fact, I don't see how the criminal should benefit from concealing one's crime.

Otherwise, naturalized citizenship will gradually become so diluted that it will eventually become meaningless. And I don't buy the argument that naturalized citizens should forever lay low, live humble lives, and make sure their morals are always 'perfect', just because they are naturalized. Whatever happened to the "land of the free".
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You should be glad that hyperbole isn't a deportable offense. :) Seriously, denaturalization is an exceptionally rare procedure. There are thousands of naturalized citizens who are convicted of crimes every year and nothing different happens to them. You are making a gigantic mountain out of a molehill, all to defend liars and criminals. The efforts in the 1990s were because naturalization was made too easy and sloppy earlier. If you want to make it impossible to denaturalize a citizen, then be prepared to wait 5 or 10 years for all of your background checks to complete when you file your N400.

I want liars and criminals to always be looking over their shoulder, worried that they are about to be caught.
 
Jackolantern said:
It was a court ruling (the Kichul Lee case) that stopped those denials for trivial reasons, not an actual change in the law.
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Thanks for the correction.

As far as mass denaturalizations and denials for trivial reasons go, it's difficult not to think that the USCIS is, in fact, out to deny applications. I'm not too big on conspiracy theories, but I've seen plenty of interview experience posts on this forum where the applicants keep saying that IOs are humans just like us and they are not out to deny applications. Hmmmm....I'm not so sure about that.
 
Jackolantern said:
It was a court ruling (the Kichul Lee case) that stopped those denials for trivial reasons, not an actual change in the law.
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But those same court rulings have set a precedent which would make it much more difficult for the government to denaturalize citizens for trivial reasons in the future.
I would hope that the court system would always protect naturalized citizens from any type of grey areas or detrimental administrative decisions made by the USCIS. In the end, a law is only as strong as the legal precedents behind it.
 
TheRealCanadian said:
I want liars and criminals to always be looking over their shoulder, worried that they are about to be caught.
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You still don't get it. If you are NOT a liar nor a criminal, you're going to have serious trouble proving your case if they bring up something about you 20+ years after naturalization.
 
TheRealCanadian said:
Then you're paranoid. Please enlighten us by finding out how many denaturalization processes DOJ initiates and for what. I'll give you a hint - it's INCREDIBLY difficult to denaturalize someone. DOJ doesn't do it just for the heck of it.



If one commits a crime after naturalization, the 14th Amendment guarantees equal treatment. If one committed the crime before naturalization and concealed the fact, I don't see how the criminal should benefit from concealing one's crime.



You should be glad that hyperbole isn't a deportable offense. :) Seriously, denaturalization is an exceptionally rare procedure. There are thousands of naturalized citizens who are convicted of crimes every year and nothing different happens to them. You are making a gigantic mountain out of a molehill, all to defend liars and criminals. The efforts in the 1990s were because naturalization was made too easy and sloppy earlier. If you want to make it impossible to denaturalize a citizen, then be prepared to wait 5 or 10 years for all of your background checks to complete when you file your N400.

I want liars and criminals to always be looking over their shoulder, worried that they are about to be caught.
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Now see who is using hyperbole ;) I don't think that having a statute of limitation would lead to much lengthier naturalizations. (Deleted) I was going to do some political observations about which political party could try to do something like that. Let me use your words, shake them a little bit and rearrange them. You say that denaturalizations are extremely rare, that INS under pressure from certain political party was trying to denaturalize a bunch of "allegedly" incorrectly naturalized citizens en masse, and were stopped by the courts. However, the point is that the government tried, and they proved they can easily go after naturalized citizens if allowed. Now, if denaturalizations are rare, wouldn't you prefer those liars and criminals to have the opportunity of instead of being fearful and looking over their shoulders all the time to fully integrate and be good parents and spouses and members of society? Even criminals after going through prison are afforded the right to straighten their ways and better themselves. Anyway, as Jackolantern has pointed it many times, it is about protecting the innocent, and I would add also to protect the slightly guilty. Those slightly guilty that were going to get in trouble with INS until the courts intervened.
 
Bobsmyth said:
But those same court rulings have set a precedent which would make it much more difficult for the government to denaturalize citizens for trivial reasons in the future.
I would hope that the court system would always protect naturalized citizens from any type of grey areas or detrimental administrative decisions made by the USCIS. In the end, a law is only as strong as the legal precedents behind it.
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Hi Bobsmyth,

I agree that thanks to those court rulings denaturalization is not that easy nowadays, however one should remain vigilant and worried about erosion of rights. We are living in times that are seeing a lot of civil rights erosion and with a good amount of anti-immigrant sentiment. Now it seems all of the hatred is pointed towards undocumented immigrants, but let me be a prophet for a second and tell everybody that once this score is settled they will start beating against legal residents and naturalized citizens. I can see the comments, naturalized citizens that still speak their mother tongues at home, to their poor children, that might not have all the loyalty to the U.S. and hurtful comments like those. Comments that are very difficult to dispute. I think we should form a common front, a lobby if needed to have our voices heard and to stave off the tide of bigotry :)
 
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