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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
Nos. 10–1542 and 10–1543
_________________
ERIC H. HOLDER, Jr., ATTORNEY GENERAL,
PETITIONER
10–1542
v.
CARLOS MARTINEZ GUTIERREZ
ERIC H. HOLDER, Jr., ATTORNEY GENERAL,
PETITIONER
10–1543
v.
DAMIEN ANTONIO SAWYERS
on writs of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the ninth circuit
[May 21, 2012]
Justice Kagan delivered the opinion of the
Court.
An immigration statute, 8 U. S. C.
§1229b(a), authorizes the Attorney General to cancel the
removal of an alien from the United States so long as the alien
satisfies certain criteria. One of those criteria relates to the
length of time an alien has lawfully resided in the United States,
and another to the length of time he has held permanent resident
status here. We consider whether the Board of Immigration Appeals
(BIA or Board) could reasonably conclude that an alien living in
this country as a child must meet those requirements on his own,
without counting a parent’s years of residence or immigration
status. We hold that the BIA’s approach is based on a
permissible construction of the statute.
I
A
The immigration laws have long given the
Attorney General discretion to permit certain otherwise-removable
aliens to remain in the United States. See
Judulang v.
Holder, 565 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at
2–4). The Attorney General formerly exercised this authority
by virtue of §212(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act
(INA), 66Stat. 187, 8 U. S. C. §1182(c) (1994 ed.),
a provision with some lingering relevance here, see
infra,
at 7–9. But in 1996, Congress replaced §212(c) with
§1229b(a) (2006 ed.). That new section, applicable to the
cases before us, provides as follows:
“
(a) Cancellation of removal for
certain permanent residents
“The Attorney General may cancel removal
in the case of an alien who is inadmissible or deportable from the
United States if the alien—
“(1) has been an alien lawfully admitted
for permanent residence for not less than 5 years,
“(2) has resided in the United States
continuously for 7 years after having been admitted in any status,
and
“(3) has not been convicted of any
aggravated felony.”
Ibid.
Section 1229b(a) thus specifies the criteria
that make an alien eligible to obtain relief from the Attorney
General. The first paragraph requires that the alien have held the
status of a lawful permanent resident (LPR) for at least five
years. And the second adds that the alien must have lived in the
United States for at least seven continuous years after a lawful
admission, whether as an LPR or in some other immigration
status.[
1] (The third paragraph
is not at issue in these cases.)
The question we consider here is whether, in
applying this statutory provision, the BIA should impute a
parent’s years of continuous residence or LPR status to his
or her child. That question arises because a child may enter the
country lawfully, or may gain LPR status,
after one of his
parents does. A parent may therefore satisfy the re- quirements of
§§1229b(a)(1) and (2), while his or her child, considered
independently, does not. In these circum- stances, is the child
eligible for cancellation of removal?
The Ninth Circuit, the first court of appeals to
confront this issue, held that such an alien could obtain relief.
See
Cuevas-Gaspar v.
Gonzales,
430 F.3d 1013 (2005). Enrique Cuevas-Gaspar and his parents
came to the United States illegally in 1985, when he was one year
old. Cuevas-Gaspar’s mother was lawfully admitted to the
country in 1990, as an LPR. But Cuevas-Gaspar was lawfully admitted
only in 1997, when he too received LPR status. That meant that when
Cuevas-Gaspar committed a removable offense in 2002, he could not
independently sat- isfy §1229b(a)(2)’s requirement of
seven consecutive years of residence after a lawful entry.[
2] (The parties agreed that he just met
§1229b(a)(1)’s 5-year status requirement.) The Board
deemed Cuevas-Gaspar ineligible for relief on that account, but the
Ninth Circuit found that position unreasonable. According to the
Court of Appeals, the Board should have “imputed” to
Cuevas-Gaspar his mother’s years of continuous residence
during the time he lived with her as an “unemancipated
minor.”
Id., at 1029. That approach, the Ninth Circuit
reasoned, followed from both the INA’s
“priorit[ization]” of familial relations and the
Board’s “consistent willingness” to make
imputations from a parent to a child in many areas of immigration
law.
Id., at 1026.
The Board responded by reiterating its
opposition to imputation under both relevant paragraphs of
§1229b(a). In
In re Escobar, 24
I. & N. Dec. 231 (2007), the Board considered whether
a child could rely on a parent’s period of LPR status to
satisfy §1229b(a)(1)’s 5-year clock. The Board expressly
“disagree[d] with the reasoning” of
Cuevas-Gaspar, rejecting the Ninth Circuit’s
understanding of both the statute and the Board’s prior
policies. 24 I. & N. Dec., at 233–234, and
n. 4. Accordingly, the Board announced that it would
“decline to extend”
Cuevas-Gaspar to any case
involving §1229b(a)(1), and that it would ignore the decision
even as to §1229b(a)(2) outside the Ninth Circuit. 24
I. & N. Dec., at 235. A year later, in
Matter of
Ramirez-Vargas, 24 I. & N. Dec. 599 (2008), the
BIA took the final step: It rejected imputation under
§1229b(a)(2) in a case arising in the Ninth Circuit,
maintaining that the court should abandon
Cuevas-Gaspar and
defer to the Board’s intervening reasoned decision in
Escobar. See
Ramirez-Vargas, 24 I. & N.
Dec., at 600–601 (citing
National Cable &
Telecommunications Assn. v.
Brand X Internet Services,
545 U.S.
967 (2005)).
The BIA’s position on imputation touched
off a split in the courts of appeals. The Third and Fifth Circuits
both deferred to the BIA’s approach as a reasonable
construction of §1229b(a). See
Augustin v.
Attorney
Gen., 520 F.3d 264 (CA3 2008);
Deus v.
Holder,
591 F.3d 807 (CA5 2009). But in
Mercado-Zazueta v.
Holder, 580 F.3d 1102 (2009), the Ninth Circuit doubled down
on its contrary view, declaring the BIA’s position
unreasonable and requiring imputation under both
§§1229b(a)(1) and (a)(2)
. See
id., at 1103
(“[T]he rationale and holding of
Cuevas-Gaspar apply
equally to the five-year permanent residence and the seven-year
continuance residence requirements” of §1229b(a)).
B
Two cases are before us. In 1989, at the age
of five, respondent Carlos Martinez Gutierrez illegally entered the
United States with his family. Martinez Gutierrez’s father
was lawfully admitted to the country two years later as an LPR. But
Martinez Gutierrez himself was neither lawfully admitted nor given
LPR status until 2003. Two years after that, Martinez Gutierrez was
apprehended for smuggling undocumented aliens across the border. He
admitted the offense, and sought cancellation of removal. The
Immigration Judge concluded that Martinez Gutierrez qualified for
relief because of his father’s immigration history, even
though Martinez Gutierrez could not satisfy either
§1229b(a)(1) or §1229b(a)(2) on his own. See App. to Pet.
for Cert. in No. 10–1542, pp. 20a–22a (citing
Cuevas-Gaspar, 430 F. 3d 1013). The BIA reversed, and
after entry of a removal order on remand, reaffirmed its
disposition in an order relying on
Escobar, see App. to Pet.
for Cert. in No. 10–1542, at 5a–6a. The Ninth Circuit
then granted Martinez Gutierrez’s petition for review and
remanded the case to the Board for reconsideration in light of the
court’s contrary decisions. See 411 Fed. Appx. 121
(2011).
Respondent Damien Sawyers was lawfully admitted
as an LPR in October 1995, when he was 15 years old. At that time,
his mother had already resided in the country for six consecutive
years following a lawful entry. After Sawyers’s conviction of
a drug offense in August 2002, the Government initiated removal
proceedings. The Immigration Judge found Sawyers ineligible for
cancellation of removal because he was a few months shy of the
seven years of continuous residence required under
§1229b(a)(2). See App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 10–1543,
p. 13a. (No one doubted that Sawyers had by that time held LPR
status for five years, as required under §1229b(a)(1).) The
Board affirmed, relying on its reasoning in
Escobar. See
In re Sawyers, No. A44 852 478, 2007 WL 4711443 (Dec. 26,
2007). Sawyers petitioned the Ninth Circuit for review, arguing
that the Board should have counted his mother’s years of
residency while he was a minor toward §1229b(a)(2)’s
7-year requirement. As in
Gutierrez, the Court of Appeals
granted the petition and remanded the case to the BIA. See 399 Fed.
Appx. 313 (2010).
We granted the Government’s petitions for
certiorari, 564 U. S. ___ (2011), consolidated the cases, and
now reverse the Ninth Circuit’s judgments.
II
The Board has required each alien seeking
cancellation of removal to satisfy §1229b(a)’s
requirements on his own, without counting a parent’s years of
continuous residence or LPR status. That position prevails if it is
a reasonable construction of the statute, whether or not it is the
only possible interpretation or even the one a court might think
best. See
Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v.
Natural
Resources Defense Council, Inc.,
467 U.S.
837, 843–844, and n. 11 (1984); see also
INS
v.
Aguirre-Aguirre,
526 U.S.
415, 424–425 (1999) (according
Chevron deference
to the Board’s interpretations of the INA). We think the
BIA’s view on imputation meets that standard, and so need not
decide if the statute permits any other construction.
The Board’s approach is consistent with
the statute’s text, as even respondents tacitly concede.
Section 1229b(a) does not mention imputation, much less require it.
The provision calls for “the alien”—not, say,
“the alien or one of his parents”—to meet the
three prerequisites for cancellation of removal. Similarly, several
of §1229b(a)’s other terms have statutory definitions
referring to only a single individual. See,
e.g.,
§1101(a)(13)(A) (“The terms ‘admission’ and
‘admitted’ mean, with respect to
an alien, the
lawful entry of
the alien into the United States”
(emphasis added)); §1101(a)(33) (“The term
‘residence’ means the place of general abode; the place
of general abode of a person means
his principal, actual
dwelling” (emphasis added)). Respondents contend that none of
this language “forecloses” imputation: They argue that
if the Board allowed imputation, “[t]he alien” seeking
cancellation would “still have to satisfy the
provision’s durational requirements”—just
pursuant to a different computational rule. Brief for Respondent
Martinez Gutierrez in No. 10–1542, p. 16 (hereinafter
Martinez Gutierrez Brief); see Brief for Respondent Sawyers in No.
10–1543, pp. 11, 15 (hereinafter Sawyers Brief). And they
claim that the Board’s history of permitting imputation under
similarly “silent” statutes supports this construction.
Martinez Gutierrez Brief 16; see Sawyers Brief 15–16;
infra, at 10–11. But even if so—even if the
Board
could adopt an imputation rule consistent with the
statute’s text—that would not avail respondents. Taken
alone, the language of §1229b(a) at least permits the Board to
go the other way—to say that “the alien” must
meet the statutory conditions independently, without relying on a
parent’s history.
For this reason, respondents focus on
§1229b(a)’s history and context—particularly, the
provision’s relationship to the INA’s former
§212(c) and its associated imputation rule. Section
212(c)—§1229b(a)’s predecessor—generally
allowed the Attorney General to prevent the removal of an alien
with LPR status who had maintained a “lawful unrelinquished
domicile of seven consecutive years” in this country. 8
U. S. C. §1182(c) (1994 ed.). Like §1229b(a),
§212(c) was silent on imputation. Yet the Second, Third, and
Ninth Circuits (the only appellate courts to consider the question)
concluded that, in determining eligibility for relief under
§212(c), the Board should impute a parent’s years of
domicile to his or her child. See
Rosario v.
INS, 962
F.2d 220 (CA2 1992);
Lepe-Guitron v.
INS,
16 F.3d 1021, 1024–1026 (CA9 1994);
Morel v.
INS,
90 F.3d 833, 840–842 (CA3 1996). Those courts reasoned
that at common law, a minor’s domicile was “the same as
that of its parents, since most children are presumed not legally
capable of forming the requisite intent to establish their own
domicile.”
Rosario, 962 F. 2d, at 224; see
Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v.
Holyfield,
490 U.S.
30, 48 (1989) (defining “domicile” as
“physical presence in a place in connection with a certain
state of mind concerning one’s intent to remain
there”). So by the time Congress replaced §212(c) with
§1229b(a), the BIA often imputed a parent’s years of
domicile to a child in determining eligibility for cancellation of
removal. Sawyers argues that against this backdrop, Congress
“would have understood the language it chose [in
§1229b(a)] to provide for imputation.” Sawyers Brief
10.
But we cannot conclude that Congress ratified an
imputation requirement when it passed §1229b(a). As all
parties agree, Congress enacted §§1229b(a)(1) and (a)(2)
to resolve an unrelated question about §212(c)’s
meaning. See
id., at 17; Martinez Gutierrez Brief 28; Brief
for Petitioner 25. Courts had differed on whether an alien’s
“seven consecutive years” of domicile under
§212(c) all had to post-date the alien’s obtaining LPR
status. See
Cuevas-Gaspar, 430 F. 3d, at
1027–1028 (canvassing split). Congress addressed that split
by creating two distinct durational conditions: the 5-year status
requirement of subsection (a)(1), which runs from the time an alien
becomes an LPR, and the 7-year continuous-residency requirement of
subsection (a)(2), which can include years preceding the
acquisition of LPR status. In doing so, Congress elimi- nated the
very term—“domicile”—on which the appeals
courts had founded their imputation decisions. See
supra, at
8. That alteration dooms respondents’ position, because the
doctrine of congressional ratification applies only when Congress
reenacts a statute without relevant change. See
Jama v.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
543
U.S. 335, 349 (2005).[
3] So
the statutory history here provides no basis for holding that the
BIA flouted a congressional command in adopting its no-imputation
policy.
Nor do the INA’s purposes demand
imputation here, as both respondents claim. According to Martinez
Gutierrez, the BIA’s approach contradicts that
statute’s objectives of “providing relief to aliens
with strong ties to the United States” and “promoting
family unity.” Martinez Gutierrez Brief 40, 44; see Sawyers
Brief 37. We agree—indeed, we have stated—that the
goals respondents identify underlie or inform many provisions of
immigration law. See
Fiallo v.
Bell,
430 U.S.
787, 795, n. 6 (1977);
INS v.
Errico,
385 U.S.
214, 220 (1966). But they are not the INA’s only goals,
and Congress did not pursue them to the
nth degree. To take
one example, §1229b(a)’s third paragraph makes aliens
convicted of aggravated felonies ineligible for cancellation of
removal, regardless of the strength of their family ties. See
§1229b(a)(3). And more generally—as these very cases
show—not every alien who obtains LPR status can immediately
get the same for her spouse or minor children. See Brief for
Petitioner 31–32, and n. 9 (providing program-specific
examples). We cannot read a silent statute as requiring (not merely
allowing) imputation just because that rule would be
family-friendly.
Respondents’ stronger arguments take a
different tack—that we should refuse to defer to the
Board’s decision even assuming Congress placed the question
of imputation in its hands. Respondents offer two main reasons.
First, they contend that the Board’s approach to
§1229b(a) cannot be squared with its acceptance of imputation
under other, similar statutory provisions. This
“wil[d]” and “ ‘[u]n- explained
inconsistency,’ ” Sawyers asserts, is the very
“paradigm of arbitrary agency action.” Sawyers Brief
13, 41 (emphasis deleted); see Martinez Gutierrez Brief
52–54. Second, they argue that the Board did not appreciate
its own discretion over whether to allow imputation. The Board,
they say, thought Congress had forbidden imputation, and so did not
bring its “ ‘experience and expertise to
bear’ ” on the issue.
Id., at 31 (quoting
PDK Labs. Inc. v.
DEA,
362 F.3d 786, 797 (CADC 2004)); see Sawyers Brief 38–39.
These arguments are not insubstantial, but in the end neither
persuades us to deny the Board the usual deference we accord to
agency interpretations.
Start with the claim of inconsistency. The BIA
has indeed imputed parental attributes to children under other INA
provisions that do not mention the matter. Section 1182(k), for
example, enables the Attorney General to let certain inadmissible
aliens into the country if he finds “that inadmissibility was
not known to, and could not have been ascertained by the exercise
of reasonable diligence by, the immigrant before the time of
departure.” Like §1229b(a), that provision refers to a
single person (“the immigrant”) and says nothing about
imputation. But the BIA has consistently imputed a parent’s
knowledge of inadmissibility (or lack thereof) to a child. See,
e.g., Senica v.
INS,
16 F.3d 1013, 1015 (CA9 1994) (“Therefore, the BIA
reasoned, the children were not entitled to relief under
[§1182(k)] because [their mother’s] knowledge was
imputed to them”);
In re Mushtaq, No. A43 968
082, 2007 WL 4707539 (BIA, Dec. 10, 2007) (
per curiam);
In re Ahmed, No. A41 982 631, 2006 WL 448156 (BIA, Jan.
17, 2006) (
per curiam).
Similarly, the Board imputes a parent’s
abandonment (or non-abandonment) of LPR status to her child when
determining whether that child can reenter the country as a
“returning resident immigran[t]” under §1181(b).
See
Matter of Zamora, 17 I. & N. Dec. 395, 396
(1980) (hold- ing that a “voluntary and intended abandonment
by the mother is imputed” to an unemancipated minor child for
purposes of applying §1181(b));
Matter of Huang, 19 I.
& N. Dec. 749, 755–756 (1988) (concluding that a
mother and her children abandoned their LPR status based solely on
the mother’s intent);
In re Ali, No. A44 143 723,
2006 WL 3088820 (BIA, Sept. 11, 2006) (holding that a child could
not have abandoned his LPR status if his mother had not abandoned
hers). And once again, that is so even though neither §1181(b)
nor any other statutory provision says that the BIA should look to
the parent in assessing the child’s eligibility for
reentry.
But
Escobar provided a reasoned
explanation for these divergent results: The Board imputes matters
involving an alien’s state of mind, while declining to impute
objective conditions or characteristics. See 24
I. & N. Dec., at 233–234, and n. 4. On one
side of the line, knowledge of inadmissibility is all and only
about a mental state. See,
e.g., Senica, 16 F. 3d, at
1015;
In re Ahmed, 2006 WL 448156. Likewise,
abandonment of status turns on an alien’s “intention of
. . . returning to the United States” to live as a permanent
resident,
Zamora, 17 I. & N. Dec., at 396; the
Board thus explained that imputing abandonment is “consistent
with the . . . longstanding policy that a child cannot form the
intent necessary to establish his or her own domicile,”
Escobar, 24 I. & N. Dec., at 234, n. 4.
And as that analogy recalls, the 7-year domicile requirement of the
former §212(c) also involved intent and so lent itself to
imputation. See
Rosario, 962 F. 2d, at 224;
supra, at 8. But the 5- and 7-year clocks of §1229b(a)
fall on the other side of the line, because they hinge not on any
state of mind but on the objective facts of immigration status and
place of residence. See
Escobar, 24 I. & N.
Dec., at 233 (“[W]e find that residence is different from
domicile because it ‘contains no element of subjective
intent’ ” (quoting
Cuevas-Gaspar, 430
F. 3d, at 1031 (Fernandez, J., dissenting))). The BIA’s
varied rulings on imputation thus largely follow from one
straightforward distinction.[
4]
Similarly,
Escobar belies
respondents’ claim that the BIA adopted its no-imputation
rule only because it thought Congress had left it no other choice.
The Board, to be sure, did not highlight the statute’s gaps
or ambiguity; rather, it read §1229b(a)’s text to
support its conclusion that each alien must personally meet that
section’s durational requirements. See 24
I. & N. Dec., at 235. But the Board also explained
that “there [was] no precedent” in its decisions for
imputing status or residence, and distinguished those statutory
terms, on the ground just explained, from domicile or abandonment
of LPR status.
Id., at 234; see
id., at
233–234, and n. 4. And the Board argued that allowing
imputation under §1229b(a) would create anomalies in
administration of the statutory scheme by permitting even those who
had not obtained LPR status—or could not do so because of a
criminal history—to become eligible for cancellation of
removal. See
id., at 234–235, and n. 5. The Board
therefore saw neither a “logical” nor a
“legal” basis for adopting a policy of imputation.
Id., at 233. We see nothing in this decision to suggest that
the Board thought its hands tied, or that it might have reached a
different result if assured it could do so. To the contrary, the
decision expressed the BIA’s view, based on its experience
implementing the INA, that statutory text, administrative practice,
and regulatory policy all pointed in one direction: toward
disallowing imputation. In making that case, the decision reads
like a multitude of agency interpretations—not the best
example, but far from the worst—to which we and other courts
have routinely deferred. We see no reason not to do so here.
Because the Board’s rejection of
imputation under §1229b(a) is “based on a permissible
construction of the statute,”
Chevron, 467 U. S.,
at 843, we reverse the Ninth Circuit’s judgments and remand
the cases for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
