HORACIO RAMOS MIRANDA, PETITIONER,
v.
IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE, RESPONDENT

9th Cir. | 1980-10-30
No. 79-7370
Before PREGERSON and NELSON, Circuit Judges, and WILKINS, District Judge.
638 F.2d 83 United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (1980) Caution
Cited by 12 cases

AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.


Holding

The court held that the INS's unexplained eighteen-month delay in processing a visa petition constituted affirmative misconduct, estopping the INS from denying permanent resident status.


Facts & Procedural History

Petitioner sought permanent resident status based on a visa petition filed by his wife. The INS delayed processing the petition for eighteen months be…

The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.


Opinion of the Court
PHILIP C. WILKINS, District Judge.

PHILIP C. WILKINS, District Judge.

Miranda seeks judicial review of a Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) decision. Said decision dismissed the appeal of the order of deportation and of the denial of petitioner’s application for adjustment of status or for voluntary departure. Petitioner argues that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) should be es-topped from denying him the status of permanent resident pursuant to the provisions of Section 245 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1255, due to its delay in processing an immediate relative visa petition filed by his then wife on his behalf. The Board found no evidence of any “affirmative misconduct” by a Service officer regarding the denial of the visa petition. We reverse.

The unexplained failure of the INS to act on the visa petition for an eighteen-month period prior to the petitioner’s withdrawal following the breakup of Miranda’s marriage was affirmative misconduct by the INS. See Villena v. INS, 622 F. 2d 1352 (9th Cir. 1980) (en banc); Sun II Yoo v. INS, 534 F. 2d 1325 (9th Cir. 1976).

The matter will be remanded for consideration of Miranda’s application for permanent residence under the circumstances as they existed at the time the INS should originally have acted. The INS must, however, in considering the application, treat the visa petition as if it were approved.

Reversed and remanded.


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Cited By

Previewing 3 of 6 citing cases — full citator treatment, depth of discussion, and citing context are member features.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

Authorities Cited

Full citator, related cases, and AI research tools

Open in FLexlaw