In a strange unified decision, the Supreme Court denied illegal aliens with temporary protected status a green card, which was essentially an amnesty plan.
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Monday that noncitizens who have been granted temporary humanitarian relief from deportation cannot use the process known as “adjustment of status” to obtain lawful permanent residency in the United States without leaving the country. The court ruled in Sanchez v. Mayorkas that adjustment of status is reserved for those who were inspected at the border and admitted to the United States by an immigration officer, thus disqualifying the majority of those granted Temporary Protected Status. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the opinion for the court.
Jose Sanchez and Sonia Gonzalez came to the United States from El Salvador without authorization in the 1990s. The U.S. government granted them temporary protection in 2001 when the United States designated El Salvador as part of the TPS program in the wake of devastating earthquakes in that country. Under the TPS program, foreign nationals living in the United States are permitted to remain here due to unsafe conditions in their home countries.
Sanchez and Gonzalez have maintained TPS status for 20 years, during which Sanchez’s employer filed an immigration-visa petition for Sanchez as a skilled worker. Immigration officials approved this petition, authorizing Sanchez to be admitted to the United States as a lawful permanent resident. They simultaneously approved Gonzalez, his wife, for admission as a lawful permanent resident.
The government, however, denied the couple’s subsequent application to use the adjustment-of-status process in order to transition from temporary to permanent residency without leaving the United States. Immigration officials ruled that the couple’s original unauthorized entry disqualified them from adjustment of status. The government relied on the text of Immigration and Nationality Act Section 1255(a), which restricts the in-country adjustment-of-status process to noncitizens who were “inspected and admitted or paroled into the United States.”
Sanchez and Gonzalez argued that the TPS statute includes a provision making TPS holders eligible for adjustment of status even if they had not been inspected and admitted or paroled when they originally entered the United States. Specifically, Section 1254a(f)(4) states that “for purposes of adjustment of status under Section 1255 …, the [TPS holder] shall be considered as being in, and maintaining, lawful status as a nonimmigrant.” They asserted that the phrase “considered as being in … lawful status” makes the grant of TPS the equivalent of being inspected and admitted as a lawful nonimmigrant. Sanchez and Gonzalez argued the detailed vetting that accompanies applicants for TPS is equivalent to the vetting that accompanies inspection and admission at a port of entry.
The court sided with the government and rejected the interpretation advanced by Sanchez and Gonzalez. “Section 1255 generally requires a lawful admission before a person can obtain LPR status,” Kagan wrote. “Sanchez was not lawfully admitted, and his TPS does not alter that fact. He therefore cannot become a permanent resident of this country.”
The Supreme Court has unanimously ruled against allowing illegal aliens that have temporary protected status to apply for permanent residency.
The court determined that federal immigration law prohibits TPS recipients from seeking green cards if they entered the country illegally.
Immigrants are required to have been “inspected and admitted or paroled” in the U.S. before they would be eligible to apply for permanent residency, which prohibits illegal aliens.
There are currently 400,000 people from 12 countries with TPS status in the US.
“The TPS program gives foreign nationals nonimmigrant status, but it does not admit them. So the conferral of TPS does not make an unlawful entrant…eligible” for a green card, Justice Elena Kagan wrote.
The Associated Press reports that Kagan noted the House of Representatives has already has passed legislation that would make it possible for TPS recipients to become permanent residents, but the bill faces uncertain prospects in the Senate.
“Monday’s decision does not affect immigrants with TPS who initially entered the U.S. legally and then, say, overstayed their visa, Kagan noted. Because those people were legally admitted to the country and later were given humanitarian protections, they can seek to become permanent residents,” the report states.
The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) on Monday held that illegal aliens who were subsequently given Temporary Protected Status (TPS) are not eligible for green cards to permanently remain in the U.S.
Justice Elena Kagan, appointed to the court by former President Obama, wrote in a 9-0 decision that a “TPS recipient who entered the United States unlawfully is not eligible … for [lawful permanent resident] status merely by dint of his TPS.”
Jose Santos Sanchez, an illegal alien from El Salvador, came to the U.S. illegally in 1997. In 2001, Sanchez was provided TPS, a nonimmigrant status that allows him to remain in the U.S. for as long as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) extends TPS for El Salvador.
In 2014, Sanchez applied for lawful permanent resident status, commonly known as a green card, to permanently resettle in the U.S. After the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency denied Sanchez’s green card application on the grounds that he first entered the U.S. illegally, Sanchez challenged the decision in a federal district court and won.
Then, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed the decision, finding that because Sanchez first entered the U.S. illegally, he was not eligible for a green card under federal immigration law.
The Supreme Court held that federal immigration law “applied according to its plain terms, prevents Sanchez from becoming a [lawful permanent resident].”
“The question here is whether the conferral of TPS enables him to obtain [lawful permanent resident] status despite his unlawful entry,” Kagan writes in the Court’s opinion. “We hold that it does not.”
Kagan writes:
There is no dispute that Sanchez “entered the United States in the late 1990s unlawfully, without inspection.” But as earlier described, §1255 requires a [lawful permanent resident] applicant like Sanchez to have entered the country “lawful[ly],” with “inspection” — that is, to have been admitted. Indeed, §1255 imposes an admission requirement twice over. Its principal provision states that an applicant for [lawful permanent resident] status must have been “inspected and admitted or paroled into the United States.” [Emphasis added]
And another provision says that a person who has worked without authorization in the country — as Sanchez did for several years — may become a [lawful permanent resident] only if his presence in the United States is “pursuant to a lawful admission.” Sanchez has never claimed that he can, without aid from the TPS provision, satisfy those demands for admission. A straightforward application of §1255 thus supports the Government’s decision to deny him [lawful permanent resident] status. [Emphasis added]
And nothing in the conferral of TPS changes that result. [Emphasis added]
Kagan writes that while Congress “could have gone further by deeming TPS recipients to have not only nonimmigrant status but also a lawful admission,” it is not in the Court’s authority “to say that the something it does is not enough.”
“Section 1255 generally requires a lawful admission before a person can obtain [lawful permanent resident] status,” Kagan writes. “Sanchez was not lawfully admitted, and his TPS does not alter that fact. He therefore cannot become a permanent resident of this country. We affirm the judgment below.”
The ruling is the third 9-0 SCOTUS decision on immigration in the last two weeks. The Court unanimously ruled, in an opinion by Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, against a previously-deported criminal illegal alien who sought to avoid deportation.
Last week, the Court unanimously reversed, in an opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Ninth Circuit appeals court decision that helped grant immigration relief to illegal aliens seeking asylum to stay in the U.S.
The case is Sanchez v. Mayorkas, No. 20–315 in the Supreme Court of the United States.
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