04 Dec Cancellation of Removal Granted for Nonpermanent Resident
Our Philadelphia Immigration Lawyers represented a native and citizen of Mexico in applying for relief from removal proceedings in the form of Cancellation of Removal for Non-Permanent Residents under Section 240A(b) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA). To fulfill the requirements of the statute, we demonstrated to the Immigration Court that our client had been continuously physically present in the United States for more than 10 years prior to issuance of the Notice to Appear, that he was a person of good moral character, that he had not been convicted of a crime that would make him inadmissible to the United States, and that if the removal were carried out, it would result in “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to his U.S. citizen children. By presenting extensive evidence to the court, we were able to meet the demanding standard of the exceptional and extremely unusual hardship requirement of the statute is rarely met. We showed that one of our client’s U.S. citizen children would have suffered exceptional and extremely unusual hardship if our client had been removed from the United States. Our client’s 14-year old daughter has a severe lifelong learning disability similar to autism and she has been medically diagnosed as having the mental capacity of an 8-year old. She is enrolled in a school for children with special needs. She only speaks English, and her learning disability prevents her from learning Spanish. Her mother, our client’s wife, only speaks Spanish, has less than a high school education, and is not able to learn English. We successfully argued that because of the vital role our client played in taking care of his daughter, and because of the lack of availability of the type of special education needed by his daughter and her inability to adapt to life in Mexico, removal of her father to Mexico would represent exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to her. To establish our client’s continuous physical presence in the United States for 10 years, we presented the court with our client’s federal tax records for each year since 1999. To establish the exceptional and extremely unusual hardship removal would cause to our client’s US Citizen daughter, we presented the court with a report of results of educational testing performed at the time his daughter entered kindergarten, a letter from his daughter’s school verifying her attendance and that the school’s program is a special education program, and minutes of a meeting held by school psychologists, speech therapists, and other special education specialists to consider placing his daughter in a more restricted setting. Our client’s employer provided an affidavit stating that he had employed our client since 1997, that to his knowledge our client had not been absent from the United States during that period, and that he knows our client’s daughter who suffers from a lifelong learning disability. Our client provided a sworn affidavit detailing his family situation: his daughter’s lifelong learning disability, his vital role in caring for his daughter and interpreting all communications between his daughter and her mother, his wife’s inability to support his daughter, and the unavailability of the necessary special education in Mexico. Our client’s wife and a close family friend also provided sworn affidavits attesting to the specifics of their family situation and were prepared to testify in court on our client’s behalf. His daughter’s primary care physician, a Developmental Pediatrician who had evaluated her medically, and her Middle School Counselor wrote letters explaining her situation and that in their professional opinions it was crucial to her well-being that both she and her father remain in the United States. We also submitted to the court two academic articles detailing the shortcomings and scarcity of special needs education in Mexico, and the disparity in cultural acceptance and availability of suitable educational opportunities for those with symptoms of autism in the United States as compared with Mexico. The Immigration Court considered the evidence presented along with our EOIR 42B Application for Cancellation of Removal and granted Cancellation under INA 240A(b)(2).