WASHINGTON Mon Jun 9, 2014 12:11pm EDT
The court was divided 5-4 in
deciding that only in limited circumstances does federal immigration law allow
for children to retain their place in line after they become adults.
The case concerns a program that
allows people who are U.S. citizens or legal residents to sponsor relatives who
live overseas. People often have to wait for years for approval of their visa
applications and the number of visas available is capped each year.
The litigation is unconnected to
recent reports of unaccompanied children crossing the U.S. border illegally.
The court endorsed the federal
government's interpretation of the law, which was that only children of
permanent U.S. residents were eligible to keep their place in line once they
reached the age of 21.
The case was brought by two
groups of plaintiffs, including Rosalina Cuellar de Osorio, who was told in
November 2005 that her family was at the front of the line to obtain visas to
enter the United States from El Salvador. The family was told at the time that
her son, Melvin, who had turned 21 just months earlier, would no longer be
eligible.
The Supreme Court decided to hear
the issue after the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled
in September 2012 that a broader category of visa applicants was eligible than
had been argued by the administration of President Barack Obama.
The five justices in the majority
were split over which legal rationale to adopt. Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote
the majority opinion, was joined in full by only Justices Anthony Kennedy and
Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Kagan wrote that when a statute
is unclear, the court was required to defer to the interpretation offered by
the government. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia agreed
with the judgment but offered a different rationale.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who,
like Kagan, was appointed by Obama, wrote in a dissenting opinion that the law
was clearer than the majority suggested and that the case should have been
decided with a "commonsense approach."
The case is Scialabba v. de
Osorio, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 12-930.
(Editing by Howard Goller
and Bernadette Baum)
Read the entire article at http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/09/us-usa-court-immigration-idUSKBN0EK1GX20140609
No comments:
Post a Comment