A section 212c waiver allows certain long-time green card holders who have been placed in removal proceedings because they were convicted of a criminal offense to avoid being deported.

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Congress repealed former section 212(c) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act effective April 1, 1997. However, the United States Supreme Court decided in 2001 that the repeal does not apply to lawful permanent residents who pleaded guilty to a crime before April 1, 1997 INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289.

 

On December 12, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an important decision further protecting the rights of immigrants under the St. Cyr decision. In Judulang v. Holder, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the government’s policy for deciding when lawful permanent resident immigrants may apply for 212(c) relief from deportation for pre-1996 guilty plea convictions deeming such immigrants ineligible for relief if the deportation ground at issue does not have a sufficiently comparable inadmissibility ground was arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

 

The Court remanded the case for the government to adopt a new approach that does not arbitrarily deny long-term permanent resident immigrants such as Mr. Judulang from being able to apply for relief from deportation.

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court issued another important decision protecting the rights of immigrants with long-ago criminal convictions to travel abroad without risking detention and removal upon their return. In Vartelas v. Holder, the Supreme Court struck down the government’s retroactive application of a 1996 immigration law amendment that the government said allowed denial of re-admission and removal of lawful permanent residents who take short trips abroad even if their old convictions preceded the new law.

 

Such retroactive application of the 1996 amendment subjected immigrants with relatively minor offenses—many of whom were not deportable while inside the U.S. to detention and removal simply because they needed to travel to attend a funeral, visit a sick family member, or otherwise attend to family or other emergent business abroad.

In Matter of Abdelghany, 26 I&N Dec. 254 (BIA 2014), the Board of Immigration Appeals held that relief under former INA section 212(c) is also available to otherwise eligible lawful permanent residents, even if they were convicted following a trial before April 1, 1997.