In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 17‐3545
LAITH WILLIAM MURAD BIJAN,
Petitioner‐Appellant,
v.
UNITED STATES CITIZENSHIP & IMMIGRATION SERVICES,
Respondent‐Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 15 C 10636 — Charles R. Norgle, Judge.
____________________
ARGUED JULY 5, 2018 — DECIDED AUGUST 20, 2018
____________________
Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and SCUDDER and ST. EVE, Cir‐
cuit Judges.
WOOD, Chief Judge. Five years after entering the United
States, ostensibly as the unmarried son of a lawful permanent
resident, Laith Bijan applied to become a naturalized citizen.
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
denied his application, concluding that Bijan actually had
been married when he entered the country and had thus mis‐
represented his eligibility for lawful permanent residence and
2 No. 17‐3545
citizenship. Bijan sought judicial review of that decision. Re‐
viewing USCIS’s decision de novo, the district court concluded
that Bijan had misrepresented his marital status and lied un‐
der oath during a naturalization interview when he denied
giving “false or misleading information” while applying for
an immigration benefit. We affirm on the alternate ground
that Bijan previously had given the agency false information
when he failed to disclose on his visa application that he had
two children and later lied about that omission.
Claiming that he was the unmarried son of a lawful per‐
manent resident, Bijan (a citizen of Iraq) entered the United
States in 2004. His authorization for doing so dated back to
1991, when his mother, already a lawful permanent resident,
filed an I‐130 petition (“Petition for Alien Relative”) on his be‐
half. On the petition, she identified Bijan as unmarried.
Twelve years later, in 2003, after fleeing Iraq for Jordan with
his two children and their mother, Bijan sought to enter the
United States based on his mother’s previously approved pe‐
tition. On his visa application, consistent with his mother’s
petition, Bijan stated that he was unmarried and had no chil‐
dren. He was granted lawful permanent residence and en‐
tered the United States in January 2004.
Bijan and the mother of his children, Nahrain Shaoul, re‐
mained apart for several years. In 2006 Bijan traveled to Jor‐
dan, where Shaoul still lived, and, according to Bijan, the cou‐
ple were married. Upon returning to the United States that
same year, Bijan filed I‐130 petitions for his children. USCIS
denied these applications because Bijan had made conflicting
statements in communications with the agency and had not
previously identified his children on his 2003 visa application.
(The children were born in 1997 and 1999.)
No. 17‐3545 3
In 2009 Bijan applied for naturalization. USCIS inter‐
viewed Bijan and denied his application, concluding that
there was evidence he had been married when he entered the
U.S. in 2004 under a status for unmarried sons or daughters of
lawful permanent residents. The agency also noted that Bijan
had omitted from his 2003 visa application the fact that he had
children.
Bijan requested a hearing and was interviewed again in
November 2012, under oath. During that interview, he testi‐
fied that he had never “given false or misleading information
to any U.S. government official while applying for any immi‐
gration benefit[.]” USCIS denied his application a second
time. The agency determined again that there was evidence
suggesting that Bijan had married Shaoul before he became a
lawful permanent resident in January 2004, and therefore he
had not established that he was eligible for naturalization.
And the agency reiterated that Bijan had falsely omitted his
children from his 2003 visa application.
Bijan then petitioned the district court under 8 U.S.C.
§ 1421(c) for relief from the denial of his application for natu‐
ralization. He focused primarily on whether he had been mar‐
ried in 2004 when he became a permanent resident. He sub‐
mitted a marriage certificate showing that he did not marry
Shaoul until 2006, and a church certificate showing that he
had not been “bound to any previous engagement or mar‐
riage” as of October 2003. USCIS responded by submitting a
set of marriage records from a church in Baghdad, Iraq. These
records were accompanied by the affidavit of the church’s
bishop, who explained that the records reflected the marriage
of “Laith William Murad” and “Nahrain Boutros Shaoul” on
4 No. 17‐3545
September 21, 1996. Bijan countered that these records con‐
flicted with another certificate, signed by the same bishop,
that gave a marriage date of “1990” for “Laith W. Bijan” and
“Nahrain P. Shaoul.”
The court granted summary judgment for USCIS. It found
no tenable dispute of fact about Bijan’s marital status at the
time he entered the United States in 2004 as an “unmarried
son” of a permanent resident: the court thought it clear that
he was already married at that point and that he had not been
truthful about this fact during his naturalization interviews.
Bijan had lied further during those interviews, the court
added, when he denied giving false information to immigra‐
tion officials: he had given false information when, among
other things, he had omitted from his 2003 visa application
the fact that he had two children. The court thus found that
Bijan was ineligible for naturalization for two reasons: first,
he had not been lawfully admitted for permanent residence
as an “unmarried son” of a lawful permanent resident,
see 8 U.S.C. § 1427(a)(1); 8 C.F.R. § 316.2(a)(2); and second, he
had lied under oath and thus not shown “good moral charac‐
ter,” see 8 U.S.C. § 1427(a)(3); 8 C.F.R. §§ 316.2(a)(7),
316.10(b)(2)(vi).
On appeal Bijan argues that genuine issues of fact exist re‐
garding his marital status when he became a lawful perma‐
nent resident in 2004 and the truthfulness of the information
that he gave the government. He is entitled to pursue these
arguments because “Congress specifically calls for de novo re‐
view in naturalization cases.” O’Sullivan v. USCIS, 453 F.3d
809, 811–12 (7th Cir. 2006). They are thus not subject to the
rules governing typical immigration cases, in which we are
No. 17‐3545 5
bound by an immigration judge’s factual and credibility de‐
terminations. Further, although it is Bijan’s burden to estab‐
lish eligibility for naturalization, see Berenyi v. Dist. Dir., INS,
385 U.S. 630, 636–37 (1967), he needs only to raise a fact ques‐
tion to survive summary judgment. See Injeti v. USCIS, 737
F.3d 311, 315 (4th Cir. 2013).
We turn first to the question of Bijan’s marital status in
2004, when he became a lawful permanent resident. Bijan was
admitted for permanent residence under 8 U.S.C.
§ 1153(a)(2)(B), the provision for unmarried sons and daugh‐
ters of permanent residents; no visa category exists for married
sons or daughters of permanent residents. See id.
§ 1153(a)(1)–(4). Thus if, as USCIS contends, Bijan got married
after his mother’s 1991 petition but before he became a per‐
manent resident in 2004, then his mother’s petition would
have been revoked automatically and he would have been in‐
eligible for permanent residence. 8 C.F.R. § 205.1(a)(3)(i)(I).
Bijan’s mother did become a citizen in 2000, before Bijan be‐
came a permanent resident, and she could have repetitioned
for him at that time under the visa categories for either mar‐
ried or unmarried children of U.S. citizens, 8 U.S.C.
§ 1153(a)(1), (3). But she did not do so. This means that the
only way Bijan could have been “lawfully admitted for per‐
manent residence” is if he was, in fact, unmarried at the time
of his 2003 visa application. His eligibility for naturalization
in 2009, see 8 U.S.C. § 1427(a)(1); 8 C.F.R. § 316.2(a)(2), de‐
pends on the same thing.
We conclude that genuine questions of material fact exist
with regard to Bijan’s marital status in 2003–04. It is possible
that, as Bijan testified, his children were born out of wedlock
6 No. 17‐3545
and that he and Shaoul did not tie the knot until 2006. Fur‐
thermore, even if we were to ignore the 2006 marriage certifi‐
cate, which the district judge found inadmissible, other evi‐
dence supports Bijan’s contention that he was unmarried as
of 2004. The bishop who attested to the accuracy of the 1996
marriage records had previously given conflicting infor‐
mation about Bijan’s marriage date and other details. This
constitutes specific impeachment evidence. See Outlaw v.
Newkirk, 259 F.3d 833, 838 (7th Cir. 2001). In addition, Bijan
explained that they did not marry until 2006 because Shaoul’s
parents did not consent to their marriage, and even after they
had children he did not tell his own family about Shaoul be‐
cause he feared that the news would upset his ailing father.
Bijan is competent to testify to his own experiences, and that
testimony may raise an issue of fact. See McKinney v. Office of
the Sheriff of Whitley Cnty., 866 F.3d 803, 814 (7th Cir.
2017); Payne v. Pauley, 337 F.3d 767, 771 (7th Cir. 2003). Fi‐
nally, Bijan’s mother and brother corroborated Bijan’s story
that he did not tell them about Shaoul or the children until
after his father died in 2004.
If this case were exclusively about marital status, we
would have to remand for further proceedings. But it is not.
The district court also concluded that Bijan had lied under
oath when he said he had “never given false or misleading
information to any U.S. government official while applying
for any immigration benefit[.]” The government highlights
two examples of false information: allegedly fraudulent bap‐
tismal certificates that Bijan submitted for his children’s visa
petitions, and Bijan’s assertion that he had simply lost contact
with his children at the time he filled out his own visa appli‐
cation.
No. 17‐3545 7
We need not address the baptismal certificates. A more ob‐
vious example of falsification stands out to us—Bijan’s failure
to disclose on his 2003 visa application that he had any chil‐
dren, anywhere. Given that glaring omission, Bijan’s testi‐
mony in 2012 that he had never given “false or misleading in‐
formation” while “applying for any immigration benefit” was
plainly false. True, the government did not spotlight this
omission in its brief, but our review is de novo, and an appellee
need not raise all possible alternative grounds for affirming
the district court’s decision. Thayer v. Chiczewski, 705 F.3d 237,
247 (7th Cir. 2012). The district court specifically found that
Bijan’s omission in his visa application of any reference to his
children, followed by his denial of having lied in any immi‐
gration application, demonstrated that Bijan lacked good
moral character and thus was ineligible for naturalization. It
found unpersuasive Bijan’s effort to explain the omission by
saying that he had lost contact with his children when he
filled out his own visa application. (Losing contact with one’s
children in no way implies their nonexistence.) The Sixth Cir‐
cuit has observed that lying about previous lies, as Bijan has
done, “reveal[s] a lack of good moral character,” United States
v. Haroon, 874 F.3d 479, 483 (6th Cir. 2017), cert. denied, 138 S.
Ct. 1576 (2018). We concur.
The undisputed facts show that Bijan was aware of the
misrepresentation on his visa application and thus that he in‐
tended to obtain an immigration benefit—naturalization—by
denying that he had made it. See Kungys v. United States, 485
U.S. 759, 779–80 (1988). During oral argument, Bijan’s counsel
questioned whether Bijan knew he had omitted his children
from his visa application in 2003, given his limited English
and the fact that someone else had filled out the application
8 No. 17‐3545
on his behalf. But what matters for purposes of Bijan’s natu‐
ralization application is his false testimony with USCIS in 2012.
See 8 C.F.R. § 316.10(b)(2)(vi). Even if Bijan was unaware of
the omission at the time it was made, he was certainly aware
of it by the time USCIS brought it up—first, when the agency
denied visas for his children in 2006, and second, when it ini‐
tially denied his naturalization application in April 2012. By
the time Bijan testified in November 2012 that he had “never
given false or misleading information,” he had to have known
his statement was false. Because of this, Bijan cannot meet his
burden of establishing eligibility for naturalization.
We therefore AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.