Cyrus Mehta: Supreme Court’s Heightened Standard for Revoking Naturalization Should Apply to All Immigration Benefits
In a blog post entitled Supreme Court’s Heightened Standard for Revoking Naturalization Should Apply to All Immigration Benefits, immigration attorney Cyrus D. Mehta analyzes the Supreme Court’s decision in Maslenjak v. United States, which involved the question when a misrepresentation in the naturalization process may lead to loss of U.S. citizenship. Divna Maslenjak, an ethnic Serb, lied during her naturalization process about her husband’s service as an officer in the Bosnian Serb Army. When this was discovered, the government charged her with knowingly procuring her naturalization contrary to law because she knowingly made a false statement under oath in a naturalization proceeding. A lower courts ruled that to secure a conviction, the government need not prove that her false statements were material to, or influenced, the decision to approve her citizenship application. The Supreme Court disagreed.
KJ