Post-Conviction Relief for Immigrants

An order granting coram nobis relief should be effective to eliminate a conviction for immigration purposes, since relief is based on a fundamental injustice.  In other words, the conviction should never have existed at all, and it was only a profound mistake of fact, so serious as to preclude the existence of the conviction in the first place, that will justify relief.  Therefore, the writ is considered to be based on a ground of legal invalidity arising at the time the conviction first came into existence, and thus erases the conviction completely for immigration purposes.

Pendency of Post-Conviction Relief.  The pendency of this request for post-conviction relief does not destroy the finality of the conviction.[323]

[323] See § 5.40, supra.