Crimes of Moral Turpitude

(E)  Foreign Expungements.  The BIA found a foreign expungement in Italy ineffectual to avert excludability.[92]  The Ninth Circuit, however, has held that equal protection requires the court to honor a foreign expungement in a drug case where an expungement would have been possible under the Federal First Offender Act if the case had been prosecuted in federal court.[93]

[92] Matter of B, 7 I. & N. Dec. 166 (BIA 1956); Matter of G, 5 I. & N. Dec. 129 (BIA 1953).

[93] Dillingham v. INS, 267 F.3d 996 (9th Cir. 2001) (British expungement honored); see also Lujan-Armendariz v. INS, 222 F.3d 728 (9th Cir. 2000) (holding that state court expungements are effective to eliminate the immigration effects of first-offense simple drug possession convictions where the defendant would have been eligible under the Federal First Offender Act, 18 U.S.C § 3607 but see Matter of Salazar-Regino, 23 I. & N. Dec. 223 (BIA 2002) (en banc) (reaffirming BIA rule that 1996 IIRAIRA definition of “conviction” eliminated the effectiveness of expungements to negate immigration effects for all categories of crimes and rejecting equal protection argument relied upon by the Ninth Circuit regarding first-offense minor controlled substance offenses).