Appeals court: 'Habitual drunks' cannot avoid deportation

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Appeals court: 'Habitual drunks' cannot avoid deportation
Updated 4:45 pm, Tuesday, May 30, 2017

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal appeals court has upheld a law that bars people who are in the country illegally from avoiding deportation if they are habitual drunks.

A divided 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday said Congress may have reasonably concluded that people who regularly drink alcohol to excess pose a greater risk to themselves and others. The law considers regular drunks not to have good moral character.

The ruling overturned a decision by a smaller 9th Circuit panel that ruled that alcoholism is an illness, not a moral defect.

The decision came in the case of Salomon Ledezma-Cosino, who faced deportation after his arrest in California in 2008 on suspicion of driving under the influence.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Appeals-court-Habitual-drunks-cannot-avoid-11183252.php

[Honeycombe8]

1. I don't understand why being an habitual drunk would get them out of deportation.

I don't get the logic of that. In any case, that's not a reason to avoid deportation now, I guess.

[WoonTars]

2. Me either...

Very strange...

[Bradical79]

4. I think the headline might be misleading?

I can't quite tell, but it looks like it's not so much that being a drunk could get you out of deportation, but that it couldn't be taken into account when determining poor moral character. Here the 9th circuit overturned that decision, reinstating that it could be.

Edit: see post 3 below.

[More_Cowbell]

3. People can escape being removed from the country if they have "good moral character"

The majority of the court found that this person, who was a "habitual drunkard," was not of "good moral character." A few of the judges said that merely being an "alcoholic" (all that was proven in this case) isn't enough to qualify as not having good moral character. They would rather have seen the BIA look into this specific circumstances of this case, to see if the person was still abusing alcohol and being a danger to others. If this guy was driving drunk, as the story says, that would probably have been enough. They just didn't like a person who was admittedly an "alcoholic" (recovering, according to some testimony) to be automatically considered not to have good moral character, with no examination of his behavior.

[Skittles]

5. do they mean alcoholics?