De Avilia v. Civiletti

In 1976, Congress passed amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act (the act) that sought to eliminate differences governing immigration from the Western Hemisphere and the Eastern Hemisphere. The primary effect of the amendments was that countries in the Western Hemisphere became subject to a 20,000-visa quota per country for each fiscal year, which had previously only applied to countries from the Eastern Hemisphere. The amendments were passed in the second quarter of the 1977 fiscal year. The United States Department of State (state department) (defendant) retroactively applied the new quota limits to the beginning of the fiscal year, holding that any visas issued in that period would be counted against the country’s total visa allotment for the fiscal year. In that first quarter of the fiscal year prior to the amendments’ passage, 14,203 visas had been issued to Mexican immigrants. The state department therefore determined that only 5,797 visas were available for Mexican immigrants for the remaining three-quarters of the fiscal year. Imelda De Avilia joined with other Mexican visa applicants (the applicants) (plaintiffs) to file a class action against the state department. The applicants claimed that the retroactive application of the visa quota violated their rights and that the quota limits should have only been applied after the passage of the law. The district court agreed and held that the state department should have only issued visas under the quota on a pro rata basis after the passage of the amendments for the remainder of the fiscal year. Both the applicants and the state department appealed.