Sharma

Vijanti Devi Sharma petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ order denying her motion to reopen for adjustment of status and her motion to reopen based on changed country conditions in her home country of Fiji. We deny the petition.

A. Adjustment of status

Sharma’s case was administratively closed on April 27, 1995, when the BIA denied her appeal of the IJ’s decision to deport her in absentia. Sharma filed her motion to reopen for adjustment of status on May 1, 2000, more than five years later and well beyond the 90-day limitation on such motions. See 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2 (c).

Even if she had raised equitable tolling in front of the BIA (which she did not), Sharma’s allegations that her original counsel was ineffective do not carry the day. There is no evidence that her counsel represented her during that entire five-year period, that she ever notified him that her husband’s visa application had been approved or that she retained him to pursue adjustment of status. Indeed, the record is silent as to what prompted Sharma, after doing nothing with her case for such a long period of time, to file a motion to reopen pro se. 1 For these same reasons, there was no…