Deportation of a Immigrant

[tonado]

Legal Immigrants can be deported anytime if convicted certain crimes.

 

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http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/art..._pardon?pg=full

 

He was 36 hours away from pardon

But arrest puts decision on hold

By Michael Levenson, Globe Correspondent | September 16, 2004

 

PORTLAND, Maine -- Touch Rin Svay was 36 hours away from a governor's pardon that would let him stay in the United States, even though he faced deportation because of his manslaughter conviction from a 2001 drunken driving accident that killed his sister.

 

Then on Tuesday night, Svay's parole officer arrested him and charged him with three parole violations: drinking alcohol, driving without a license, and changing his address without informing authorities, the governor's spokesman, Lee Umphrey, said yesterday.

 

Now Svay, 24, may be deported to Cambodia, banished to a country he knows only through books, to speak a language he knows only in shreds.

 

Governor John Baldacci planned to sign the pardon today. Umphrey said a hearing on Svay's parole violations is scheduled to be held within the next 72 hours, and Baldacci expects to wait for the outcome before making a final decision. But Umphrey called the new arrest ''a tragic turn of events for Svay and his family."

 

''The governor finds the evidence unfortunate and has put the prospect of a pardon on hold," Umphrey said. ''The governor is concerned and inclined not to issue a pardon because of this new information."

 

If he doesn't, Svay would be sent back to a country whose brutality his family fled in the late 1970s.

 

In an interview just hours before he was arrested Tuesday, Svay said he saw the governor's pardon as a chance to be ''reborn again" in the United States.

 

His mother, who speaks very little English, sobbed yesterday after Svay's lawyer delivered the news that her son was in trouble with the law again.

 

''I am worried," said his mother, Soeun.

 

Sarah Em, Svay's 14-year-old half-sister, who pleaded with the pardon board to let her older sibling stay in the United States and help guide her through adolescence, could not believe what happened.

 

''I'm shocked right now," she said. ''I feel really bad."

 

Svay was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. When he was 4, his family moved to the United States as part of a wave of some 145,000 Cambodian refugees who fled the country between 1975 and 2002. About 1,300 settled in Maine, according to the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center in Washington, D.C.

 

Svay is a legal permanent resident of this country, but he said that growing up in Portland and Long Beach, Calif., he never gave much thought to his legal status.

 

Brutality under the regime of Pol Pot, Cambodia's former prime minister and head of the Khmer Rouge, were not discussed at home, Svay said, and he barely remembers the refugee camp where he was born. Pol Pot was responsible for executions, forced labor, and famine involving millions of Cambodians during his rule.

 

Svay joined the Marines after high school and was home on leave three years ago when he smashed a car into a pole at high speed while driving drunk. His sister, Sary Svay, who was riding with him, was killed.

 

Svay said he pleaded guilty to manslaughter rather than put his family through a trial. Beth Stickney, Svay's lawyer, said he believed incorrectly that he could fight deportation later.

 

Under federal law, legal immigrants who are not US citizens face deportation if convicted of certain crimes categorized as aggravated felonies, according to US immigration lawyers and advocates for immigrants. The only way noncitizens can avoid deportation in such cases is to prove that they would be tortured in their home countries.

 

About 1,500 Cambodians nationwide also face deportation for convictions on a range of felonies, according to the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.

 

Baldacci's spokesman said the governor has never met Svay and has signed only 11 pardons out of 231 pardon hearings requested since taking office last year. But up until Svay's most recent arrest, the governor was convinced that Svay had paid the price for his crime, said Umphrey, Baldacci's spokesman.

 

Svay spent about a year in prison. After his release, he worked 50- and 60-hour weeks in a grocery warehouse with the father of Sary's children. Svay completed substance abuse counseling and psychological counseling, and worked to support Sary's children, now 5 and 3.

 

This year, the state pardon board made a unanimous recommendation to forgive Svay. And Umphrey said the governor planned to agree with the recommendation after speaking with Svay's sentencing judge, Superior Court Justice Thomas Humphrey, who had said when sentencing Svay that deportation would be a ''horrible and unjust result," given that his sister had died in the accident.

 

''The governor felt that Svay's family had suffered already with the death of their daughter," Umphrey said Tuesday, before Svay's most recent arrest. ''Sending him back [to Cambodia] might not have been the appropriate solution to this."

 

In the hours before his arrest, Svay and his family were home in their tiny apartment adorned with a Buddhist shrine to his dead sister. Sary's children cuddled on Svay's lap and, he said, he was beginning to plan for the future. A friend's recent wedding made him think about his life in the years ahead, he said.

 

''I've never really lived a life where I'm on my own, get my own car, get my house," Svay said. ''I can have a new life. I can have a family, do things a little differently this time."

[warpedbored]

This is a very good example of why our loved ones should become naturalized citizens.