Most, but not all, convicted immigrants earned their fate, though families suffer.
12/30/2008
Long Beach Press Telegram (California, USA)
The Killing Fields of Cambodia reach through the years and across oceans to places like Long Beach, and continue to take their toll. Among the victims are children of refugees, now young adults, rejected by their second homeland.
Most richly deserve it, as reflected in letters from readers responding to a series of articles by Greg Mellen about Cambodian immigrants deported for committing mostly serious crimes. There is little sympathy for most.
But there are troubling exceptions, including some who served relatively short jail terms for nonviolent offenses, only to face deportation, separation from their Americanized families, never to return from an alien land they had experienced only as toddlers. Phally Rin, for example, deported because of a 10-year-old conviction on a gun charge, left behind in Long Beach a weeping wife and young children.
Rin and about 1,700 other Cambodians were among those ensnared by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, passed partly in reaction to the first bombing of the World Trade Center. Since then, the law has been used to eject a total of 111,700 immigrants in fiscal year 2008 for criminal offenses.
The law widened the types of crime that made an immigrant deportable to include offenses that in some cases were not even felonies in some states. According to a Human Rights Watch study in 2007, deportation of legal immigrants convicted of crimes has separated 1.6 million children and adults, including many who are U.S. citizens.
The Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, whose district includes part of the Long Beach area, told reporter Mellen that at one point he had reservations about the effect of the deportations on families. But he has come to believe that's a false premise, since families have the option of joining the deportees in Cambodia.
That's not much of an option. Also, the law rigidly limits the ability of federal judges to use discretion in cases involving individuals whose charges are dubious or who have shown every indication of living reputable, productive lives.
It is clear that the nation needs tight immigration laws, including provisions for deportation. But in a democracy there is no need to take away the rights of judges to make judgments.
Mellen's reporting from a recent trip to Cambodia showed that many of the deportees, rather than falling into crime or despair, are making what they can of their situation and reaching out to help others. That's heartening.
It's also evidence that we can do a better job of deciding who deserves to be deported.
12/30/2008
Long Beach Press Telegram (California, USA)
The Killing Fields of Cambodia reach through the years and across oceans to places like Long Beach, and continue to take their toll. Among the victims are children of refugees, now young adults, rejected by their second homeland.
Most richly deserve it, as reflected in letters from readers responding to a series of articles by Greg Mellen about Cambodian immigrants deported for committing mostly serious crimes. There is little sympathy for most.
But there are troubling exceptions, including some who served relatively short jail terms for nonviolent offenses, only to face deportation, separation from their Americanized families, never to return from an alien land they had experienced only as toddlers. Phally Rin, for example, deported because of a 10-year-old conviction on a gun charge, left behind in Long Beach a weeping wife and young children.
Rin and about 1,700 other Cambodians were among those ensnared by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, passed partly in reaction to the first bombing of the World Trade Center. Since then, the law has been used to eject a total of 111,700 immigrants in fiscal year 2008 for criminal offenses.
The law widened the types of crime that made an immigrant deportable to include offenses that in some cases were not even felonies in some states. According to a Human Rights Watch study in 2007, deportation of legal immigrants convicted of crimes has separated 1.6 million children and adults, including many who are U.S. citizens.
The Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, whose district includes part of the Long Beach area, told reporter Mellen that at one point he had reservations about the effect of the deportations on families. But he has come to believe that's a false premise, since families have the option of joining the deportees in Cambodia.
That's not much of an option. Also, the law rigidly limits the ability of federal judges to use discretion in cases involving individuals whose charges are dubious or who have shown every indication of living reputable, productive lives.
It is clear that the nation needs tight immigration laws, including provisions for deportation. But in a democracy there is no need to take away the rights of judges to make judgments.
Mellen's reporting from a recent trip to Cambodia showed that many of the deportees, rather than falling into crime or despair, are making what they can of their situation and reaching out to help others. That's heartening.
It's also evidence that we can do a better job of deciding who deserves to be deported.
2 comments:
For your information:
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a strong supporter of the deportations, is right wing conservative with links to Sam Rainsy.
Perhaps, Mr. Rainsy should have a talk with his old friend to stop compounding Cambodia's existing problems with street gang elements from America?
This is a serious issue that must be addressed by certain pro-American and pro-Western opposition elements of the Khmer community.
- Khmer Patriot, Ph.D.
This is the way US act to all immigration who did not follow US Law. Why don't Cambodia act the same way like USA?. Listent!, if anyone fight Vietnamese this and that, you are considered as a racism and violate Human Rights of UN standart. Cambodian better acts like USA. Many-Many foriegners violate Khmer Law, fishing, lands, sex trafficking issues, drugs. There are Khmer students gratuated every years, hire them for these jobs for better safe of Cambodia.
Khmer oversea at US advice Khmer-smart in Cambodia.
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