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Panel Is Facing Deadline on Immigrants’ Pardons

2010-10-22 19:11| 发布者: gws110| 查看: 1222| 评论: 0|来自: NYTIMES

摘要: Tam Phan, a convicted armed robber who earned college degrees in prison, hopes to get a pardon, to avoid deportation to Vietnam. In May, as the federal government increased deportations and some stat ...

Tam Phan, a convicted armed robber who earned college degrees in prison, hopes to get a pardon, to avoid deportation to Vietnam.

In May, as the federal government increased deportations and some states sought to tighten immigration enforcement, Gov. David A. Paterson caused a national stir by announcing a push in the opposite direction: a state effort to speed the granting of pardons to immigrants facing deportation for old or minor criminal convictions.

Nearly six months later, that initiative is finally coming to fruition — with little time to spare.

Hundreds of petitions from legal permanent residents for pardons have swamped the New York governor’s office, and a special clemency panel is rushing to sift through them and make recommendations to Mr. Paterson before his term and the program end on Dec. 31.

The vast majority of the requests were mailed just before an Oct. 1 deadline, compelling the panel to double the frequency of its meetings. “The expectation is that when all is said and done, there will be well over 1,000” petitions, said Morgan Hook, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson. “We literally have boxes of them sitting in the hallway.”

Some of the petitions are elaborate, bound documents numbering scores of pages, with color photographs and affidavits from relatives, employers and others testifying to the petitioners’ worthiness for clemency.

“To some extent this is a competition,” said Manoj Viswanathan, a lawyer who filed a petition on behalf of a Frenchman who holds a green card and served three years in prison in the early 1990s for narcotics and firearm convictions. “It’s like applying to college: there’s so much competition, you want to make your packet stand out.”

But unlike many college applicants, these petitioners are almost completely in the dark about their chances for success. The Paterson administration will say little about the decision-making process or how many pardons the governor expects to issue.

When he announced the formation of the so-called pardon panel, Mr. Paterson specified that it would recommend pardons only for legal permanent residents — green card holders — “who have contributed as New Yorkers and who deserve relief from deportation or indefinite detention.”

Some lawyers and immigrant advocates complain that the governor has provided few guidelines for what makes a strong case.

Margaret Love, a lawyer in Washington who served as the United States pardon attorney under Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton, said that lack of guidelines was not surprising, especially given how new and unusual Mr. Paterson’s program is. “A pardon historically is a pretty free-form exercise,” she said. “One reason governors don’t like it is they have to make subjective decisions about people who by definition are not safe bets. It’s scary.”

Mr. Paterson’s own record provides scant guidance. Since taking office in March 2008, he has granted only two pardons to legal permanent residents.

In 2008 he gave one to Ricky Walters, the hip-hop musician known as Slick Rick, who was facing deportation to his native Britain for convictions on attempted murder and weapons charges dating back 17 years. In March, the governor pardoned Qing Hong Wu, 29, who had served three years in prison for a number of muggings committed when he was 15; Mr. Wu went on to become an information technology executive, yet still faced deportation to China, which he had left at age 2.

The governor cited Mr. Wu’s case as one reason for his move to expedite pardons for other immigrants.

The crimes now under review range from misdemeanors to felonies, and from turnstile jumping to murder, officials and lawyers said. Some were committed in recent years, while others date back decades. Most petitioners face deportation for their convictions, and only a governor’s pardon can prevent it, though officials said that in some cases, including those involving certain gun and drug crimes, even a pardon would not prevent deportation.

Among the petitioners is Tam Phan, 35, who immigrated to the United States in 1981 at age 6, and grew up in Midwood, Brooklyn. In high school, he fell in with a gang, and was convicted for his involvement in a series of armed robberies, he said. He went to prison at 17, and was released in January.

During his 17-year incarceration, he said, he immersed himself in academics, earning associate’s degrees from Bard College and Sage College of Albany, and a bachelor’s degree from Canisius College. He is now pursuing a graduate degree in urban policy and administration at Brooklyn College and is working part time at the Fortune Society, a nonprofit organization that helps ex-convicts re-enter society.

The government is trying to deport him to Vietnam. A pardon, Mr. Phan said, would allow him to stay in the United States with the rest of his family, all of whom are American citizens. “I feel like I’m doing well,” he said.

All the petitions are being reviewed by the pardon panel, a five-member group drawn from the governor’s office and state agencies, officials said. The panel refers promising petitions to the Executive Clemency Committee, which recommends cases to the governor for his review and final determination.

There is no limit on the number of pardons the governor is prepared to grant, officials in his office said.

National immigration officials have recently focused their resources on catching and deporting immigrants who have been convicted of crimes or pose a national security threat. In the last year, the federal government has deported a record number of people, including a record 195,772 convicted criminals.

Mr. Paterson said in May that he was creating the panel to compensate for an “extremely inflexible” federal law.

Lawyers and advocates representing immigrants have praised the initiative. “People are being deported for indiscretions of their youth, and it’s ripping families apart,” said Carrie Grimm, the pro bono administrator at the law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, who helped organize a team of lawyers in New York to file petitions on behalf of former prisoners. The panel, she said, “is a fabulous idea and needs to be replicated far and wide.”

A spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which calls for reducing immigration levels, said that while he was not familiar with Mr. Paterson’s panel, “as a general rule, we would be opposed to governors or other local officials stacking the deck so that people who could legitimately be deported get to remain in the country.”

The spokesman, Ira Mehlman, said Mr. Paterson was superseding the authority of Congress. “This is not his determination to make,” he said.

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