The deportation ruling
Editorial
Stabroek News
December 16, 2006
Mexican Juan Antonio Lopez, a cocaine possession ex-convict, has become the poster boy for green-card holding misdemeanour convicts in the United States. It was Lopez's case which brought about the landmark Supreme Court ruling on December 5 last, halting the automatic deportation of legal US residents convicted of low-level drug offences.
According to USA Today, Lopez, who became a US legal permanent resident in 1990 was convicted of aiding and abetting the possession of cocaine in South Dakota, where he lived. He was sentenced to five years in prison, but was released after 15 months for good behaviour and was deported to Mexico in January this year. However, his case was taken to the higher court and there was also the lobby by civil rights, immigrant advocacy and criminal defence groups, along with former US government immigration lawyers not just on Lopez's behalf, but against the system of automatic deportation of US residents found guilty of drug misdemeanours in general.
Eight of the nine presiding Supreme Court judges ruled that despite a 1996 federal immigration law which requires the deportation of anyone convicted of an aggravated felony, which includes a felony punishable under the federal drug law, legal immigrants cannot be automatically deported for drug offences that are felony crimes under some state laws, but less serious misdemeanours under federal law.
The ruling is out of sync with the George W. Bush's administration's position on alien removal. In 2005, the United States deported about 77,000 of its legal immigrants who had criminal records. About 7,000 of them had been arrested and charged with drug possession.
Non-deportation though is not automatic. The prospective deportee would have to have the wherewithal to fight his/her deportation and this might not always be the case. And that is just the beginning. The prospective deportee would also have to win his/her case in order to reverse the deportation and each individual case would be decided on its own merit.
Lopez, who had to leave his family which includes two children, behind in the US, is not yet out of the woods. The ruling simply allows him a chance to appeal his deportation and argue that he should be allowed to return to live the US where he had lived for 16 years. However, Lopez's prospects look good as, according to reports, he ran a legitimate business - a grocery store - and was not actually in possession of the cocaine in question but simply told someone where they could have obtained it.
The burning question though is why Lopez, who clearly intends to remain in the US, had not acquired US citizenship 16 years after taking up residence in that country, where a resident alien, as legal immigrants are called, could easily lose his/her status, but citizenship offers security. And there is also the fact that Lopez's children at 11 and six years old were more than likely born in the US.
Given that the US deported 77,000 legal immigrants last year, it stands to reason that there are hundreds of thousands of Lopezes in that country. A look at local deportation statistics confirms this. Out of 30 former legal immigrants pulled from the list of hundreds sent back here last year from the US, one had migrated as early as 1970 - 36 years ago. Two had migrated in 1972, two in 1976, one in 1978, one each in 1980 and 1981, five in 1982, one each in 1983 and 1984, five in 1985, five in 1986, three in 1987, one each in 1988 and 1989. All of these people, 29 men and one woman, had left here to settle in the United States before Lopez. And given their ages when they were deported, they had all left here while they were children or in their late teens. However, unlike Lopez, the majority of these deportees, 24 of them, had been convicted of felonies such as trafficking in large amounts of cocaine, attempted murder and gun possession. At the lower end of the scale, trespassing, a misdemeanour which drew a very light sentence, had also resulted in automatic deportation.
The point had been made in this column before that many of the Guyanese resident aliens being deported were people who had spent most of their lives in the US and who had stronger ties there. Some media reports have made the assumption that the ruling would have great implications for, and could see a corresponding reduction in deportees returning, particularly to the Caribbean. Perhaps, it will redound to the benefit of those serving time for misdemeanours and awaiting deportation. Maybe the reprieve will serve as the impetus they need to clean up their acts.