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Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back
San Tran Croucher’s earliest memories are of fleeing ethnic attacks in her Vietnamese village, only to be later tortured in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge.
Katya Cengel met San when San was seventy-five years old and living in California, having miraculously survived the Cambodian genocide with her three daughters, Sithy, Sithea, and Jennifer. But San’s family’s troubles didn’t end after their resettlement in California. As a teenager under the Khmer Rouge, San’s daughter Sithy had been the family’s savior, the strong one who learned how to steal food to keep them alive. In the United States, Sithy’s survival skills were best suited for a life of crime, and she was eventually jailed for drug possession. U.S. immigration law enforces deportation of any immigrant or refugee who is found guilty of certain illegal activities, and San has hired a lawyer to fight Sithy’s deportation case. Only time will tell if they are successful.
In Exiled Cengel follows the stories of four Cambodian families, including San’s, as they confront criminal deportation forty years after their resettlement in the United States. Weaving together these stories into a single narrative, Cengel finds that violence comes in many forms and that trauma is passed down through generations. With no easy answers, Cengel reveals a cycle of violence, followed by safety, and then loss.
Katya Cengel met San when San was seventy-five years old and living in California, having miraculously survived the Cambodian genocide with her three daughters, Sithy, Sithea, and Jennifer. But San’s family’s troubles didn’t end after their resettlement in California. As a teenager under the Khmer Rouge, San’s daughter Sithy had been the family’s savior, the strong one who learned how to steal food to keep them alive. In the United States, Sithy’s survival skills were best suited for a life of crime, and she was eventually jailed for drug possession. U.S. immigration law enforces deportation of any immigrant or refugee who is found guilty of certain illegal activities, and San has hired a lawyer to fight Sithy’s deportation case. Only time will tell if they are successful.
In Exiled Cengel follows the stories of four Cambodian families, including San’s, as they confront criminal deportation forty years after their resettlement in the United States. Weaving together these stories into a single narrative, Cengel finds that violence comes in many forms and that trauma is passed down through generations. With no easy answers, Cengel reveals a cycle of violence, followed by safety, and then loss.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
344 pages, Hardcover
Published September 1, 2018
7 people are currently reading
89 people want to read
About the author
Katya Cengel
5 books47 followersKatya Cengel is the author of four non-fiction books, including most recently Straitjackets and Lunch Money, which the San Francisco Chronicle called “incredibly affecting” and Kirkus Reviews called “harrowing but engrossing”. Cengel’s earlier titles cover everything from minor league baseball in Bluegrass Baseball to falling in love at Chernobyl in From Chernobyl with Love. She has received an Eric Hoffer Academic Press award, an Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY), and a Foreword INDIES.
As a journalist Cengel has written for New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine and Atavist Magazine among others. Her writing has taken her to Utah to search for Bigfoot (she didn’t find him) and to Mongolia to write about female street artists. Cengel has been awarded grants from the International Reporting Project, the International Women’s Media Foundation and the International Center for Journalists. Her stories have received a Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Award and a Society for Features Journalism Excellence-in-Features Award.
As a journalist Cengel has written for New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine and Atavist Magazine among others. Her writing has taken her to Utah to search for Bigfoot (she didn’t find him) and to Mongolia to write about female street artists. Cengel has been awarded grants from the International Reporting Project, the International Women’s Media Foundation and the International Center for Journalists. Her stories have received a Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Award and a Society for Features Journalism Excellence-in-Features Award.
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November 24, 2018
Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back, by Katya Cengel
Reviewed by Bill Herod
“Exiled” is an extraordinary book detailing a little-known tragedy impacting thousands of extremely vulnerable people. It is deeply researched, both in the U.S. and in Cambodia, and is primarily based on extensive interviews with the people most directly affected. It is as gripping as a good novel, but the tragedy is real, continuing and, in the present political climate, seems virtually irreversible.
For the average person, “deportation” brings to mind foreign gangsters and thugs who enter a country with bad intentions, get caught in some criminal activity, and are sent back to their countries of origin. In “Exiled,” however, Ms. Cengel introduces us to a unique community of people whose lives have been forever upended due to the unintended consequences of US immigration law. The vast majority of these individuals entered the US as young children, the children of Cambodian refugees who fled the terror the Khmer Rouge and Cambodia’s continuing civil war and were accepted into the US as “legal permanent residents” (”green card” holders) on track to become US citizens.
Ms. Cengel introduces us to several of these families, following them from the horror of the Khmer Rouge atrocities, through the terror of their escape across hostile, mined territory, the dangers and indignities of refugee camps, into the mean streets of American cities where they were surrounded by gangs, drugs and violence.
As the children of these families grew into their teens, some joined accepting social networks - gangs - for a sense of community and protection.
So, the stage was set. Cambodian refugee children grew up in the US surrounded by hopelessness, drugs and violence. Inevitably, some fell prey to those forces. Some became involved in illegal gang activities, some were only peripherally involved in the surrounding gang culture, some simply “smoked a joint” once in a while. Others found creative, but fraudulent, ways to support their families. Some two thousand were convicted of criminal activity (ranging from non-violent marijuana possession to more serious crimes), served their court-ordered prison sentences and, in most cases, returned to their communities and moved on with their lives. They started families, held down regular jobs and became contributing members of their communities.
It is important to understand that these people, while Cambodian citizens by law, are culturally American. The are Americans of Cambodian heritage. Most have little or no recollection of Cambodia. Indeed, many were born in refugee camps and have literally never stepped foot in Cambodia.
Under current U.S. law, however, any non-citizen convicted of a felony (or two or more misdemeanors} in the U.S. must be deported to their “home” country. Beginning in 2002, this was applied to Cambodian citizens who were living in the U.S. as “legal permanent residents.” Since that time, nearly seven hundred individuals have been sent “back” to Cambodia - most of them in shackles.
In her interviews with some families ensnared in this horrifying and bewildering legal maze, Ms. Cengel shares the unimaginable terror as young people - men and women - are taken from their families to be forcibly sent to Cambodia. In a few cases, deportation is avoided through legal maneuvers, but in hundreds of heartbreaking cases the deportations are carried out.
Among those facing deportation, Ms. Cengel reports several misunderstandings, revealing how little is known about the deportation process even now. For example, some ask how they could be identified as Cambodia “citizens” when they were born in Thai refugee camps. Even those who were born in Cambodia note that virtually all public records were destroyed during the Khmer Rouge time, so how could the Cambodian government claim they were its citizens?
It isn’t that the Cambodian government “claims” its citizens. It is the U.S. government that determines citizenship based on refugee records and other factors, and presents the evidence to the Cambodian side. Under Cambodian law, a person born to a Cambodian citizen anywhere in the world is a Cambodian citizen. Under international law, Cambodia is obligated to accept the “return” of its own citizens, even if they have never been there before.
One of the unique contributions of Ms. Cengel’s book is her account of the efforts of anti-deportation activists, both in the U.S. and in Cambodia, who continue their struggle to stop - even reverse - deportations. None can question their passion or the justice of their cause, but in the present political climate in the U.S., their successes, while precious, will be few. Ms. Cengel documents two particularly dramatic courtroom cases where judges stopped deportations. There have also been a handful of other legal victories and pardons by courageous governors, but these are far too rare.
This amazing, moving and well-researched book should be required reading for anyone involved in immigration reform: immigration activists, attorneys, judges, congressional staff, journalists and those facing deportation and their families and supporters. We are not dealing here with “widgets” - interchangeable pieces that can be moved about with ease. We are dealing, in each case, with individuals who have highly complex back stories. Semi-literate peasant families were plucked out of refugee camps after fleeing in terror from the cauldron of Khmer Rouge horror and dropped into American inner-cities with little psychological support or guidance. Some of them made bad choices and, as a result, are now being ripped from their families and forcibly sent to a country and culture about which they know little, if anything, often including a functional knowledge of the language.
Full disclosure: Katya Cengel is an acquaintance and I provided some assistance to her research in Cambodia in this book.
Reviewed by Bill Herod
“Exiled” is an extraordinary book detailing a little-known tragedy impacting thousands of extremely vulnerable people. It is deeply researched, both in the U.S. and in Cambodia, and is primarily based on extensive interviews with the people most directly affected. It is as gripping as a good novel, but the tragedy is real, continuing and, in the present political climate, seems virtually irreversible.
For the average person, “deportation” brings to mind foreign gangsters and thugs who enter a country with bad intentions, get caught in some criminal activity, and are sent back to their countries of origin. In “Exiled,” however, Ms. Cengel introduces us to a unique community of people whose lives have been forever upended due to the unintended consequences of US immigration law. The vast majority of these individuals entered the US as young children, the children of Cambodian refugees who fled the terror the Khmer Rouge and Cambodia’s continuing civil war and were accepted into the US as “legal permanent residents” (”green card” holders) on track to become US citizens.
Ms. Cengel introduces us to several of these families, following them from the horror of the Khmer Rouge atrocities, through the terror of their escape across hostile, mined territory, the dangers and indignities of refugee camps, into the mean streets of American cities where they were surrounded by gangs, drugs and violence.
As the children of these families grew into their teens, some joined accepting social networks - gangs - for a sense of community and protection.
So, the stage was set. Cambodian refugee children grew up in the US surrounded by hopelessness, drugs and violence. Inevitably, some fell prey to those forces. Some became involved in illegal gang activities, some were only peripherally involved in the surrounding gang culture, some simply “smoked a joint” once in a while. Others found creative, but fraudulent, ways to support their families. Some two thousand were convicted of criminal activity (ranging from non-violent marijuana possession to more serious crimes), served their court-ordered prison sentences and, in most cases, returned to their communities and moved on with their lives. They started families, held down regular jobs and became contributing members of their communities.
It is important to understand that these people, while Cambodian citizens by law, are culturally American. The are Americans of Cambodian heritage. Most have little or no recollection of Cambodia. Indeed, many were born in refugee camps and have literally never stepped foot in Cambodia.
Under current U.S. law, however, any non-citizen convicted of a felony (or two or more misdemeanors} in the U.S. must be deported to their “home” country. Beginning in 2002, this was applied to Cambodian citizens who were living in the U.S. as “legal permanent residents.” Since that time, nearly seven hundred individuals have been sent “back” to Cambodia - most of them in shackles.
In her interviews with some families ensnared in this horrifying and bewildering legal maze, Ms. Cengel shares the unimaginable terror as young people - men and women - are taken from their families to be forcibly sent to Cambodia. In a few cases, deportation is avoided through legal maneuvers, but in hundreds of heartbreaking cases the deportations are carried out.
Among those facing deportation, Ms. Cengel reports several misunderstandings, revealing how little is known about the deportation process even now. For example, some ask how they could be identified as Cambodia “citizens” when they were born in Thai refugee camps. Even those who were born in Cambodia note that virtually all public records were destroyed during the Khmer Rouge time, so how could the Cambodian government claim they were its citizens?
It isn’t that the Cambodian government “claims” its citizens. It is the U.S. government that determines citizenship based on refugee records and other factors, and presents the evidence to the Cambodian side. Under Cambodian law, a person born to a Cambodian citizen anywhere in the world is a Cambodian citizen. Under international law, Cambodia is obligated to accept the “return” of its own citizens, even if they have never been there before.
One of the unique contributions of Ms. Cengel’s book is her account of the efforts of anti-deportation activists, both in the U.S. and in Cambodia, who continue their struggle to stop - even reverse - deportations. None can question their passion or the justice of their cause, but in the present political climate in the U.S., their successes, while precious, will be few. Ms. Cengel documents two particularly dramatic courtroom cases where judges stopped deportations. There have also been a handful of other legal victories and pardons by courageous governors, but these are far too rare.
This amazing, moving and well-researched book should be required reading for anyone involved in immigration reform: immigration activists, attorneys, judges, congressional staff, journalists and those facing deportation and their families and supporters. We are not dealing here with “widgets” - interchangeable pieces that can be moved about with ease. We are dealing, in each case, with individuals who have highly complex back stories. Semi-literate peasant families were plucked out of refugee camps after fleeing in terror from the cauldron of Khmer Rouge horror and dropped into American inner-cities with little psychological support or guidance. Some of them made bad choices and, as a result, are now being ripped from their families and forcibly sent to a country and culture about which they know little, if anything, often including a functional knowledge of the language.
Full disclosure: Katya Cengel is an acquaintance and I provided some assistance to her research in Cambodia in this book.
April 1, 2019
SUMMARY: Important and well researched content, bad writing
As the daughter of Cambodian refugees and a member of the diaspora, I am glad that Cengel told these stories. They need to be heard as much as they need to be told. It is an important step in solving the issues within the community – continued trauma and threats of deportation. Cengel writes about four families facing cases of deportation, emphasizing on the failures of the system that led to these situations. Perhaps inspired by the stories of those she interviewed, she draws a parallel between Cambodia and the United States, intentional or not. During the Khmer Rouge, families were separated. This decreased the amount of attempted escapes; they were less likely to leave without their family, their children. In the United States, deportation rips families apart again. Parents, siblings and children are being lost again. This amplifies the trauma these generations are trying to heal from.
Although the themes are powerful and the content is well researched, the overall writing made it hard to get through the novel. To begin, the “Oh, these poor people” tone dehumanized the characters. That’s what they felt like to me, characters – not real, multi-dimensional people. This pitying tone contributes to the larger problem of how we talk about immigrants, particularly refugees.
In addition, there were often descriptions that made me uncomfortable. One of the biggest examples being the part where San and her husband are described.
It just made me so uncomfortable to see this strong, intelligent woman who survived a genocide by herself be introduced and described like that. To be reduced to her white husband’s submissive counterpart. Did no one find this part uncomfortable?
Part of the condescending tone is amplified by the link to tragedy – every story is bathed in blood, risk and hopelessness. The novel even ends with “‘I feel like I am a piece of trash,’ she says, ‘I am nobody.’” There are many stories, written by genocide survivors, that accurately tell their story of survival. In this novel, it broadly talked about the pain in the first and second generations, which is unique. However, I wanted it to focus more on the healing. Without that part, it again does not paint a full story.
Lastly, the order of the novel is disorienting. I cannot tell why she decided to order it like that or where she is going. She tells the story of four different families. Instead of going through each family, she often skips around without any context. It is hard to follow, especially with the many characters. Some are not given enough depth or characterization to be remembered. Because of the structure, Cengel often repeats details that have already been given, which makes the writing seem sloppy and flat.
Again, the content is brilliant and well researched. It has helped me connect with my background in many ways I have not been able to do so before. Now, I understand some of the roots behind the physical and mental ailments of family members. And that is powerful, so I thank Cengel for that.
However, just because it was well researched does not mean the quality of writing can be neglected. Cengel got too carried away with her creative license, flattening the richness of people into poorly written characters to fit into a particular narrative.
This critique is meant to help; next time you write a novel on real life people, please do better. Because we deserve better.
As the daughter of Cambodian refugees and a member of the diaspora, I am glad that Cengel told these stories. They need to be heard as much as they need to be told. It is an important step in solving the issues within the community – continued trauma and threats of deportation. Cengel writes about four families facing cases of deportation, emphasizing on the failures of the system that led to these situations. Perhaps inspired by the stories of those she interviewed, she draws a parallel between Cambodia and the United States, intentional or not. During the Khmer Rouge, families were separated. This decreased the amount of attempted escapes; they were less likely to leave without their family, their children. In the United States, deportation rips families apart again. Parents, siblings and children are being lost again. This amplifies the trauma these generations are trying to heal from.
Although the themes are powerful and the content is well researched, the overall writing made it hard to get through the novel. To begin, the “Oh, these poor people” tone dehumanized the characters. That’s what they felt like to me, characters – not real, multi-dimensional people. This pitying tone contributes to the larger problem of how we talk about immigrants, particularly refugees.
In addition, there were often descriptions that made me uncomfortable. One of the biggest examples being the part where San and her husband are described.
San didn’t want to tell her story. It was Tom Croucher, her husband, who insisted she talk. On the surface, they seem almost a cliché. He is a self-possessed American businessman with blue eyes and briefcase full of ideas. She is a petite Southeast Asian woman who loves to cook and lets her husband do all the talking […] That is where the white man-Asian woman cliché ends.
It just made me so uncomfortable to see this strong, intelligent woman who survived a genocide by herself be introduced and described like that. To be reduced to her white husband’s submissive counterpart. Did no one find this part uncomfortable?
Part of the condescending tone is amplified by the link to tragedy – every story is bathed in blood, risk and hopelessness. The novel even ends with “‘I feel like I am a piece of trash,’ she says, ‘I am nobody.’” There are many stories, written by genocide survivors, that accurately tell their story of survival. In this novel, it broadly talked about the pain in the first and second generations, which is unique. However, I wanted it to focus more on the healing. Without that part, it again does not paint a full story.
Lastly, the order of the novel is disorienting. I cannot tell why she decided to order it like that or where she is going. She tells the story of four different families. Instead of going through each family, she often skips around without any context. It is hard to follow, especially with the many characters. Some are not given enough depth or characterization to be remembered. Because of the structure, Cengel often repeats details that have already been given, which makes the writing seem sloppy and flat.
Again, the content is brilliant and well researched. It has helped me connect with my background in many ways I have not been able to do so before. Now, I understand some of the roots behind the physical and mental ailments of family members. And that is powerful, so I thank Cengel for that.
However, just because it was well researched does not mean the quality of writing can be neglected. Cengel got too carried away with her creative license, flattening the richness of people into poorly written characters to fit into a particular narrative.
This critique is meant to help; next time you write a novel on real life people, please do better. Because we deserve better.
June 7, 2020
The substance of this book — the tales of four Cambodian families resettled to the United States after Khmer Rouge persecution, the subsequent struggles of life in the US, the deportation orders and limbo that result for some — is really interesting and really really important. When refugees get green cards but don’t take the next step toward citizenship, they remain vulnerable to deportation, including for myriad NONviolent crimes; this can result in the breakup of families, double punishment for individuals who have already served time for crimes, and doesn’t take into account whether the individuals have any connection to Cambodia (especially relevant for those who were kids when they came to the US). So kudos to the author for focusing on this story. Unfortunately, the writing is not great - the organization of the book is confusing and jumpy, the tone is a little condescending, and there’s a lot of repetition within the narrative that could’ve been avoided. The writing isn’t *bad,* it’s just a bummer the content itself isn’t more powerfully delivered, because the *stories* are powerful and convey critical human and policy messages.
May 1, 2024
from “Healing Self, Others, the World,” Knox Book Beat, The Berkeley Times, 24 August, 2023.
Katya Cengel’s Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back (2018) makes a good effort at exploring a sticky immigration policy problem after the horrific four-year plus of the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge Communist Peoples Party regime slaughtered somewhere between 1.5 and 3 million of their own people out of 8 million between 1975 and 1979. Like the Nazis in Poland, China’s “Cultural Revolution,” European invasions (“settlement”) of North and South America (Africa, Asia…), Julius Caesar in Britain and other “successful” (insane) empire builders -- Pol Pot’s genocide began by sending adventurous, propagandized and viciously “loyal” militia members and officers to round up the wealthy bourgeoisie, intellectuals, cultural creatives, “foreigners,” minority religious members and community organizers. If you didn’t “convert” and “buy in,” you were “eliminated” by various horrific means.
In Cambodia, this caused chaotic mass emigration to nearby countries, particularly Vietnam and Thailand, and “political policy” spread to removals of workers, craftspeople and the peasantry from cities and homes, more “killing field” executions, starvation, agrarian work camps, death marches, disease and constant terror.
In the U.S., we had pulled out of Vietnam and ended up funding succeeding regimes in the “cold war” disruption that ensued. Our fluctuations in immigration policies paralleling the “Law and Order” expansion of courts and police powers clamping down on domestic drug and property crimes at that time caused many Cambodians who had emigrated to run afoul of the authorities here and face deportation in the ensuing 45+ years, like many of the “dreamers” who thought they were citizens already or misunderstood English, the complex, ever-changing laws and often struggled to find sustainable work and healthy living conditions.
The Trump administration exacerbated problems, and the families Cengel follows diligently, if not vividly descriptively, seem mostly cast adrift in a sea of misunderstanding; social, mental and physical illness caused by uprootedness, stress, poverty, cultural and racial prejudice, ancestral memory and/or PTSD.
This omnipresent fear, despair, struggle and visceral family memory unfortunately renders Cengel’s subject interviewees, insecurely isolated in a foreign land and language, almost mute, flat and unsympathetic to her readers. They literally “can’t talk about it” to us, even as Cengel tries valiantly to show them to us. This is the legacy of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the result of terror and abuse; which is almost impossible to “undo,” and vastly afflicts so many humans; individually, nationwide and globally.
This is a thorough piece of journalism and research, but unfortunately neither draws us in empathetically nor moves us towards a mindset or set of personal or political actions that might change this situation for her subjects. Maybe there are other ways for her and the community to make their distress better known, so that they can take action and changes can be made on a broader scale?
University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE.
Katya Cengel’s Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back (2018) makes a good effort at exploring a sticky immigration policy problem after the horrific four-year plus of the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge Communist Peoples Party regime slaughtered somewhere between 1.5 and 3 million of their own people out of 8 million between 1975 and 1979. Like the Nazis in Poland, China’s “Cultural Revolution,” European invasions (“settlement”) of North and South America (Africa, Asia…), Julius Caesar in Britain and other “successful” (insane) empire builders -- Pol Pot’s genocide began by sending adventurous, propagandized and viciously “loyal” militia members and officers to round up the wealthy bourgeoisie, intellectuals, cultural creatives, “foreigners,” minority religious members and community organizers. If you didn’t “convert” and “buy in,” you were “eliminated” by various horrific means.
In Cambodia, this caused chaotic mass emigration to nearby countries, particularly Vietnam and Thailand, and “political policy” spread to removals of workers, craftspeople and the peasantry from cities and homes, more “killing field” executions, starvation, agrarian work camps, death marches, disease and constant terror.
In the U.S., we had pulled out of Vietnam and ended up funding succeeding regimes in the “cold war” disruption that ensued. Our fluctuations in immigration policies paralleling the “Law and Order” expansion of courts and police powers clamping down on domestic drug and property crimes at that time caused many Cambodians who had emigrated to run afoul of the authorities here and face deportation in the ensuing 45+ years, like many of the “dreamers” who thought they were citizens already or misunderstood English, the complex, ever-changing laws and often struggled to find sustainable work and healthy living conditions.
The Trump administration exacerbated problems, and the families Cengel follows diligently, if not vividly descriptively, seem mostly cast adrift in a sea of misunderstanding; social, mental and physical illness caused by uprootedness, stress, poverty, cultural and racial prejudice, ancestral memory and/or PTSD.
This omnipresent fear, despair, struggle and visceral family memory unfortunately renders Cengel’s subject interviewees, insecurely isolated in a foreign land and language, almost mute, flat and unsympathetic to her readers. They literally “can’t talk about it” to us, even as Cengel tries valiantly to show them to us. This is the legacy of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the result of terror and abuse; which is almost impossible to “undo,” and vastly afflicts so many humans; individually, nationwide and globally.
This is a thorough piece of journalism and research, but unfortunately neither draws us in empathetically nor moves us towards a mindset or set of personal or political actions that might change this situation for her subjects. Maybe there are other ways for her and the community to make their distress better known, so that they can take action and changes can be made on a broader scale?
University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE.
August 31, 2021
Easy to read, touching book on the plight of the Cambodians - first from suffering under the Khmer Rouge regime, troubled childhood suffering from post trauma stress and failing to fit into the US system. All that leads to years of crime, incarceration and then facing deportation.
It is sad to read about how these people are victims all their lives and their struggle to fight against being separated from their families.
It is sad to read about how these people are victims all their lives and their struggle to fight against being separated from their families.
October 1, 2018
Four stars instead of five as a trigger warning for some disturbing episodes. A page-turner following some vey sympathetic characters - and a few not so, in four families who come to dealing with the same threat by different paths.
October 1, 2018
Very well written. What lives these people led! Barely survive an insane, murderous regime, somehow make it to the US, then get dumped in a violent ghetto where you are the bottom minority. The book sensitively describes the fate of these kids who live there half a lifetime, become culturally American, get on the wrong side of the law, sometimes for victimless "crimes", and are then dumped back into an alien third world culture they don't fit and can't speak the language.
The wider issue for me is the law change the author describes, that started all this. Thousands of long-term, established Permanent US Residents (Green Cards) are being deported if they have certain criminal records, even if the convictions go back decades, or are minor. For people like me, who had a green card for 46 years with no trouble, why worry? because there are tens of thousands of bureaucratic crimes you have never heard of that carry prison terms. One example- Governor Cuomo of New York picked up an eagle feather recently and took it home. That was a Federal crime! The same is true for hundreds of other bird's feathers! It is said that everyone commits at least three crimes a day, unknowingly. The law is very unclear how bad a "crime" has to be for deportation. If you have a green card, read this book and immediately apply for citizenship. And don't register for medical marijuana!
The wider issue for me is the law change the author describes, that started all this. Thousands of long-term, established Permanent US Residents (Green Cards) are being deported if they have certain criminal records, even if the convictions go back decades, or are minor. For people like me, who had a green card for 46 years with no trouble, why worry? because there are tens of thousands of bureaucratic crimes you have never heard of that carry prison terms. One example- Governor Cuomo of New York picked up an eagle feather recently and took it home. That was a Federal crime! The same is true for hundreds of other bird's feathers! It is said that everyone commits at least three crimes a day, unknowingly. The law is very unclear how bad a "crime" has to be for deportation. If you have a green card, read this book and immediately apply for citizenship. And don't register for medical marijuana!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews