The way I see it, there are 5 alternatives here in the case below. #1- Keep this guy in jail. Throw away the key. #2- Deport the guy back to Liberia. Good luck. Send us a post card. #3- Release the guy from jail immediately. Let him travel freely in the US without restriction. Jail anyone who gives him employment. Or jail him again on vagrancy charges, if no one does offer him employment and he has to start to beg in the street to eat. #4- Release the gentleman. Give him a permanent room at the Holiday Inn with a daily free continental breakfast. He can watch cable. It's less government expense and more humane, too. #5- Admit that he has just as good a right to be here as you or I, and just as good a right to employment as you or I have. Comrades on the list, which is the best of these difficullt choices? Tony __________________________________ Amnesty group vilifies INS for asylum seeker's years of imprisonment 07/29/2000 By Dan Malone / The Dallas Morning News Amnesty International USA on Friday denounced as abusive the continued incarceration of an asylum seeker who � although he has committed no crime � has been imprisoned for almost six years. Jimmy Johnson, a 36-year-old Liberian, is one of the longest, if not the longest, held foreigners in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He has been in custody since arriving in the United States on Sept. 4, 1994. His claim for asylum was approved by an immigration judge last year, and Mr. Johnson was ordered released. But the INS contested the judge's rulings, and Mr. Johnson remains incarcerated in the York County Prison in Pennsylvania. His case was first reported in The Dallas Morning News on June 18. At a Pennsylvania news conference Friday, Amnesty officials said that they questioned INS officials about the Johnson case and other issues in April, but received no response. "The continued imprisonment of a man declared to be a refugee by an immigration court seems abusive and is of grave concern to our organization," Amnesty executive director William F. Schulz and refugee office director Nicholas Rizza wrote in an April 30 letter released Friday. Immigration officials have defended the prolonged incarceration of Mr. Johnson, claiming that he lied about his identity. It would be dangerous, they say, to release someone without an established identity. Mr. Johnson entered this country on a bogus passport, an action necessary, he said, because all his identity papers had been confiscated by the Liberian government. Amnesty also asked INS to stop housing its inmates in the York County Prison unless conditions there improve. The organization said asylum seekers are housed with criminals in the facility. "Asylum seekers are not criminals, but at YCP they are treated as if they are," Mr. Schulz said. . Immigration officials said conditions at the prison meet their standards for detention, but said they should have given "higher priority" to the issues raised by Amnesty. Charles Zemski, acting director of the INS Philadelphia district, said the agency will respond to the group's concerns after a "thorough review." Mr. Johnson's plea for freedom remains under consideration by the Board of Immigration Appeals. A spokesman for the board said this week that he was unsure when a decision would be announced. Mr. Johnson's attorney, Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran of New York, this week filed a lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia seeking his release. He said Mr. Johnson's continued incarceration is "excessive" and "shocks the conscience." _______________________________________________ Crashlist mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
