Thursday, April 17, 2008

Kentucky Victim of Terrorism to be Deported

It's no surprise that the maladministration that thought the best way to find terrorists hiding in Pakistan was to attack Iraq also has trouble distinguishing victims from perpetrators.

But that ludicrous incompetence has become a matter of life and death for a student at Lexington's Transylvania University.

As Page One Kentucky neatly put it:

Sudanese scholar and refugee Lino Nakwa just had his green card application denied because he was kidnapped by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army when he was 12-years-old, the very reason he was granted entry to the United States of America as a victim of persecution. Because Nakwa was held captive against his will for one month by the Sudanese terrorist organization, the Department of Homeland Security has decided Nakwa poses a security threat.

Sound preposterous that Lino, a Dean’s List student at Transylvania University trying to make everything right with the world would be carelessly tossed aside?

Click here to learn more about Lino Nakwa and contact your legislators to urge their support of one of the few immigrants in the U.S. who follow the legal route to citizenship only to be castigated by the system.

Don’t sit idly by while the United States allows another person to die in genocidal Sudan. Which is what will happen if Lino is deported. It’s sad enough that we’ve (the world, not just the USA) allowed hundreds of thousands of others to perish.

On Wednesday, Transy students set up a phone bank on campus, providing cell phones for people to call Senator Mitch McConnell, R-KY, and Lexington Congressman Ben Chandler, D-KY6 and urge them to save Nakwa.


Nakwa hugs a fellow student at Wednesday's phone-a-thon.


As Transylvania President Charles L. Shearer wrote in a letter supporting Nakwa:

“Lino’s story is compelling, his resilience as a survivor is deeply touching, and his belief against all odds that there can be a better future brings hope that the American Dream is still possible.”

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

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