Patterson Blind to Proposition’s Flaws
May 13, 2010
by Wais Hassan
Last week, New York Governor David Paterson said he would create the nation’s first “pardon panel” to expunge the criminal records of legal aliens in order to help them avoid deportation. In a speech announcing his idea, Patterson claimed that, “Some of our immigration laws, particularly with respect to deportation, are embarrassingly and wrongly inflexible.” Patterson said the panel would pardon immigrants if they meet certain requirements including rehabilitation and demonstrate that they do not pose a threat to public safety.
Patterson’s move is in direct defiance of federal immigration policy. Immigration policy and deportation practices have traditionally been the jurisdiction of the federal government. Patterson first brought attention to this issue in March when he pardoned 29-year-old IT executive Qing Hong Wu for crimes Wu committed as a teenager. Wu, a legal immigrant from China, was convicted of a mugging at the age of 15. Last November, when applying for citizenship Wu’s name was flagged by ICE officials. He was subsequently detained at an ICE enforcement center in New Jersey and awaited deportation until being pardoned in March.
Cases such as Wu’s are fairly rare within the New York immigration system, but it likely that a formal panel to consider pardons will generate thousands of pardon appeals by immigrants seeking US citizenship status and a shield from further prosecution. It is likely to become a very costly proposition for a state already facing huge budget deficits.
According to recent estimates from Albany, New York faces an $8.2 billion deficit for this fiscal year. Last week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he would seek to shed 11,000 public employees through layoffs and attrition in order to shore up the city’s $4.1 billion deficit. New York is still in the grip of a major recession and the Governor’s office would be better served by concentrating on larger concerns.
Patterson’s proposal also seems to be both murky and poorly thought out. It is not clear how Patterson differentiates a major crime from a minor one. Crimes that involve physical assaults like a mugging do not seem like “minor” crimes that can be so easily forgiven. Would victims be given any chance to voice their opinions in upcoming pardon appeals? It is easy to imagine the pardoning process going horribly wrong by allowing serious offenders to manipulate it.
By proposing this law while denouncing the newly passed Arizona law criminalizing illegal immigration, Patterson seems to be advocating a hypocritical double standard. He denounced the Arizona law for being unconstitutional but then proposes a policy that violates Constitutional jurisdiction over immigration policy. Patterson seems only to adhere to the Constitution when it produces results that he agrees with. Hopefully Patterson’s successor in 2011 will reexamine his shoddy proposal and reject it forthright.
