Every now and then I come across an article that seems to pack in as many social issues as possible. This particular story on the impending deportation of a 25-year-old Indian man in Utah has several interesting angles on the subject’s predicament. International adoptee? Check. Religious minority? Check. Juvenile delinquent? Check. Confused young person who made some really bad decisions and tried to play the victim card? Errr, check, check, and uh, check.
Samuel Jonathan Schultz was born in India and adopted at age 3 by a Utah woman. His adopted mother apparently failed to complete his application for US citizenship upon his arrival to the US.
As a teenager, Schultz got in trouble with the law on numerous occasions. At the age of 18, he was arrested for driving a stolen vehicle (he claims that his friend stole the car and that he was simply on his way to return it). A year later, he was convicted again for car theft. Then there are the offenses that he committed as a juvenile:
Samuel Schultz has a juvenile record of theft offenses and engaged in altercations as a teen with his stepfather that occasionally required police intervention.
Because of his two adult convictions and his citizenship status, immigration authorities at Utah State Prison ordered that Schultz be deported.
But wait, there’s more. Schultz sought to appeal the deportation order because:
As a Christian in general, and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in particular, he believes he will be targeted for persecution [in India].
More importantly,
The 25-year-old knows little about the nation of his birth, speaks only English and believes he would have to live on the streets there, according to court documents.
The appeals judge, however, refused to reverse the deportation order and had this to say:
“He has not shown that people of the Mormon faith are routinely persecuted by the government or people operating outside the government,” Vandello stated in his ruling. “There are random acts of persecution of Christians and also of other religions, as far as that goes, even the majority religions on occasion.”
Ok. There’s a lot of baggage here to be unpacked. Is Schultz a victim of circumstance? No, I think he does deserve to serve time in prison. Is he rightfully terrified of having to relocate to India? After some consideration, yes. Does he deserve to be deported over his two felony convictions? I don’t know. But I’ll ask my fellow mutineers to weigh in.
I don’t know, Naina. He does seem to be using his religious background as a crutch, but I do think he is justified in being frightened to return to India. The article doesn’t mention if he is in touch with anyone there, but I’m guessing not, if he was adopted at that young an age. It’d be one thing if he was a recent immigrant or if he had ties to India, but he seems to have nothing there – no family, no friends, no connections. Repatriation would be extremely difficult in those circumstances.
And of course several people in India speak English, but not speaking any Indian language will only handicap him if he is to look for a job, etc. It’d be one thing if he had an extensive educational background and could fit into a professional workplace in India where many people speak English, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
It seems like he just needs some rehabilitation in Utah.
(Oh and this is off topic – sorry – but did you happen to see Dana Parson’s column in the LA Times, Naina? He reacts to both of your Sepia Mutiny posts. I posted it on the News tab. He doesn’t really seem to understand what you were getting it, but that shouldn’t be surprising :))
Well, he certainly sounds like a bag of douche. If he knows how to fight and steal cars, I doubt he’ll have much trouble living “on the streets.”
Hey Sai,
I see what you’re saying re only knowing English and being afraid to have to go back to India. But from what I understood from the article, the kid has already been to prison. If he’s not afraid to steal cars and go to prison then really, what’s so terrifying about going to India?
I’m usually very sympathetic about deportation cases where families are torn apart or there are huge debts in the balance. But in this case, it’s really hard for me to feel sorry for this kid.
i’m curious what India thinks about the United States exporting an American (in substance though not form) Criminal to India. He should be punished for the crime he committed. But should he really be punished for his mother’s incompetence (yes yes, I know deportation is not formally considered punishment. but c’mon, be serious). There should be a safe harbor for adoption mistakes or at least some statute of limitations (is there?). Maybe this case will be the catalyst (although, I can’t imagine it’s been the first).
“Is he rightfully terrified of having to relocate to India? I don’t think so.”
“If he’s not afraid to steal cars and go to prison then really, what’s so terrifying about going to India?”
I’m really surprised by the above comments. This guy, regardless of his criminal behavior, was adopted when he was THREE! Ofcourse he’s afraid to move to another country. I think what we have here is a little insecurity on the part of fellow sepia posters, “How dare he say he is afraid of India? Our country is just as good as his! He’s a common criminal and he’s afraid of our motherland? That is so not politically correct!”
Whatever. He’s a common criminal but he’s an American criminal. It makes no sense to deport him because of a technicality. Dude is doing whatever he can to stay in the US.
Sai,
Yeah, I saw that column. Still mulling over it. 🙂
Ok, you’re reading into this way too much. I already explained my position: I’m not sympathetic to him; therefore, I’m not sympathetic to his deportation. This has nothing to do with my opinions of India or whatever. Please stop putting words in my mouth.
Other than that, I can see your other points.
This kid will be working for the underworld in Mumbai with a month of getting back “home.” He may even write a novel about his experience, which will aptly start with a description of the apalling poverty in the desh. “What kind of government would allow this…” and all that. India should tell the US to buzz off if they try to deport him there.
I agree with Lamba. The kid is messed up but it seems particularly callous to send him to a country that’s not his anymore, especially when the citizen-ship muck-up wasn’t his fault.
I can’t believe this. They’re knowingly sending a criminal to India. What the hell! And I don’t think he would be persecuted “religiously” or because he doesn’t speak any Indian language, he’d have too much of a problem. That’s an insult to Indians everywhere. Our constitution is definitely more secular than America’s. Rant Over.
I don’t know if they did the right thing by sending him back to India but he does need some jailtime.
From a human POV it makes no sense to deport this guy. Hopefully a lawyer weighs in somewhere along the this thread. If his lawyers are focussing more on his Christian background and his not ‘fitting in’ in India, it seems that they don’t have any legal recourse in the law suggesting that he cannot be made a victim for someone else’s mistake. (And I feel that his mother should be censured somehow here)
Like people have already said, he is a douche but an American douche and should be tried as one.
they do this cambodian gang-bangers. the only diff. is those kids usually have some relatives in cambodia to help them out.
Wow, thanks for posting this, Naina. Actually, we are working on a feature article for Nirali on the broader theme of international adoptions. This brings in a whole new facet.
I certainly don’t think, however, that he deserves deportation. My two cents.
if he was adopted by an american then he should automatically be considered an an american, just like in marriage. sounds like an unintended loophole in the law.
he should be scared about going to india. he has no skills, family, job…and poverty in india is on a whole other level than poverty in the US. meanwhile kids of illegal immigrants are automatic citizens.
Just because it’s late and I am still in the office, when his mother brought him into the US, did she not show any papers to immigration? I know that young kids had their details aded to their parent’s passports before.. but he was just adopted, so how was he allowed in without any paperwork at the US immigration?
There’s a big difference between going to India and relocating to India. I don’t think he should be handed an extraordinary judgment based on a supposedly vast capacity for recklessness. It’s not about India per se, it’s about having to relocate to any other country which you have no significant ties to because of a record of petty crime. He probably didn’t “fear” prison because he knew it would be temporary; deportation often is not.
Also, we have to consider the context – as a child adoptee, he was technically (if not legally) brought to America without a choice and conditioned to become an American. His ties to India at this point are, to me at least, a technicality at most.
That aside, please do keep us updated on how you plan to respond to Mr. Parsons (that is, if you plan to)!
damn. the world is so differernt from the oligarchy of opinionheads i grew up w/. Naina is being attacked by the LA Times. razib was linked by the instapundit today. i’m waiting for MoDo to take on Vinod.
Ok, Sai, I now see your point. I concede that I had a lapse in judgement there. As you’re well aware, it’s been a LONG day. 🙂
Naina, I respect your ire and appreciate your considerable sarcasm but I disagree with you on this point. I concur with Lamba, Shimi and Nemo– he left India when he was a toddler. If you dumped me in India right now, I’d be lost; I was last there when I was 14 AND I still have some family hither and yon. Yes, yes I’m aware that people in India speak English better than plenty of Americans do, but I think this is beyond language, this is about culture and what’s right. It’s not his fault that he was adopted by someone who was incompetent and while he is a criminal who deserves to pay for what he’s done, he should be doing that here. Instead of dusting our American hands off gleefully while gloating about how we passed the clusterfuck, we should take care of our own criminals, not outsource them.
Ah, guess I should have hit refresh before publishing. 😉
This is frickin insane. The kid was adopted by an american when he was three! America is all he knows. Is it his fault that the stupid Mormon woman who adopted him neglected to do the necessary paperwork?
Let him serve time for his crimes in America. India should refuse to take him back.
What’s wrong with the latter? If we do
deportoutsource this guy, his proficiency in English vernacular would ingratiate him with his normally rankled customers and enable him to quickly rise through the ranks. His skills could even earn him a couple Employee of the Month tiffins at the local call center. Everybody wins.I agree with Sai,
He should be punished as a US national. Yes hey is a miscreant, but as far as miscreants go he is not breaking any records in the US. He is as much an American as an American can get. I am wondering if he had been a white kid would the judgement have been any different?
As an Indian, this guy roaming around on Indian streets scares me. India has loads of endemic social problems, but one thing we don’t see is violent random-nature crime of the nature of the US: mugging is unknown in India as is carjacking. The last thing I want is this guy introducing this stuff in India.
Yep, we have to admit he’s an Indian citizen by birth and descent, and the US has a golden opp to get rid of him, so India’s got to take him. But I hope they won’t just be letting him loose on the streets, but send him off to Tihar or somewhere to pass his days contemplating his purpose.
I do feel sorry for the upbringing this guy’s had though. Why did his mom adopt him all the way from India if she didn’t want to or have the knowledge to raise him properly?
I am with naina.
There is a serious technicality. I have read quite a few stories like this NYT, especially since 2001. Some deserve sympathy***. In past, they would look the other way but since 9/ 11, they do not cut slack. If they cut slack for one, what is there not to cut slack for other guy or girl.
There are gangs here who full of illegals. Is it US responsibility to take care of them. Car theft @ 18 is often a starting point……..repeat offenders (he was convicted twice) are not going sing hymns pretty soon.
Say, a teenage gang member, dope dealer in NYT, Los Angeles comes from Mexico, Peru, Vietnam to USA at the age of 7, 9, 11, 13 with their parents illegally. Should they be also allowed to stay too if convicted? Should anyone be ever deported? Everyone should become an asylum seeker at some point. Is there is cut off date, cut of age?
Sure, her mother messed up time and time, even as late as in 1989, there was a general amnesty, when you could get you status fixed no questions asked.
India has lot of phoren criminals – petty and serious both – at one point, Goa was the safest hide out for the most wanted in the world. Just meld in with the hippies, and you could escape detection for ever. We all know Shantaram.
He will be in the top of food chain within 15 days – English speaking skills, and Amrikan panache will come handy.
He is 25, he knew what he was doing.
*** There was Pakistani teenage honor student deported after 9/ 11 as his mother came to US on visitor visa, and died few months later. He stayed with his uncle and aunt. That is a case that deserve second look. They were some felllowship freshmen to Columbia, Vanderbilt, etc. who are illegals. They deserve second look.
This American life had a similar story about el Salvadorian kids who grew up in the US being deported down there because of similar issues. The kids are completely lost and out of place in a country they have never known. Think this is more indicative of the assumptions of the deporting country that color and race take precedent over the individual.
razib was linked by the instapundit today
hey, i’ve been linked/mentioned by glenn as far back as 2002 (query “Razib”). nothing new there 😉
whatever his crimes in the u.s., if he has had absolutely no contact with india or his relatives there since arriving in the u.s. as a child, it would be unkind to deport him, but not because he will be “persecuted.” for all intents and purposes, despite the lack of a piece of paper, he is an american, and only an indian by birth. he should do his time in the u.s. he already seems to have had a troubled childhood, what will being in what is essentially a foreign country to him do to him? desperation could make him do even worse things in india.
do his two older brothers and older sister who came with him to the u.s. at the same time have citizenship? what about the other two indian children she had already adopted before them? if they all have citizenship, why was he neglected?
More likely he’ll kill himself. Unless some people there take it upon themselves to help him out. If the Indian media gives this a lot of coverage he may get some benefactors. Otherwise he faces a very bleak existence in India. Perhaps he could be hired in a salesman type of capacity somewhere, where speaking English despite not necessarily having a degree could come in handy. By the way he looks like his origins in India might be from the NorthEast somewhere.
I’m thinking maybe he could be absorbed somewhere in India’s burgeoning retail market. Selling appliances at the mall type of thing. Even there though you do need some ability in the local Indian language since not all the customers will want to speak English. And it sure wouldn’t be a comfortable life. Kush, do you (or does anyone else) have specific ideas about legitimate jobs someone like this could do in India (and manage to get by)? He definitely has to find his niche somewhere if he’s going to survive.
Kush, do you (or does anyone else) have specific ideas about legitimate jobs someone like this could do in India (and manage to get by)? He definitely has to find his niche somewhere if he’s going to survive.
Sales – be it for cars, electronic appliances, hotels, clubs, or doing some kind of HR kinda of work for outsourcing outfits.
In all honesty, he could land up with a very decent job in Delhi/ Bangalore/ Mumbai using his English language skills. Sure, somebody has to give him a break, maybe through one of the charitable Christian organizations in India might give him the first one, and be his under writer.
English skills in India can take you really far.
Amitabh, How about call center?
Seriously, he can do OK but he does need a benefactor there immediately.
a minor note: most of the world’s christians don’t consider mormons christians. mormons reject the trinity, believe that god has a consort, that he lives on a planet in this universe and has a physical body, that there are an infinite number of gods, that human males can become gods and that god was a man, that jesus and satan are brothers conceived of sexual intercourse between god and his wife…and on and on….
but razib, i do not think that (mormoms difference) should be an issue at all in India. the reason, i brought christian organization because they will most likely show some empathy for someone like him. for that matter, he could be noticed by some hindu, muslim, sikh benefactor too.
but someone who gives him the first break.
however, if you are resourceful in India and willing to bend the rules, you can really take off.
a case like shantaram is not an exceptional case, he talks of expats in India, hanging around in Leopolds in Mumbai with papers long expired. So long they did not doing anything shocking in India like pedophillia, you are left alone to thrive (these are Shantaram/ Gregory Robert’s observations).
risible (#8):
This is a point which was overlooked. It takes two to make a deportation happen – there’s the deportation and there’s the repatriation. How do these things work, generally? How do the treaties work? Is the Government of India duty-bound to take him “back?” If so, how do they go about it? Where to they put him? Which city, even?
Does anyone know?
the reason, i brought christian organization because they will most likely show some empathy for someone like him.
sure, but not because he’s christian. most christian organizations are pretty hostile to mormonism because it consider it a fake, a non-christian religion trying to pass it off as christian (e.g., almost no christian organization accepts mormon baptisms as valid – i believe that the episcopalian bishop in salt lake did years ago, and that was a big deal).
U.S. immigration policy needs to be more sensitive to the countries they plan to deport to. I’m currently writing a research paper about U.S. policy in El Salvador and toward Salvadoran refugees during the 1980s, and how these policies gave rise to the multinational gang Mara Salvatrucha 13. By wanting to send its criminals elsewhere, the U.S. only contributes to the growth of crime in the receiving countries. This article details how deportation of gang members leads to the flourishing of gangs in Central America. MS-13 went from being a L.A. street gang to a Western hemisphere gang thanks largely in part to U.S. policies. As a result, El Salvador’s homocide rate is the highest in the hemisphere, even higher than Colombia which is engaged in a civil war. Obviously the situation with the Indian adoptee is different, but something to think about nonetheless.
The US has agreements with a number of countries on accepting citizens that are deported from the U.S. Generally, the country involved (India in this case) helps in obtaining appropriate travel documentation, often times a passport, and they proceed through immigration upon arrival. The government isn’t duty bound to “place” the person anywhere. Occasionally, they’ll have helped the person locate relatives or someone who may be able to assist with housing and other needs.
I’d point out that other coutries do send U.S. citizens back to the U.S. as well.
The Mara Salvatrucha issue underlines the inter-connectdness between immigration (legal or otherwise) and the disparities that exist in this hemisphere. Many of the Maras are children of illegal immigrants and those who used the amnesty and TPS programs who created their own gangs based on a self-identified need for community, exclusion from U.S. society, and lack of supportive family structure, and a failure of individual responsibility. But it’s not an easy task to find a root cause, and I don’t think it’s justfiable to say that U.S. policy is largely to blame without giving an adequate accounting of the governance failures in El Salvador, the lack of economic opportunities there that “push” migration to the U.S., the civil wars (where the U.S. and others took sides) and the lack of family units in towns where 90% of the men have gone elsewhere to work.
Guantanamo Bay, no?
He needs to re-enter the US and go to a different part of the country and pretend that he ran away from home when he was 12 who does not remember his social security number.
Another point: There are a lot of young kids in the US who have no records whatsoever. This dude doesnt have an accent. ICE will never get involved if he were to re-enter the US through Mexico and start living in lets say Michigan.
a minor note: most of the world’s christians don’t consider mormons christians. mormons reject the trinity, believe that god has a consort, that he lives on a planet in this universe and has a physical body, that there are an infinite number of gods, that human males can become gods and that god was a man, that jesus and satan are brothers conceived of sexual intercourse between god and his wife…and on and on….
Really, ROFL.. looks like Hinduism to me. Hindus in America should then support Mitt Romney for President.
looks like many of the comments are hostile to the guy in question. I pity the condition he is in. India should accept him. India has thousands of petty criminals and adding one more would not be a big deal. Also, India should tighten up the adoption process. I think China has done the right thing recently by tightening the adoption process.
This is appalling. This is a child dragged from his original homeland for the benefit of a woman too stupid to make sure his immigration was secure. No wonder he has problems. He is a petty criminal and basically still a child. His only attachment to India is his brown skin, and despite the number of Indians who probably speak English, how is he supposed to realistically fit into a society without speaking any of the local dialects?
This kid is obviously an American, and should be punished just like any other American.
*Though I would definitely prefer the exile to jail and I don’t speak those languages either.
I’m surprised at the outsourcing criminals responses. Please! In this case, due to the age he immigrated to the US I do feel some sympathy for him, and perhaps jail time is better than deportation, but if we are not a nation of laws, what are we?
My ex lost his medical license in two separate states due to writing prescriptions for himself (drug and alcohol addict). The first hospital sent him to expensive rehab. Expensive, expensive top of the line rehab. As far as I know (haven’t had contact in years), they never had success deporting him. The system is messed up, big-time. We keep people we shouldn’t and send back people we shouldn’t. It’s completely random and a huge, bureacratic nightmare. The system needs a massive overhaul. I mean, why send this kid back and not a person who immigrated as an adult and has multiple convictions?
‘ i>This is appalling. This is a child dragged from his original homeland for the benefit of a woman too stupid to make sure his immigration was secure.‘
Since when is 25 still a child? I guess you get a pass at 30 now? Why do people still kepp extending adolescence to make excuses?
He needed to pull it together as an adolescent and he didn’t. If you have time served either as a juvenile or as an adult, you have had your opportunity to grow up in more ways than most people.
Caco should tighten up and do his time like the rest of us.
The first thought that came to my mind had nothing to do with the fairness of his deportation, immigration issues, or the international adoption issues that have been raised. What of the prison officials that initially sought his deportation? This, to me, is symptomatic not only of immigration issues, but also illustrates the problems facing the penal system in the U.S. My guess is that the Utah prison system, like most in the U.S., is in a state of overcrowding and general crisis right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if the prison officials sought deportation just because it would be one less person they’d have to deal with in their prisons.
My ex lost his medical license in two separate states due to writing prescriptions for himself (drug and alcohol addict).
I wonder about the level of prescription drug abuse in the desi community. Somebody recently approached me on this issue after they got themselves into legal trouble. In this dude’s case, the family made it much worse by trying to ‘hide’ the problem instead of seeking treatment etc.