Fresno Ca. - Bullard High valedictorian to be deported [View All]

[Kadie]

Bullard High valedictorian to be deported
By Vanessa Colón / The Fresno Bee
06/01/08 22:25:54


Arthur Mkoyan's 4.0 grade-point average has made him a valedictorian at Bullard High School in Fresno and qualified him to enter one of the state's top universities.

snip...
Arthur hasn't seen Armenia since he was 2, and he doesn't want to return. The thin, rather shy teenager doesn't speak Armenian and barely understands the language when it's spoken to him.

snip...
The family fled from the old Soviet Union and has been seeking asylum since 1992. The appeals ran out this year.

snip...
Mark Silverman, director of immigration policy at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, said Arthur Mkoyan's case illustrates why Congress should have passed the Dream Act. The act would have allowed students who excelled in school and stayed out of trouble to become permanent residents and attend college or enlist in the military

snip...
Arthur's father, Ruben Mkoian, ran a general store and worked as a police officer in the then-Soviet Republic of Armenia, where he was threatened by independence supporters as the Soviet Union was breaking up, Arthur's mother said. His store was broken into and the family home was burned down, she said.

snip...
Immigration officers picked up Mkoian, now 46, in April at his Fresno home, according to his family. He is now in a detention center in Arizona.

The officers left behind Arthur, his 12-year-old brother, who is a U.S.-born citizen, and their mother. Arthur and his mother now face deportation; the family plans to take the younger brother as well if forced to leave the country.


more...
http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/637728.html