<p>""according to the article, he will face deportation after he serves time in prison.</p>
<p>I think the only reason they are bringing that up is because he was offered a plea deal in which he would serve community service hours only and they would “help” him not get deported, but he turned it down.</p>
<p>I wonder if his attorneys advised him to turn that down?""</p>
<p>No need to speculate endlessly.</p>
<p>He had NO option. The plea bargain or guilty verdict has the same result. He WILL be deported and be I inadmissible for LIFE to the US … And Canada for a very long time. No judge can overturn the Immigration law passed in 1996. Plea bargaining to any felony with a possible sentence of more than one year regardless of probation meant an immediate deportation. Most of the deportations of legal residents are for DUi, domestic violence, and Ill-advised plea agreements. </p>
<p>Nobody ever said justice had to be fair or just. As often, justice is blind and a travesty. This was the latter.</p>
<p>This outcome should only please the most rabid zealots and abject activists.</p>
<p>I find there are parents who “teach” their child they are better than others in a roundabout way. I have found that when kids get into disagreements with each other, there are parents who feel that as long as their kid is getting the better end of the deal, then all’s fair. </p>
<p>As early as kindergarten, there are kids on their way to being thought of as not as good as the rest. And parents of the other kids are so happy it’s not their kid, they encourage their kid to look the other way. </p>
<p>It’s not deliberately cruel, it’s more just a sad fact of human nature.</p>
<p>I don’t consider myself a rabid zealot but from what I’ve read of the trial I am pleased with the verdict. There has to be a line somewhere between being a kid and being an adult. Eighteen-year old college students are adults. Incredibly immature, sheltered, coddled perhaps, but legally, adults. And they also have the right to have sex with other consenting adults, whether they met them off the internet or randomly hooked up at a party. Tyler made a reasonable request for private use of the room. Ravi was not charged in Tyler’s death, but with invasion of privacy and bias intimidation. If your child’s roommate set up a webcam, so that it could be viewed remotely, and advertised it to others…how could anyone say that is not an invasion of privacy?</p>
<p>psych_ : Agree. That’s the impression that I got.
Again, I come back to the idea of the same situation with different genders. If my 18 yr old freshman daughter had a roommate who, in the first 2-3 weeks of school, was meeting random adult men on the internet and bringing them back to the dorm room for sexual hookups I would be appalled. I would probably march down to the housing office myself if I could to have a switch made. I would not expect her to watch intimate activity on a webcam, but I would be concerned about theft and the security of the room. It would gross me out. I would expect her to be freaked out by the situation. It wouldn’t surprise me if she told her friends on facebook chat or via text message to process the information and try to figure out what to do about it (no twitter account thankfully). Up to that point Ravi’s response does not seem deviant to me. Obviously, the invasion of privacy in the second incidence wasn’t the right choice, and it doesn’t seem out of bounds that there would be charges for that, but don’t think it rises to the level of a hate crime. Clementi having sex with an adult man in his dorm room in front of a known webcam (having a history of logging into live webcam sex sites) also demonstrates a lack of judgement. It seems that rather than being intimidated Clementi was at least ambivalent about the idea that his actions might have been observed.</p>
<p>I looked up what the jury was permitted to know from Clementi’s email to his RA regarding his feelings. "“I feel like my privacy has been violated and extremely uncomfortable sharing a room with someone who would act in this manner.” Actually, the original email has “wildly inappropriate” before the word manner but it was redacted by the judge. </p>
<p>If your child was the one being recorded, imagine how fast you might march down to that housing office.</p>
<p>Among the lessons from this, I am concluding that if I had a child who was not a citizen, I would have them become one at the earliest possible moment. From a little reading, it seems that this can only occur when the child turns 18. Any experts want to comment on whether this is correct?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Almost as fast as if my child were bringing in sexual partners from Craigs list.</p>
<p>Dadx, I’m pretty sure that if a parent takes the step from permanent resident to naturalized citizen (with a minimum 5 years between the 2 steps) at that point all of their children under the age of 18 automatically become naturalized citizens.</p>
<p>It seems that this family did not choose to become naturalized citizens.</p>
<p>My job was transferred from Canada to the US 10 years ago, as a result of which my entire family has been through the entire employment-based immigration process from end to end (we’re naturalized citizens now) and by virtue of having put in my time on immigration forums (like CC but revolving around immigration rather than college) I know something about other paths to immigration as well. Glad to help.</p>
<p>dadx, your first conclusion was bang-on in my opinion. Luckily, this doesn’t have to wait until the child turns 18.</p>
<p>Once the family attains permanent resident status (or in popular language, they get green cards), then after five years residing in the US, they can apply for US citizenship. If a person attains permanent residency by marrying a US citizen, they only have to wait three years. When people immigrate to the US with their minor children, as in the case of the young Ravi, or my daughter, normally when the parent(s) get green cards, the kids quite straightforwardly do too, as dependents.</p>
<p>So, after five (or three) years, the parent(s) are eligible to apply for US citizenship (naturalization). This is a fairly straightforward process (the hard part is getting the permanent residency). Under the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, when a parent becomes a US citizen, any child they have who is a permanent resident, under 18 and residing in the US, automatically becomes a US citizen too. You can go right down to the post office or passport office and apply for their US passport (and that’s what we did).</p>
<p>The immigration process is very long because there are processing delays of months and years at USCIS. They don’t have enough funding to handle the queue of applicants. When we were got our green cards, we were happy to realize that if we applied for citizenship at the first possible moment (actually you can submit the application after 5 years less 90 days), with a bit of luck we’d naturalize while D was still 17 and she’d automatically become a US citizen. So that’s what we did, and it all worked out.</p>
<p>Quite honestly, we probably would have been slower to seek US citizenship if not for our D. We were very conscious that stories abound of young adult permanent residents who do something stupid and get deported. You also easily lose your permanent residency status if you move outside the US (e.g. attending college abroad) and believe me, it is very hard to gain back.</p>
<p>Without commenting on the tragic case that provoked this question, when I read some background, the first thing I thought was “What was that family thinking?” God forbid that a child should ever get into that kind of situation, but for sure, if your kid is raised in the US, they’re an American in their heads, whether or not they have the paperwork for legal status. IMO, when immigrants bring their kids to grow up here, we owe it to them to make sure they become US citizens. Sadly, illegal immigrants don’t have this option.</p>
<p>I don’t recall seeing all the details of the plea deals offered him but would enough of the charges have been dropped (ie the witness tampering charges) that there would have been a very low risk of deportation had he pled? I realize there would always be some risk in overcoming the “moral turpitude” issues even if he had but it really does seem likely that he was either given poor legal advice or he and his family refused to accept possibly good legal advice.</p>
<p>For clarity: My understanding is that there was no “recording” or “posting” of images involved. Yes, the web-cam was still an invasion of privacy but the “posts” were all conversational tweets.</p>
<p>In the popular media the story is told as if Ravi recorded a video and posted the video on the internet. Whatever his crimes were, that was not one of them. The story is also often told as if Ravi “outed” Clementi. Clementi was newly “out” and according to the NewYorker story had only told his parents 3 days before leaving for school with mixed response.</p>
<p>From The New Yorker:
'In September, Clementi attended at least one meeting of the Bisexual, Gay, and Lesbian Alliance, a Rutgers student organization. As he put it to Cruz, “I would consider myself out . . . if only there was someone for me to come out to.” '</p>
<p>The article continues on to describe Clementi’s extensive internet activity and “increased boldness” at Rutgers which I will not copy here.</p>
<p>Again, I am not trying to argue that Ravi was innocent of all charges, that he is a sympathetic individual or that what he did was acceptable. However, unlike much of the media portrayal I don’t think this case should have been elevated to a black and white “let’s make and example of him” case of bias intimidation.</p>
<p>Let’s say that a college freshman had posted on the Parents Forum, as some kids do, saying something like this:</p>
<p>"I thought of posting this on College Life, but I thought I would get better answers here on the Parents Forum. </p>
<p>My roommate is gay. I don’t mind that, although it’s something we haven’t talked about. We’ve only known each other for a few weeks, and he’s really shy, so we haven’t talked about much of anything, actually. But there’s something going on now that I’m uncomfortable with. He’s just asked to sexile me for the third time in a week. And the guy he’s seeing looks, well, strange. He’s a lot older than we are, and he looks like he’s kind of poor. I’m worried about having to leave my stuff in the room when he’s there, and I’m also worried that my roommate, who is a sort of timid little guy, might not be safe with him. I also don’t like being sexiled. What do you think I should do?"</p>
<p>How would we have responded?</p>
<p>And let’s say that later on in the thread, it came out that the OP had used a Webcam to see what was going on in the room during the roommate’s second date with MB.</p>
<p>How would we have responded to that?</p>
<p>I can imagine that a lot of different reactions would be posted here. And after the OP mentioned the Webcam thing, I’m sure that some of us would have warned that he should stop this immediately because it could get him in trouble with the college authorities – maybe even leading to being kicked out of the dorms.</p>
<p>But would any of us have imagined that something like this would be brought to the attention of the police? Or that it would lead to the OP being sentenced to prison and possible deportation?</p>
<p>Yes, when social inappropriateness crosses the line and breaks a law as happened in this case. Jerks spray paint swastikas (sp?) on churches. Maybe they’re 18 and don’t really realize the message they’re sending? Problem is they did it and it is a crime. What type of 18 yr old would do something so insensitive? An @$$ hole who shouldn’t be held accountable because he would probably spry paint hate words/ symbols on other churches as well because he was just a real jerk? Where did this child come from? Most likely had parents that didn’t bring him up quite right. </p>
<p>At some point being a real jerk can get you in trouble. It behooves parents to teach their kids not to be jerks! Jerks aren’t born, they’re made.</p>
<p>The webcam thing might get him kicked out of the dorms? What is wrong with you people? You can’t videotape people having sex and post it on the Internet without their consent. Really basic stuff here.</p>
<p>Marian didn’t you forget to include: “I have been thinking about using my webcam in order to watch my things. I have dabbled in using webcams before so I am familiar with how to do this. I respect the opinions of you parents but will probably also seek out opinions from friends on Twitter and I may even give them access to my webcab videos as they are playing.” ;)</p>
<p>Ravi, you could have just told your roommate “no”, that you were not comfortable with allowing strangers in your room…</p>
<p>but had there been a SECOND webcam that was viewed by anyone else - which is what Ravi intended - it DEFINITELY would have gone viral in a matter of minutes…</p>
<p>…say someone hires a hit man to kill someone, is he any less guilty than the person that actually pulled the trigger?</p>
<p>Eh, I don’t think so. What he did is what I would expect any other kid to do. Anyway, Tyler overreacted by a ton. If tomorrow you take a picture of me kissing someone and the next day I commit suicide, I would hope that people look at you as innocent and me overreacting</p>