The News is asking GOP presidential candidates if Nadia Habib deserves deportation

nydailynews.com
Editorials
Friday, September 30th 2011, 4:00 AM


Nadia Habib, a 20-year-old from Queens, is facing deportation to Bangladesh.

The question has been put to the Republican presidential candidates: Should the United States deport 20-year-old Nadia Habib of Queens and her mother, Nazmin, to Bangladesh as illegal immigrants?

Under pressure from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the Obama administration yesterday spared Nadia and Nazmin, at least temporarily, from being separated by an ocean and a continent from Nadia's father, who is a legal resident, and her three siblings, who are citizens by birth.

The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency made the right and humane call in granting a reprieve to Nadia and Nazmin shortly before they were due to board a plane. Booting them would only have highlighted even more dramatically how unjust and unwise America's immigration policies are.

The GOP contenders may have different perspectives as they seek to lead a party that vehemently opposes providing a path to citizenship to the country's 11 million undocumented residents.

Their stances include revoking the grant of citizenship to anyone born here, standing against the DREAM Act, which would offer safe harbor to children who were brought into the country illegally and have good records, and focusing on border security to the exclusion of all else.

Thus the Daily News Editorial Board yesterday emailed queries to the campaigns of Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul. The intent is to measure the human impact of their rhetoric and policies on families like the Habibs.

Nadia's father, Jawad, came to the U.S. in 1981. He started driving a taxi and earned a green card. Nazmin and Nadia came here in 1993, on a tourist visa, when Nadia was 20 months old. They overstayed the visa, becoming illegal immigrants.

Having settled in Woodside, the family grew with three more siblings: Naiem, Fahad and Nashita, all citizens by birth. Nadia, a top student, graduated from Bronx High School of Science and now studies psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

In an attempt to become legal, Nazmin and Nadia petitioned for asylum, citing the possibility of political persecution if forced to return to Bangladesh. Their bid was rejected in 2000 and they remained in legal limbo until Sept. 10, when the feds ordered them out of the country.

ICE deports about 400,000 people a year, a number that Director John Morton says is the agency's top capacity. He announced recently that, with so many undocumented residents to choose from, his agents would make a priority of getting rid of the estimated 1 million criminals in the illegal population, followed by recent border crossers, followed by repeat offenders.

The guidelines have been derided as giving amnesty to all others, despite the fact that the U.S. cannot deport an 11-million member population of illegal mothers, fathers and children. Again, Perry, Romney, Cain, Bachmann, Huntsman, Gingrich, Santorum and Paul may disagree.

So what say each of them to the question? Would you have ripped Nadia and Nazmin away from Jawad, Naiem, Fahad and Nashita - and away from America?

We await replies.

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