Con-turned-social worker may avoid deportation

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Source: San Francisco Chronicle

(05-06) 16:12 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- An immigrant who spent 19 years in prison for a San Francisco kidnapping and robbery won a chance to remain in the United States on Friday when a federal appeals court told immigration judges to consider his work with youths and community service behind bars before deciding whether to deport him to China.

Xiao Fei "Eddy" Zheng was 16 when he committed his crime. He is now 41, works at a Chinatown youth center and has received support from numerous community leaders and officials in his fight against deportation, including his prosecutor and a former state prison director.

But immigration officials argue that Zheng deserves to be deported because of the gravity of the crime he committed.

Zheng and two other teenagers staged an armed takeover of a family's Chinatown home in January 1986, tied up the children and their father and forced the mother to accompany them to a family-owned store for a robbery.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/06/BAS11JD37O.DTL

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Zheng is a legal immigrant who came to the US at age 12. And the SFGate.com bigot-bots are winning in the comment section.