Yesterday, Governor Paterson announced that he was pardoning a Chinese immigrant who was convicted of muggings when he was 15 but then kept out of trouble and became a successful IT executive. Paterson said, "Qing Hong Wu's case proves that an individual can, with hard work and dedication, rise above past mistakes and turn his life around." The pardon means that Wu, who legally immigrated to NY when he was five, will not be deported back to China.
Wu's plight was publicized in a NY Times article last month: In 1996, when facing sentencing for his part in a series of muggings, Judge Michael Correiro told him to use his time in a reformatory, "If you do that, I am here to stand behind you." Wu did do that, earning his GED in custody and later getting his Associate's Degree, becoming the vice president of an Internet company. When Wu was flagged by immigration authorities when he applied to become a citizen and then jailed, he wrote to Correiro for help.
The Times explains, "The [immigration] court hearing his case had no discretion to consider the exemplary life he had led after emerging from the reformatory." The retired judge became one of many, including his current boss and his former employer, the Police Benevolent Association, that wrote to Paterson to request a pardon. Correiro said last month, “Here was a young man who did everything we expected of him. It really cries out for some kind of justice." Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance also supported a pardon for Wu.
Now Wu, who is engaged, may be able to apply for citizenship Correiro says, "I'm ecstatic. It restores my faith in the system, and it is the beginning of the recognition that young people should be permitted to recover from their mistakes." However, some are looking at the system skeptically: The Post's article about the pardon is headlined "Dave pardons ex-hood" and calls the timing of the pardon "bizarre," adding that "with pardons generally occurring at Christmastime or as a governor leaves office, the move left some to speculate that Paterson was getting ready to resign."
