Sometimes the law is truly an ass, and this is one of those times:



(CNN) — A high school valedictorian’s plans to study medicine at a California state university have run headlong into the federal government’s attempts to return him and his family to Armenia. “I haven’t been in Armenia since I was 2, so I don’t really know anything about the place,” said Arthur Mkoyan, 17. “All I’ve seen is just videos my mom has watched on the Internet.” Mkoyan’s long-term plans were turned upside down one morning in April when two immigration officers arrived at the door of his family’s house. “They took both of my parents, and they released my mom because she had to take care of us, since me and my brother are minors,” he recalled. “But instead they took my dad away to a detention center in Arizona.” Mkoyan, who has a grade-point average above 4.0 — extra credit for Advanced Placement classes makes that possible — is set to graduate next week from Bullard High School in Fresno, California. VideoWatch students from Arthur’s school talk about his case » Ten days later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to deport him and his family to the Armenian capital city of Yerevan, the same city his family fled in fear 16 years ago.

His crime ? Thirteen years ago, when Arthur was 3 years old, his parents fled Armenia in the face of ethnic conflict and harassment and came to the United States for the same reason immigrants have been coming here for hundreds of years, they were looking for a new life:

They arrived in the United States in 1995 on six-month tourist visas, according to Virginia Kice, a public information officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The family settled in Fresno, where Mkoian worked as a truck driver and his wife worked in a jewelry store. They set about living their lives, which soon included a younger brother for Arthur. But after the visas expired, the family’s application to remain in the United States was denied. In 2002, an immigration judge ruled that they had no legal basis to remain in the country, Kice said. After their application to the Board of Immigration Appeals was rejected, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year denied their petition for a hearing. The court was unpersuaded by the father’s assertion that he might still be subject to reprisal if he were to return.

So because of this, a man, a boy, who barely has any memory of Armenia and has proven that he has a lot to contribute the country he considers his home is being told that we don’t want him here.

There is, at this point, one last option but the odds aren’t good:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, may attempt to pass a “private bill” that would allow the family to remain in the United States. “Our office is looking into the case,” said Scott Gerber, a spokesman for the senator. But the odds against it are long. There is “almost no chance” that the family’s quest for a private bill will succeed, said Daniel Kowalski, editor-in-chief of Bender’s Immigration Bulletin. “Very few are being passed,” he said. In fact, of the 21 private immigration bills introduced last year, none was enacted. In 2006, 117 were introduced, and none was enacted; in 2005, 98 were introduced, and four were enacted. But the filing itself would buy the family time, since it suspends any efforts to deport the family until the bill’s fate is determined.

If ever there was a case where an exception should be made, it’s this one.