With all due sympathy and wishes that he can continue his career in America, I have to say that a medical fraud billing charge is unfortunately going to make it much harder for him to fight the legal battle.
"In 2014, he and his sister Uchechi Onyekwere were charged in a $13 million medical fraud scheme. ... According to the FBI's report, the operation took place from approximately 2008 through at least the end of 2013."
"As alleged, the defendants used fictitious companies and fraudulent claims to steal very real health care dollars," said then-United States Attorney Loretta Lynch in 2014. "The Medicare and Medicaid systems serve our most vulnerable citizens, and those who seek to steal those tax dollars will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
You cannot naturalize in the US if you are found to have conducted criminal conduct. There are millions of us immigrants and children of immigrants who followed the straight path.
I understand the sentiment, and would expect that grace be given to American citizens, but the USA has millions of people applying for visas and citizenship that don't have fraud convictions.
And it's not the cold war any more, collecting chess champions doesn't give quite the same national prestige in 2026 as it did in 1980.
With all due sympathy and wishes that he can continue his career in America, I have to say that a medical fraud billing charge is unfortunately going to make it much harder for him to fight the legal battle.
It also makes it harder for so many immigrants who are following the straight path.
There are so many hustlers and that forces the American system to be so antagonistic for those who do follow the rules.
"In 2014, he and his sister Uchechi Onyekwere were charged in a $13 million medical fraud scheme. ... According to the FBI's report, the operation took place from approximately 2008 through at least the end of 2013."
"As alleged, the defendants used fictitious companies and fraudulent claims to steal very real health care dollars," said then-United States Attorney Loretta Lynch in 2014. "The Medicare and Medicaid systems serve our most vulnerable citizens, and those who seek to steal those tax dollars will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
You cannot naturalize in the US if you are found to have conducted criminal conduct. There are millions of us immigrants and children of immigrants who followed the straight path.
You are saying that if you serve time in prison for a crime, as he did, then you are ineligible to naturalize, forever?
If serving time in prison isn't sufficient, what else should he have done?
He has a child who was born in the US. What should be done about that?
Why should the US be obligated to let criminals naturalize?
It truly sucks for his kid who is a US citizen - just like how I became a US citizen even though my parents had to naturalize.
But millions of immigrants naturalize in the US without committing crimes.
It isn't that hard - don't commit fraud in a country you are not a citizen of.
A hateful country.
Dude is a fraudster. Leaving aside the $13M he scammed, why would he face torture if he was returned to his home country?
> CAT Deferral (Deferral of Removal under the Convention Against Torture)
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He served his time and hasn't been in trouble since. Do you not believe in rehabilitation?
I understand the sentiment, and would expect that grace be given to American citizens, but the USA has millions of people applying for visas and citizenship that don't have fraud convictions.
And it's not the cold war any more, collecting chess champions doesn't give quite the same national prestige in 2026 as it did in 1980.
Rehabilitation has never been the point of jail in the US. Else why would the thirteenth amendment to the US constitution still be on the books?