Missing student from Yemen arrested in New York City

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. A missing Purdue student from Yemen has been arrested by the F-B-I in New York. Eighteen-year-old Anwar Saleh Ahmed Al-Awdi is being held by New York police on a visa violation.

Purdue Vice President Joseph Bennett says plans are being made for Al-Awdi to return to Yemen.

Al-Awdi was one of 18 recent high school graduates from the Middle East visiting Purdue as part of a five-week program sponsored by the State Department. He was last been seen in West Lafayette on Friday, when he left on a trip to Detroit with two family acquaintances.

The kid wanted to go to New York. So he went to New York. It's a big city and lots of kids want to go there. Who the hell would want to go to Detroit? I say cut the kid a bit of slack unless there is more to the story.

Now as for it being "against the law", unfortunately few people from other countries who are allowed into the US take immigration law seriously.

This is largely the fault of the Federal government, which even under Bush is not quite sure if our immigration laws should be real laws, or just some sort of rules of etiquete, the State governments, which make noises like they are going to pass laws relieving illegal aliens from some of the burdens of being illegal, and of course the "let's open the borders to all" lobby which gives us such verbal dodges as "undocumented workers", which, BTW, lately I notice seems to have morphed into "migrants", with no distinction being made between legal and illegal immigration.

Most people who come to this country not as legal immigrants figure once you get past the gate, you've got it made. It's entirely up to you whether you want to stay or not. You can even file some sort of half-assed paperwork so if you do get caught, you can claim you were "cooperating with the system" to gain legal status. I know pleny of immigrants who have told me that they have hired a lawyer who filed some papers, and I believe them, but the papers never go anywhere, because the bottom line is that the people who are applying just don't meet the criteria. But they can jam the system up for nine or twelve months with a garbage application, and while the INS, or its succesor is dealing with it, claim they have "applied".

The reason why it is so easy to pick off suspected terrorists inside the US. The odds are pretty reasonable that somewhere you will find a visa violation, Presto, you can hold them.

We should not immediately suspect that every Middle Easterner who violates immigration law is a terrorist, particularly when it is an 18 year old kid. As a terrorist king pin, I probably would not send an 18 year old kid to carry out my bidding.

Kind of ironic he was a guest of the State Department, though. Or maybe not. I have never quite figured out which government, if any, the State Department works for. Do you think they are an NGO? Or maybe registered as foreign agents?

Who the hell would want to go to Detroit?

One - I resent the fact that "Detroit" is not a great location - I have lived in the area all my life - and sure, there are a few bad areas of Detroit, but there are bad areas of other large cities across the globe.

Two - There is a very LARGE Arab community in a place called Dearborn (you may know it as the home of Ford Motor Company) where he could pass along information, receive information, or just hide out for a day or two to get the money to continue his journey.

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