Manuel Bartsch - Needs Help In Immigration Snafu

Every day thousands of illegals are streaming across the border in the south. There are Illegals misusing the system and no one seems to be able to get a handle on the problem.

The solution? Find a teenager who has been here since the fourth grade, about to graduate in the spring and deport him. Ohio could possibly be the center for the dumbest step yet in being able to determine threat and distinguish a proper course of action based on the situation.

The federal government???s war on immigrants netted quite a catch last week: an 18-year-old German native who has caused no problems, but has been doing well at Pandora-Gilboa High School.

A federal judge on Friday put the Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement???s plans to deport Manuel Bartsch on hold, but this ruling makes the agency no less inept.

Rather than focusing on those who pose a threat, the federal government is wasting resources, albeit little actual effort, to crack down on a teenager who just wants to finish high school. This is the federal government keeping us safe? It should be embarrassing, but instead it???s typical.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security???s Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement took Bartsch into custody Dec. 21 when he appeared for a meeting. Bartsch???s stepgrandfather brought him to America on a 90-day visa when Bartsch was in the fourth grade. The family never renewed the visa, so Bartsch has been here illegally for quite some time.

The news last night reported that a stay of deportation has been granted and a hearing is to be held Wednesday so the boy can show up before the Judge. Some help from higher sources in the government would be not only good PR for them but more importantly the right thing to do. Let him graduate and then sort out the legal issues.

The entire hometown of Gilboa (Pandora-Gilbo) is behind him. The young man is willing to return to Germany but wants to finish school with his friends. His father who is a citizen left the country and the boy needed papers. In his effort to get help they arrested him.

Bartsch, who came to the U.S. as a young boy with his step-grandfather, has been living in Gilboa, a small village in northwest Ohio about 60 miles south of Toledo, thinking he was a U.S. citizen, he said.

That changed over the summer, when his grandfather - a U.S. citizen who was his guardian - returned to Germany, leaving Bartsch behind so he could graduate.

In order for Bartsch to stay on his own, he needed papers to show he was an American. He searched for documents at home but didn’t find any so he contacted U.S. immigration authorities in Cleveland hoping the office would have records. That’s when the trouble began.

Bartsch said that if the government lets him stay, he will return to Germany when he finishes his senior year.

Spread the word in hopes that it might reach ears of some people who can help.

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