[color="DimGray"]10/06/2006 | 12:32

Vietnamese man must leave

Reykjavík District Court has confirmed a deportation order over a young Vietnamese man and acquitted the Icelandic state of demands that the order be annulled.

The man came to Iceland with his mother at the age of 16 in 2001, and had a residents’ permit until 2004. The man’s father and brother also live in Iceland, but his mother is the only member of the family to have a residents’ permit.

According to RÚV online the man has been sentenced by a court of law on four separate occasions since 2002: once for sexually molesting a child, and three times for assault.

The deportation is based on a paragraph in the Immigrants’ Act in which a foreigner may be deported if he or she has been sentenced or detained for actions that warrant imprisonment for three months or longer.

The man felt that the Department of Immigration had violated his rights, as both the right to oppose the ruling and regulations regarding investigations had been broken. The court turned down the man’s argument.

The man claimed that he had nothing to go back to in Vietnam as his immediate family was in Iceland. But the court pointed out that the members of the man’s family are all Vietnamese citizens and are therefore free to return to Vietnam.

IcelandReview