IN Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Mr Bumble when confronted by a solicitor with the legal situation he was in, responded rather bluntly: “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass – a idiot. If that’s the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience – by experience.”

New York Governor David Paterson has seemingly adopted the reasoning of Mr Bumble in deciding this month to pardon 30 Caribbean nationals who are facing deportation because of old criminal convictions.

He has our complete support.

Mr Paterson, whose grandparents are from Jamaica and Grenada, began a special clemency process earlier this year to help permanent legal residents who were at risk of deportation because of long-ago or minor convictions.

“Federal immigration laws are often inflexible, arbitrarily applied and excessively harsh, resulting in the deportation of individuals who have paid the price for their crimes and are now making positive contributions to our society,” he is quoted as saying. “These pardons represent an attempt to achieve fairness and justice.”

United States law, like laws everywhere, is very clear that those who breach it must pay the prescribed penalty. Yet, experience shows that the punishment, even if it fits the crime, often does not take into account the mitigating circumstances. Some of the persons being pardoned bear this out superlatively.

For example:

* Marlon Oscar Powell, 36, a Jamaican, was being held in an immigration jail in New Jersey for a misdemeanour drug possession conviction when he was 15.

* Sanjay Broomfield, 28, also a Jamaican, had his application for a green card blocked because of a past conviction for illegal possession of a weapon in 2005, after he shot and killed a burglar trying to break into his home in Suffolk County, New York.

While he was serving three years’ probation, Bloomfield married an American citizen and applied for a green card. But even though a district attorney had concluded that the shooting was justified, immigration authorities rejected Broomfield’s application, because his illegal possession of a weapon had resulted in a death.

* Darshini Ramsaran, 25, a citizen of both Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, was facing deportation for her participation four years ago in a robbery. If Ramsaran were to be deported, her life would be in danger from two men who were deported after she testified against them.

* Mario Benitez, 58, a Dominican, is the current assistant director of finance for the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School and University Centre. He had pleaded guilty to selling a controlled substance in 1988 and served three years in prison.

* Edouard Colas who was brought to the US from Haiti as a lawful permanent resident at age 10, was convicted in 1997 of attempted burglary in the third degree and sentenced to five years on probation. He had since maintained gainful employment and is married to a US citizen with whom he has two young sons.

“Immigration officials “may take no account of the New York State criminal justice decisions, but I do,” Governor Paterson insisted.

The administration’s review of more than 1,100 pardon applications has shown that the federal government’s immigration laws are often excessively harsh and in need of modernisation.

Governor Paterson emphasised that the individuals pardoned “should be protected from inflexible and misguided immigration statutes”.

We agree.