The New York Times has a great story on Tuy Sobil, aka K.K., a former gang member from Long Beach, California who got into some trouble, got deported, but now teaches breakdancing to at-risk youth in Cambodia: U.S. Deportee Brings Street Dance to Street Boys of Cambodia.
K.K. was refugee from Cambodia's Khmer Rouge "killing fields" who came to the United States in 1980. Now 30 years old, he is one 189 Cambodians who have been banished from the U.S. in the past six years under a law that mandates deportations for noncitizens who commit felonies.
He wasn't an illegal immigrant—just a noncitizen by a technicality. He was an infant when he immigrated to America, and his parents never got around to completing the citizenship process when they arrived. But the mistakes of his youth caught up to him, and he was deported.
Arriving in a country he barely knew, without any family contacts, K.K. eventually founded his breakdancing club, Tiny Toones Cambodia, where he now earns a living teaching about 150 youngsters and reaching out to hundreds more. It's a pretty amazing story. Read it here.
