These Kids

This is what we know.  This German kid (he's nineteen but in my book, he's still a kid) arrived in the US back in August.  His name?  Christopher Mettin.  He was apparently one of those Germans who really didn't want to be a German anymore.  He had an American girlfriend....and somehow with her help....he ended up with a fake driver's license and fake birth certificate.  Then in a moment of brilliance after arriving, he tossed away his German passport.  He was going to live the American dream....completely.

He even set up a Facebook account as part of this American dream episode.

So he was going to be registered at a small Methodist university in Iowa.  I kinda have these doubts about his background as a Methodist but it's best not to question that.  Someone along the way convinced him in September that it was ok if he wanted to vote in the November elections....and so he went and got registered to vote.  The girlfriend?  Yeah, maybe....but we'll probably never know who suggested this part of the deal.

The county got onto his citizenship by mid-October, and he got indicted on 21 October.  The court business will occur in January.  The potential punishment?  If you count the fraud on entering the country, the fraud on the University, and the fraud on the country while registering to vote....it gets to be complicated.   Max fine is $500,000 and max prison time is eight years in a prison.  The Feds are also involved in this mess now because he entered on a fraudulent educational visa.  I would also suspect they know his hobbies list from Germany (he did enjoy hacking a bit).

The curious part about this story involves this Methodist college that he was going to attend when he arrived.....Morningside College.  It's a small operation...outside of Sioux City.  They might get up to two thousand students in a successful year.  It's a private operation and run by the Methodist Church.  As this kid started his fall semester in August....he didn't make it past six weeks when the university stepped in and dismissed him on 6 October.  The university won't say why....but I suspect the fake birth certificate and fake license are part of their reason.  So his educational visa to stay in the US....is now terminated.  You only have a certain number of days to assemble your stuff, and leave.

Within a week, this story will be picked up by the German press.  I'm guessing that the kid will become a household name and Germans will be incensed at the fact that he's still being held in a jail (at least as of yesterday).  They will insist that the dimwits at the registration point should have stopped and asked for a passport card (like any German registration office would do) and the kid would never have been allowed to register in the first place.

My advice for the court system in Iowa....to avoid some really bad German press....is to bring the kid in, and fine him for $100 and give him two months in jail, and then toss him on the next airplane back to Germany.  Course, you can imagine this moment when the US girlfriend announces that she's now married him (in some brief moment in the court) and then the whole mess goes into some weird international episode.

And the really sad thing?  If no one had caught on...he would have likely voted, and I'm guessing it would have been another Democratic vote.  Even off his Facebook account.....he indicates he kinda leans that way.   These days....you just can't get enough Democratic votes.

Oh, and if you Google enough.....you will come to realize that this German kid is a hacker, but it's best not to bring up that part of the story...it only makes the US authorities work twice as hard to dump him back into Germany.