Before the Indictment

On December 18, 2012, the FBI arrested six attorneys and twenty other individuals who engaged in the practice of political asylum law in the New York metropolitan area. All the arrestees were charged with a crime of conspiracy of defrauding the Federal government by helping the undocumented file political asylum applications with fake evidences. The arrest shocked the New York metropolitan area and shut down the New York immigration courts for one day. People wondered how and why could this happen and what was the underlying factors of this crime. This novel is trying to explain all these by characterizing part of the event through the life and law practice of one attorney, Ray Zheng, a Chinese immigrant. The stories of the character Ray Zheng of this novel set lights on the causes of the crime. The indictments for the arrests were very dry, but this novel is very juicy. The main character Ray Zheng was a college teacher in China. He came to the United States in 1991 when he was about thirty-seven. He did not know exactly why he had made the decision to come because he had built his castle in China already-he had climbed, from the bottom rung of the society as the son of a peasant, up to a college teacher. He knew he would face a new start. He might have been influenced some American writers, such as Thoreau and Emerson, to try his ambition with a dream to build his new castle in the United States like what he had done in China. He was arrogant and believed in his ability too much. At first, he struggled a little in this New World, but he later zigzagged his way into the service for the Chinese immigrants. During the course of such services, he was wayward a little. He then became an attorney. At first, he was careful about what he was doing, trying to confirm his conducts to the ethical rules of the legal profession. But, later on, he was walking on thin ice and he finally slipped...... Why couldn't he confirm himself to the law or to the ethica