Atanas Entchev

Nov 10, 2011 | Rambling

I’ve been reminded time and time again that the GIS world is pretty small.

So last year sucked on about three different levels for me. I won’t go into it here or rehash some of my whining from earlier blog posts. It just did. In the middle of all the things that were going on for me this guy appears out of no where: Atanas. He had been reading my blog and wanted to know if I would blog for him – he wanted to take some of the best and form a super blog. So how he ended on my site I’ll never know. So as the year drug on I’ve added him to facebook, we follow each other on twitter, we email, we talk, and overall I’ve really enjoyed his virtual friendship. Well – hell – there isn’t anything virtual about it. He’s my friend.

Atanas disappeared. I started seeing twest from mutual friends. Apparently Atanas is from Bulgaria. I had no idea. He left there in the early 90’s and came to America to escape communist rule. Here he has built a life, started a couple of companies, and is quite the man about the GIS world….and apparently due to a lot of stupidity on the part of the US government he is going to be deported.  I’ve not added much to this blog because his gets infinitely more traffic than this one.

If you read this blog – please sign the petition. If you are on my facebook page – please sign.  Go to his site and read about his life over the last month. Yes a productive man sits in jail in an orange jumpsuit awaiting the judgement of a government that can’t get his name right on the court papers.

http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-ice-stop-the-deportation-of-atanas-entchev-and-family

Free Atanas.

If it happened to him it can happen to any of us.

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