Paragraph seven of this story mentions that Torkieh Sadagheh is a "native" of Syria. Technically, that means he was an immigrant from Syria, or a Syrian immigrant.

After 'In America sex is legal' outburst, rapist gets 15 years

BY Melissa Grace New York Daily News

Wednesday, October 14th 2009, 4:00 AM

A fake livery cab driver tried to cry his way out of a 15-year prison sentence Tuesday for raping one woman and attempting to rape an exotic dancer.

When the tears didn't work, Torkieh Sadagheh, 30, screamed that the judge was "worse than Hitler" and dismissed one of his victims as a prostitute.

"They have two women defiling my constitutional rights!" Sadagheh shouted after Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Thomas Farber sentenced him to 15 years in the slammer for the violent Feb. 17, 2008, attacks.

"The first one was a prostitute and the second one I drove home," Sadagheh said as he tried to back-pedal his way out of a guilty plea. ... The desperate courtroom bid - in which the Syrian native claimed he was pressured into coping a plea, incomprehensibly compared himself to an assembly line cake and shouted, "In America sex is legal!" - got no sympathy from Farber.

"I have before me a selfish, manipulative, narcissistic predator," Farber said, who noted incredulously that Sadagheh of Brooklyn claimed the stripper "wanted to exchange sexual favors for a $40 cab ride."

"I see no reason to give him less than 15 years," Farber said. "He probably deserves more."

Let me tell you what I think Sadagheh meant when he shouted "In America sex is legal". He meant that while in Syria they are very repressed and Islamic, American women are supposed to be available—to immigrants like him. While nineteenth century immigrants believed that the streets of New York were paved with gold, he believes that the streets of New York are paved with...sex. And there are a lot of immigrants who feel that way. How many of them are driving cabs.