Baseball players may get three strikes before they're out, but immigrants get only one.

Showing mercy for a teenage immigrant from Romania, recently charged with car theft, a judge in New Hampshire has reduced the youth's sentence by one day, to help him escape sure deportation.

This case represents a growing trend in the judicial system to help immigrants avoid the repercussions of what many believe is an exceedingly strict law. Often times, petty offenders have been banished to dangerous homelands, away from the language and customs they know, away from their only family and friends.

The law in question, which affects non-US citizens accused of crimes, stipulates that any offended convicted of a crime and sentenced to 365 days or more in jail, must be deported to their country of origin. Defense attorneys plead with judges to limit sentences to 364 days, and the presiding judges--who tend to agree that life-long banishment is severe--tend to comply.

Those on both sides of the issue agree that the legal system is not working when criminal judges and parole boards have to let criminals out earlier than desired in order to guarantee reasonable equity to offenders.

In the New Hampshire case, when Judge Edward Thornton reduced Valentin Sechelaru's car-theft sentence by one day, he reversed the young car thief's fate from one year in jail plus life-long banishment to Romania--where he hadn't lived since he was 10 years old--to 346 days in jail. After serving his sentence, the convict will now be able to return to his family in Manchester.

Trying to keep his crime from his mother, he had apparently represented himself and taken a plea bargain with the one year sentence, totally unaware that it would mean automatic deportation.  One week later, INS agents rolled up and cuffed the boy, leaving his mother feeling suicidal when she learned of her possible long-term separation from her son.

Although the reduced-sentence tactic may work in some cases, the legal waters are still murky. The Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, passed by Congress in 1996, has strict definitions of  ''aggravated felonies,'' and "crimes of moral turpitude," so that even those convicted of car theft, and even misdemeanors can be treated akin to those who have raped and murdered.

In some cases, governors have felt forced into granting pardons to save petty offenders from the fate of deportation. Pardons are very rare, and politicians are urging the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to stop forcing them into bending laws and taking extreme measures in order to assure justice.

The fact that the INS law was made retroactive only serves to aggravate the situation. Again and again cases come up where an immigrant who has lived in the US for over 25 years and committed a crime years and years ago--sometimes as frivolous as smoking marijuana or pulling someone's hair--must face deportation back to a country they no longer even remember.

The heat is on Congress to amend the harsh laws and return judicial discretion to immigration judges, but civil rights groups and immigration advocates have had little luck so far; Congress hasn't budged.

Whether the new administration intends to do things differently remains to be seen. In the meantime, many immigrants walk on egg shells and maintain a healthy dose of paranoia, knowing that one inadvertent brush with the law could carry a lifetime sentence.

Jennifer and Peter