 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Okay, we're back. We're back with Community Matters. I'm J. Feidels, a three o'clock rock. Okay, we have Claire Hannes again. She's immigration attorney and the founder of- Aloha Immigration. Aloha Immigration. There should be Aloha in immigration. There needs to be more of it. I'm trying client by client, case by case. Well, you practiced immigration law for many years, actually. And in various places and contexts and all that, you've seen a lot come and go, but you're now in a special time, aren't you? This is different than anything you've seen before. Am I right? Yeah, special in a bad kind of way. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I mean. Yeah, I mean, a tax against immigrants on the ground and from Washington are really at an all-time high and where we were talking just a few years ago about the possibility of comprehensive immigration reform and being able to provide new avenues of relief for people who desperately need it were really, really swimming upstream. And it's all kind of defensive now to try to keep the few gains that were made in the past, including DACA, which is a program that allowed individuals who were brought as children to the United States to have a temporary protection from deportation. All those things are now kind of in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. It's scorched earth. It's at every level and every way he can possibly think of. Yeah, it is. It is. And it's hard because there's a lot of issues that I, as an individual, are concerned about. But immigration is taking up all of my time. And there are lots of, we have to be really looking at multiple fronts for civil rights and civil liberties and how they're being trounced. You know, funny thing is that this started out back around January 20th under the rubric of, we're going to protect the country from terrorism. And then he made his ban, his sort of amorphous ban about Arab countries. But there hasn't been so much talk about that lately. It's more like any foreigner is at risk. And then to me, and we get into the more detail of it, but then to me, if I look at what happened in Charlottesville a few days ago and I look at his remarks yesterday, revealing his true thoughts about this, what I get is it doesn't have that much to do about terrorism at all. In fact, it has to do about racial supremacy. Now, I agree, and it's not just immigrants. It's a larger classification, I guess, of people of color. And many immigrants fall into that category. And so immigrants are taking the same kind of hits that African-Americans and even Latinos who lived in the United States, who can trace their history back to before the United States was the United States, have been taking hits for a long, long, yeah, have been taking hits for a long, long time. And it's really, I think it's just the most knee-jerk. People are scared. The economy's bad. White folks who used to be able to plan on generation after generation, their lives being better, having more opportunities than their parents, having more opportunities than their parents don't have that anymore. Looking for somebody to blame. And immigrants are always the easiest group to blame. And this xenophobia that we're seeing towards immigrants isn't just, and people of color, isn't unique, of course, to the United States. It's actually a trend in many European countries. Australia has some very arguably racist immigration policies as well. But yeah, this is a very special time to be doing the work that I'm doing in the United States. One reaction to that, though, buddy of mine just got back from China. And he found a very interesting phenomenon in China. China has a huge presence now in Africa. In fact, they have military bases that we don't have. They have military bases. And lots of business enterprises, big ones, big presence in Africa. And African people are coming to China. They're immigrating to China. And China welcomes them. And they married Chinese. So now you have this hapahaui effect. That's not the right word, but hapahafrican effect going on in China. And I said to him, I said, gee, is there racial prejudice against the Africans in China? And he said, no, no. They don't see that. In fact, they appreciate the thing. And these people have good opportunities in China. And I find that interesting. I'm not sure that we have a good sampling of opinion art. But I find it interesting for the proposition that the US brand of treating diverse races is different and morally less developed than other countries. Do you agree? Yeah, I mean, for all the talk about being a nation of immigrants, we're sure hard on immigrants, right? And there's this attitude that, well, our family did it one way. But it was legal for those people to do it. I mean, the waves of immigrants that came from Europe in generations past, there was a legal pathway for that to happen. The problem is now we don't have that legal pathway for many people to come into the United States. And as far as I know, it's kind of hard to look at China because I've looked at racism in other Asian countries towards African-Americans as I was doing research on hardship issues in cases. And I know African-Americans, and it's been well-documented racism in Korea and in Japan. So I don't know how different the United States is really. Having lived in Australia, having friends who are Europeans, I don't really know if it's that much worse. But there's a lot more of us. And racist, I mean, as far as people in the United States versus the sizes of other countries, and there are, I think that the racist groups are actually, it's a minority. They're not the majority. But they've sure got a voice now. They've got a voice in the White House. And even though that's a very small group, of course, it was a much larger group that supported that ascension, Trump's ascension into the White House. Well, let me over the thought that after this experience over the past few days following Charlottesville, I think there'll be more people in that supremacy group, because they will be attracted. And they will be encouraged to come out on the issue, because now they know, they know that the president doesn't really condemn racism. Right. And the statements, unfortunately, of the last couple of days definitely confirm that, which puts the issues of immigration, again, in a really, really difficult spot. Yeah. And it makes you a job. It's got to make your job harder and more heart-rending, if you will. Because you're going to see, I'm sure you are seeing, personal tragedy here, as we read in the paper. Yeah, we are seeing locally. We're seeing a lot of cases that had where ICE immigration and customs enforcement would either extend or accept arguments for why good people should be allowed to stay, even though there was no legal path for them. And we've been pushing for many years to create a legal path for good people who were here, who had children, who had spouses. And again, locally, there was a degree of discretion as to whether those people could not fly under the radar, because immigration customs enforcement knew that they were in the United States. But they would let them stay with their families. They'd have reporting requirements once a year or every six months check-in. If people moved, they would need to inform the government of their address changes, those kind of things. And we felt like we were buying time until there was a legal path, until there was immigration reform. And so, well, maybe next year, maybe in six months. Now we're seeing that there's no real solid immigration reform in sight that would benefit a lot of people. And that the discretion that ICE had been extending positively in many cases, they're not doing anymore. So we've had some high-profile cases just in our own state. Probably the most high-profile case was Mr. McGanya on the Big Island coffee farmer. Sure, I mean, it was not my case. I'm Jim Stanton is his attorney. But from what I know about it, he was a very prominent person in his community. He actually did a lot, as far as education, about issues that coffee farms were having with pest control. He was a husband and a father. He had US citizen children and a US citizen wife. And he basically had a final order of deportation. I believe they were trying to get the case reopened because there was a visa petition that was filed, or an immigrant relative petition filed by his wife. But it would have taken time to work through those things, those petitions, which before would take five to six months, are now taking longer. And they were trying. At least we don't know exactly how long. Longer means we don't know exactly how long. And I think Mr. Stanton was trying to keep him here so that until that process could go through. Because once someone has to leave the United States, it's years before they're able to come back in. Yeah, they're on the line at the other end. And they've got to wait. And nobody's in a hurry to help them these days. It's a line. The line's getting longer. And it's a very expensive and time-consuming process. And in the meantime, what benefit does it serve us as a society to have this man separated from his family, from his farm, from his community, from I think the state had an interest in keeping him here because of his professional expertise. And Senator Hirona and other people got involved in his case as much as they could. But in the end, again, the kind of discretion that Homeland Security locally used to have, I think their hands are tied now. And I don't think the decision on whether to grant a stay of deportation does not come from the local level. It comes from San Francisco. So locally, we fall under the San Francisco office. And the decisions are coming from there. So we actually have a lot of good, decent people who are working at immigration and customs enforcement. But I think what they want, if they would say, want to allow Mr. McGanya to stay, they can't. Decisions are coming from someplace else. It seems terribly unfair. Now, if there was some early advice by the government to Mr. McGanya saying, you can't stay here. We're not going to let you stay here. So don't have a family. Don't start a farm. Don't become an expert. Don't make community contributions. Just go. Then, OK, so then he would leave. And he would sort of nip this problem vis-à-vis his case in the bud. But he's been permitted to stay all these years. And he was brought as a kid. I mean, he was 15 when he was 15. What are you going to say to him at 15 when he came? So I mean, it's just terribly unfair that we come down like a sledgehammer in the life of this Mr. McGanya and others, many, many others. And my recollection is the last time I knew that there had been 41,000 detentions here in the United States. We do not see that as a headline. We do not see that for all the bombast in Washington. Congress is not talking about that. And Trump is not talking about that. But the fact is, he's busy, busy, busy, busy all day, creating these terribly unfair scenarios. And they're doing these major sweeps, I mean, which are fine as far as picking up people who have dangerous criminal histories, but they're picking up all other kinds of people along with making no distinction. And then again, once people get in the deportation system, the discretion to take people out seems to have gone out the window with the Trump administration. So that's why you have, and some cities are actively resisting this. Sanctuary cities. But then they get punished. Well, then they get punished. And they're challenging that in the courts. And it'll be very interesting to follow what's happening in Denver, in San Francisco, in San Antonio. Texas has also passed some really, really repressive anti-immigrant laws. But there's resistance from chiefs of police who say that these kind of laws that target people who are law abiding, but for the immigration violation, which is a civil violation, it's not a criminal violation, people who are law abiding, who are afraid to come out and report crimes because they're afraid of getting turned over to ICE. That makes our communities less safe, and it impedes our ability to do our job and build up trust with the communities. So there's a lot of resistance right now nationally. There's a lot of resistance locally. I mean, we have a phenomenal attorney general who was out in the forefront challenging the band. I saw, no, no, no. Doug Chin's face popped into my mind, and not Jeff Sessions. There could not be more polar opposite. But Attorney General Chin is challenging these at every level on behalf of Hawaii, which I think really does our state proud. And I hope that people can see the value of what Hawaii has contributed to this. We have a great message, actually. We do. We have something that is these days in short supply. That's true. We're going to take a break, actually, Claire. And when we come back, I'd like to tell you what worries me and see if it worries you also. It's Claire Hannes. She's an immigration attorney, and we love talking to her. Thanks, Jay. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. We're back. We're live with Claire Hannes. We're talking about the immigration changes in our country and how it affects the practice of immigration law, among other things. So how does it affect the practice? I would imagine that people walk into you now, people who you might have been able to help before, before Trump. And you have to say to them, look, I'm really sorry, but this is all a very difficult situation. But I don't have the same legal tools available to me to help you. Yeah. So well, actually, the laws haven't changed yet, because Trump, thankfully, can't change the laws. Congress makes and changes the laws. Somebody has to tell him that. Well, I mean, so the reality is when people come to me, they think that Trump has a lot to do with their current situation. And the reality is that if they had options before, they generally still have options now. I've always been very careful about screening cases to make sure that an application isn't submitted to the government that might have an issue that could put someone in a worse position than they were before they submitted. I'm even more careful about that now, because we've seen, especially at the local office, the level of fine-tooth scrutiny they're putting cases under is unbelievable. And I've seen locally naturalizations denied for good people because of a silly little procedural defect that was done, that was on the form 10 years ago, where an irrelevant form was missing. I mean, it was the most ridiculous. But technically, the government was right. And so that was it. So we just had to kind of throw our hands up. So that's what we're seeing locally as far as changes go. He's telling his agency they work for him. I wish I was part of those discussions to know. I mean, we've had problems with the local office locally for a long time. But it is a new cases that say a marriage-based green card case that used to take pretty much 90 days start to finish for years. So I would just routinely say three months start to finish unless there's a red flag, which I don't see. Now it's taking seven to nine months. And then what was a problem before, and it's even more of a problem now, is cases are going into these kind of black holes where you leave the interview. And they very rarely say, OK, everything looks great. We're going to grant this. They say, OK, thank you. We'll be in touch. And then people wait and wait and wait. And our abilities, even as attorneys, to get any kind of sense of how long it's going to take for this decision to. I mean, we're stuck. And our clients get really frustrated with us. And I understand. They're thinking, well, we're paying for an attorney. And I say, you know, our hands are tied, too. I mean, I've kind of half joked about a hunger strike in front of the USCIS office locally. I mean, just to shame and put some attention on it. I joke about hunger. But I mean, what can be done? It's ridiculous. We have our congressional liaisons involved. Their hands are often tied. You know, we kick and scream. We file complaints and requests. And we get this, oh, we're sorry for the delay. The case is under some kind of administrative processing. And we're seeing those delays longer and longer. So that's what's stressing people out and stressing us as advocates out as well. My sense from what you say is that it's getting worse. Is it? It is getting worse. It is getting worse. And I think Trump, when he talked about this initial Muslim ban, it was, remember, it was kind of a pause on immigration from certain countries for them to review the vetting procedures, which were arguably fine before, kind of under the guise of a Muslim ban. Well, this kind of extreme vetting is, I think, going on at all levels right now. And again, we have no problem with background checks, of course, and with the United States doing what, of course, what it can to kind of weed people out or make sure that the people who are staying have followed. This is going way, way, way beyond that. And it's causing a lot of undue stress on people locally. But generally, people have the same options. But what might change is, so there was this RAISE Act that was proposed on October 2 by two Republican senators from the South of the US with Trump's blessing. And that would have major, if something like that passed, it would have major. So it does a couple of things. First of all, it creates this kind of preference category for immigrants who have, speak English, are well-educated, can show financial means, and have a good chance so it says of employment. So it's kind of a merit-based system where our system before had been primarily of maybe 1.2 million immigrants that came in last year. Most of them were family-based, meaning that I became a US citizen. I filed an immigrant petition for my mom so that my mom could come here or my brother or sister. And if you're from the Philippines, it can take 25 years. But eventually, if they live that long, they're able to come the families, family unity, family reunification. There's a lot to say for that. There is a lot to say for that. And that's a lot to say for our local communities, right? Our local, which we have a high immigrant, absolutely, we have a high immigrant population. But what this RAISE Act would do is it would actually eliminate, eliminate by up to half of the family-based immigration. It wouldn't eliminate all family-based immigration, but some categories it would wipe out completely. For example, if I was a US citizen, I wouldn't be able to get a green card for my mom. That's huge. That's terrible. I wouldn't be able to apply for a green card for my brother or sister. But if family remains separate, that's what happens. I mean, they could come in and try to get visitors' visa and to visit. But we can't, and look at, I mean, Hawaii is an island. It's not as though we're in California and a lot of our relatives are in Mexico, right? And you can, I mean, when you're in Hawaii, You're isolated. You're isolated. You're not really far away. And you want your family, you want your family close to you. And this would cut that out. So, Claire, you know, you didn't go into immigration law to make ukele bucks. Nope. You went to help people. Yeah, yep. And you persist in that desire, I'm sure. But now you can't help them in the same way, perhaps, that you could before. And I guess the question is, you know, not only you, but the bar, the immigration bar, must be affected by these call and policy changes or, you know, de facto policy changes is what we have. Right, right. So, A, can you make a living doing this? Or do you have to put in pro bono time in order to, you know, meet the demand walking in the door? And B, you know, should I go into immigration law now? Is it the right time? Should I go to law school and study for three years and then go into immigration? Yeah. I mean, the problem with immigration law is that there are many more people who need services than there are people who can pay for services, right? And we have a huge problem in Hawaii where we don't have a general immigration legal service provider such as legal aid. Like legal aid, because their funding is federal, their limited is to the scope of services that they can provide. So through the Hawaii Immigrant Justice Center, they can provide services to a very limited number of immigrants with immigrant related needs. And limited services at that. Super limited services, right? So for, say, crime victims, victims of domestic violence, which are crime victims, human trafficking victims, they have a place to go. Everyone else, you're pretty much on your own. And immigration law is very, very confusing. So it's really hard for people to figure out on their own. And you make a silly technical mistake in your dead meat. Yeah, there's a lot at stake. You have to be very, very careful. So it's not something that you can dabble in. Yeah, I think, I mean, if you're doing good work, you can definitely make a living at it. It's not one of the most lucrative areas. And I think most of us who do immigration law do a fair amount of pro bono work. And because we recognize the importance, the really life changing importance of what we do. But we have to limit the amount of pro bono work we do. What concerns me is that coming out of law school, not just me, but people and lawyers in general who might otherwise devote their time and skill and their practice to immigration law might be discouraged from doing it. And if that happens, we have fewer immigration lawyers still, yet. And the result is there'd be fewer resources available to people who need resources, nor now than before. And so these poor people will be even more of the victim going forward. And this new change in policy will have the desired effect of barring them and more. One thing we've seen is that there's so much outrage over the Trump administration policies towards immigrant and refugees that I think there's been a resurgence of people who are interested in pursuing immigration law. And I'm working with some fabulous law students who are volunteering to help me on some of my pro bono cases, which is great, as far as whether there's a place for them in the market. Again, that's tough because there's lots of need, but there's not a lot of people who can afford the services, especially in deportation proceedings, deportation proceedings. It's like criminal defense. It's super, super time consuming. It's super detailed. And it's expensive. It's a lot of attorney time and attorney time costs. So this is really a bad situation. It's bad for the country and the structure of the family and the community and the society. Morally, it's bad for us. It's tragically bad for all these people. It's bad for our image around the world. We're no longer the Statue of Liberty with open arms. Other countries do way better, in Canada, for example. Much more open. We have refugees who are fleeing from the United States into Canada right now. And Canada is treating them way better in lots of ways than the United States ever did. But again, locally, as far as resistance efforts, again, law students stepping forward. We have attorneys stepping forward. Are we a sanctuary city? Well, no, we are not. I mean, a sanctuary city is kind of a squishy term. Our leaders have not very proactively come out and said that they were not going to absolutely refuse to do the work of the federal government, which is what the sanctuary cities are saying, that they're not going to turn into immigration enforcement I wonder how immigration enforcement, you said that the immigration service, as always, has certain obligations. It must enforce the law. But at the same time, they're human beings, hopefully. And they may be told to do policy things that they don't really agree with, especially if they've been in immigration for a long time and they've seen all these people come and go and the reasons for their coming and going. And so now I really wonder whether there's resistance. Maybe it's nothing that we can know. But I wonder if there's resistance within the immigration service itself to this policy where they really hate doing what they're being asked to do. I think a lot of them do. Although, as far as resistance, I think they're still pretty much doing their jobs. Enforcement. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And people who work at ICE have said, don't blame us. Blame the laws. And that's easy to say that. But I understand where they're coming from, too. And while I couldn't do their job personally, a lot of them are really decent human beings. And I've seen my clients more often than not actually treated with a great degree of compassion. And you can tell that the officers don't enjoy the answers that they have to give a lot of these people as far as what their options are. Or when a stay is denied, they don't do little happy dances and said, OK, we're getting rid of another one. I mean, I think they feel it, they feel it, too. Just what I worry about more than anything else, Claire. We've come a long way down, in my opinion, since January 20. In many ways, not just immigration, but certainly that is a centerpiece of how we've come down. And day by day, it's happening. We may not see it on the headlines, but it's happening. There are detentions. There are these regrettable outcomes in the immigration process. And people are being hurt. Their lives are being damaged. And so what I worry about is that we become complacent about this. You can't protest these things every day. The community can't write a letter every day as long as it continues, even though it should. And we may become complacent and treat it, if you will. This is a term that seems to be appropriate as the new normal. The new normal is devolving into another dark place. And I worry that that will continue in this administration. And we've only seen the beginning of it. It's going to get worse because nobody, no large group, no political force, can stop it. So therefore, it takes heart in that. And it continues and gets more bold all the time. What do we do, Claire? You know, I think locally the resistance makes me a little bit more optimistic maybe than you are as far as this being accepted as the new normal. And we can't do anything. I mean, there are cases where we're definitely very limited about what we can do. But that has not stopped the community from showing up. From showing up, from talking about what we can do, from supporting each other. I mean, just Sunday night, right? After, you know, so Charlottesville was Saturday. Sunday night, there were hundreds of people who came out to Magic Island for a candlelight vigil in solidarity with the people of Charlottesville. And there were sheets on the ground where we could write messages to Heather Hire's family, the 32-year-old who was. And that was really important for us as a community. And there were a lot of the old timers who you kind of expect to be there. But a lot of new faces. So I think that the worst in this country is also bringing out some of the best. And I'm not worried about if I have two moms who had to report for removal. And there were huge, within a short period of time, huge groups of people who showed up to support them. I think those people, because many of them are their people of faith. They're people who have been in civil rights struggles for the long haul. They will keep coming out time after time after time. And new people will come along, too. We do have to pace ourselves, in a way, because four years is a long time. And we're only a bit into it. And even if Trump leaves office, part of me it thinks that this isn't so much Trump as the people behind him. Jeff Sessions, right? Jeff Sessions is, I mean, he's the architect of many of these immigration policies. And he has a lot of support. So we have to be, even if Trump falls, that doesn't mean that things are going to, another Republican is going to get in, and things are going to get better. So we have to. But I actually think we will be able to, we see a light at the end of the tunnel. And we're going to keep fighting and challenging until we get to that light. And then, hopefully, I don't know what kind of state the country will be in in three and a half years. Well, it'll be different. And the question really is, when this administration is done, I think I know the answer already, when this administration is done, will we just zing back to the way it was before with more caring and heart and humanity concern for humanity? Or will we be in a different place looking for a different direction that may not be what we really want, a different direction that doesn't zing back to the way it was before? And I think the answer is, all of this is on the record. All of this is historic. All of this goes forward. And you can never go home again. It will all feed into the ultimate outcome. But even as far as immigration policy, again, I just have to keep remembering, it wasn't so great under the Obama administration either. The Democrats, President Clinton signed some very repressive immigration laws during his time. So yeah, it wasn't as bad as it is now. And I don't know how much worse it's going to get. But I don't want to also kind of paint over with a rosy picture what happened prior to Trump. Because it was pretty rough on immigrants before. We have to take it all in context. We have to take it all on a historic continuum. We have to remember where we've been, if we want to find out where we're going or should go. And one thing, Claire, is so clear to me after this discussion is that it's not over. We can't be complacent. We can't treat it as the new normal. And we have to see you again here to keep current. I'll be here. Thank you, Claire. Thank you, Jay.