 All right, good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Christa Porter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event. We are a webinar. It's similar to a podcast but we have pictures and video that we are able to add as well. We broadcast live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time. The show, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. The show is recorded and the recordings are posted to our website later. And I will show you at the end of the day show where you can see all the recordings that you can watch. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues who might be interested in any of our topics. There's no restriction on who can attend. You don't have to be working in a library or at a library or anything. Anyone can go ahead and watch if there's something that they might find interesting out there. We do do a variety of things here on Encompass Live. Everything is library related though. Book reviews, interviews, training sessions, demos of services and products. Information about things that we think you might find interesting. Specific programs and things that the library commission is doing. Sometimes we have on the show. But as I said, everything is library related. You might look at some topics or some titles of sessions and wonder why it's on there. But trust me, it has some of the new libraries in the end. That's my whole goal here. We do have, as I said, sessions about library commission programs. So we have commissioned Nebraska Library Commission staff on. But we also have bringing guest speakers. And that's what we have this morning. To my left here is Mindy Rush-Chitman, who is, she came down from Omaha this morning to join us from the Justice for our Neighbors of Nebraska that's up there. And this is a session that I saw that Mindy did at Library Strengths Training Day, which was a one-day workshop in this past summer done up in the Northeast part of Nebraska Arts Re-River's Library System held a one-day, one-day session of workshops about all sorts of different things library related. And this was on the agenda there. So I'm glad that Mindy did come on and say, hey, let's share it with more people beyond the ones that weren't there. And her topic is the empowering immigrant community members through education and information. Immigrants, refugees coming to our country. It's a huge topic of interest right now. For people and libraries who serve anybody in the end. So Mindy's going to tell us how we can help them and what resources you guys have to help as well. Yeah. So I'll just hand it over to Mindy and take it away. Thank you. Like Krista said, Mindy, I'm an attorney with Justice for our Neighbors of Nebraska. Justice for our Neighbors is a non-profit law firm. We serve the entire state of Nebraska, also parts of Iowa. And we help our clients with immigration legal matters and also any ancillary legal matters that they may have. So what that means is we can help a client more holistically, not just with their immigration case, but also with their community and protection order, a divorce, a will, power of attorney, things of that nature. So I'm really excited for my work at Justice for Neighbors, obviously, but I didn't intend on becoming an attorney. I actually was a librarian before I became an attorney as a prison librarian. Right, that's what you said, that's cool. Yeah, so I've always kind of been interested in access to information, access to justice, but it was working at the prison that kind of encouraged me to go to law school. You're a prison librarian here in Nebraska? I was. It's like a diagnostic and evaluation center. Oh, definitely. And my dream was to become a law librarian. I'm an immigration attorney right now, but I do feel that one of the most rewarding parts of my job is providing access to information. That's librarians. Yeah, and have the MLS and the law degree. That's the perfect example for becoming a law librarian. Right, and libraries play a vital role in our communities at making sure people have access to information that can protect them from particularly ethical attorneys or non-attorneys that are trying to take advantage of our immigrant community members. I think I have slides later that show that libraries are one of the first resources that immigrants and refugees will use after resettling in our communities. And so the mixture between a law firm and a library I think is vital, especially in our rural communities. So what we're going to talk about today is just a basic introduction on immigration law. I went to law school for three years. I've been practicing for several years and I still just know a little bit about immigration law. So there's obviously no way that I can relate everything there is to know. And the law is changing every day as you know, there's new executive orders that are issued while the time we're talking about it. I know, yeah, so we're going to talk about some of that. But what I can do in this short period of time is maybe break some misconceptions that we may have, our family members, our patrons, our co-workers may have about the immigration legal system. And then I'll go into a little bit more about how we can help our immigrant and refugee community members, especially in this political climate, a lot of our immigrant community members who do not have a permanent form of immigration status or may be undocumented are particularly vulnerable and worried and come into our law firms and our libraries asking what can they do. And so the second part of the presentation we'll talk about are rights and safety planning guides that I helped just this morning was helped prepare and that's something that librarians can refer their patrons to as just kind of a guide like we can't control everything. There may not be an immigration form of release for you right now, but there are some steps that you can take to protect yourself and to give yourself as much power and preparation as possible. Just like we talked about, libraries are really vital in many of our immigrant and refugee community members' lives. Not only is there access to information, but a lot of libraries actually pride themselves in conducting programing targeted to our new Americans. So a lot of libraries provide immigration information. They provide sometimes citizenship classes, English classes, things of that nature. And so the libraries just generally have been a great source of security safety and information for our new community members. So that brings up what we've been talking about who are the members of our community, both immigrant and non-immigrant. There's really two main classifications of our community members and those are citizens and non-citizens, right? But within those two categories, there's a lot of different ways that we can obtain classifications in those categories. United States citizens, you all know that if you're born in the United States, you're automatically a United States citizen. But there are a few other ways that you can obtain your citizenship. Probably the most common is by naturalization. And that's something that we've probably heard about. It's where you've obtained permanent residency through some path. And we'll talk about how difficult and restrictive the path to residency actually are. But if you're able to become a lawful permanent resident, then you maintain your residency for a certain period of years. Then you apply, you have to pay a hefty fee, get a medical exam, take a citizenship test, which is not super difficult, but it's not things that I would be able to pass. Yeah, so many people I've seen who were born citizens started taking those tests. A lot of it, I think, is things I learned that when I was in the history class of third grade, and now I just don't remember. But the test in the interview is English, unless there's a medical reason that you can wait for that English requirement. But so the English test and the civics test has a writing and reading question. Very difficult, but once you pass and you become a naturalized citizen, you have the same rights and responsibilities as a natural born citizen. So that's one common misconception that we'll talk about right now is natural born citizens and naturalized citizens are the same. In very, very rare circumstances, your naturalization, your citizenship can be revoked, but that's primarily if you obtained your citizenship through fraud. Yeah. When I've gone out to communities and talked to immigrant community groups, there is a misconception that naturalized citizens are second class citizens, but that's just not the case. Like I said, same rights and responsibilities as natural born citizens. The other two ways of attaining your citizenship are a little bit more obscure, but you can acquire your citizenship from your parents. So even if you're born outside the United States, as long as one or more of your parents are a citizen and then lived in the United States for a certain period of time after a certain age, and it goes, the laws always changing in this category and your acquisitions determined by the law was in place the year that you were born. But what that means is people that were born outside the United States may have acquired their citizenship and not even know it. Derivation is also complicated, but in a nutshell, it's if your parents naturalized and you were a permanent resident under the age of 18, you automatically derived your citizenship from your parents. What that means is your children don't have to go through it themselves. Exactly. But oftentimes that families don't know about derivation. So you will have moms or dads taking their oath of citizenship. And if you have never been to a citizenship ceremony, you should go. They're very powerful. Even if you don't know when that's there, it's still very powerful and moving. But you'll have a lot of children that are in the audience watching the mom or dad take the oath. And what they may not know is they're also becoming citizens of the exact same time their parents are. So the reason I bring up derivation is just because oftentimes people don't know. We can't determine whether or not somebody is a citizen or not a citizen. By the way, they look or even sometimes what they say because it's so you can acquire derivation citizenship and not even know it. I've had clients come into my office wanting to apply for a form of immigration relief. And after doing a consultation, we find out that they're already already. Yeah, that's happened. They don't even know. So that's just one thing, you know, for having conversations at Thanksgiving or whatever. I always like to bring up that you, we cannot judge somebody's citizenship based upon anything because oftentimes it's so complex that the person themselves may not even know. Then we can flip into the non-citizen category and we've already talked about lawful permanent residents. These are immigrants that intend on making the United States their home. They find a path to residency and they've obtained their lawful permanent residency over LPR status. This is also referred to as spring card holders. The LPR cards used to be green. They're not green right now, but in the future they're going back to green. Green card holders is actually an okay way of describing LPRs. But the one thing that's important to mention about LPRs is even if the LPR card or the green card has expiration date on it, that doesn't mean that the residency has an expiration date on it. The residency is indefinite, can last forever until it's affirmatively taken away. So if we have a lawful permanent resident that commits a crime, that residency can be taken away and that person can be put into removal or deportation proceedings. However, just because their green card expires, that has no effect on their residency. It's just a proof of residency. So that's another common misconception when we have residents where their cards expires, they're very difficult for them to get services and maybe even obtain their employment, but really it's just the card expiring for the most part. And that's something they can get renewed easily? Yeah, yeah. So referring to justice law neighbors, another non-profit or reputable immigration attorney, that process is relatively easy unless there's something strange that's happened between the time they've obtained their residency and they need to renew. So there's a common misconception and we definitely have to talk to an attorney to talk about your steps for it. It's similar to your license expires, but that doesn't mean you're no longer, I mean you're still, you know, supposed to drive, but you're still a citizen, you're still, yeah, or whatever your state ID is. Yeah, there are definitely similarities, but the thing that was surprising for me to learn when I started practicing immigration law is lawful permit residency is indefinite. You can keep it forever. There's certain things that you have to do to maintain your residency, like you cannot live in the United States for more than six months in a row without getting permission first. If you do that, you may be found to have abandoned your residency. There's some other other things that you need to keep in mind if you're intending on applying for naturalization, but that's that's one type of nonsense and lawful permit resident. There's other people that are in our communities that are fleeing persecution and these are going to be our refugees, our assailants for the most part. Refugees and assailants really have the same criteria that they have to prove in order to obtain that classification. They have to prove that they are fearful of returning to their home country because of persecution and they have to prove that they're going to be particularly at risk of being persecuted based upon something about themselves that they cannot change. So they have to be fearful of persecution based upon their race, religion, national origin, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. The difference between refugees and assailants is simply where they applied for that protective status. Refugees have to live in a refugee camp outside of their home country and they get the classification of a refugee before they enter the United States, whereas an assailant will be in the United States and affirmatively apply for asylum status from the United States. They were already here and then something happened potentially in their home country that made them realize though this is if I go back now this is going to be bad. That that is one great example however that raises a good issue. Refugees have to start in a refugee camp in order to enrate as a refugee. There are no refugee camps in Central and South America. So while we do have people that are fleeing persecution based upon their race, religion, national origin, political opinion, membership, and particular social group, there's no way that they can enter the United States as a refugee, no way. That's right, that's right, and it's much more difficult to have your assailant application approved than it is to have your refugee application approved. They're both, the refugee process is very difficult and long. However, their criteria if you're in a refugee camp is easier to get approved by the adjudicator. The asylum applications are adjudicated more stringently and the approval rate of asylum applications are not that high. And one thing that's also starting to mention is asylum applications are pending for a long time and sometimes when your application's pending, you can apply for a work authorization. So what that means is we have had immigrant community members take an advantage of by non-attorneys or unethical attorneys by filing asylum applications even though the person may not qualify, getting a work permit, so their client thinks that they've done miracles only to find out that eventually the asylum application is going to be denied and that person is going to be placed in renewable deportation procedures. So asylum is definitely not an option for everyone. You have to be fearful of persecution based upon something about yourself that you can't change. It cannot just be you're afraid of returning to your home country because it's very dangerous. So that's the refugee assailant category. The next category is people that are in our community is with temporary permission. There are several subcategories within this category but the two main subcategories are TPS, which is temporary protected status and DACA, for action for childhood arrivals. Both of those programs are at risk of going away because of the current administration. And in fact, the current administration has ended the DACA program and we'll talk more about that in a little bit. But it's basically was a program that provided temporary permission for young people who were brought to the country at a very young age and met certain criteria and would allow the young people to obtain a driver's license, social security number, work authorization, the ability to encourage things of that nature. That program is going away and we'll talk more about that in a second. TPS is for people that are in the United States but it's unsafe for them to return to their home country because of civil warfare, natural disaster, things of that nature. And the administration is in control of which country is qualified for TPS designation and how long that designation is going to last. So that's different from the asylees because it's not something about them. It's something happening. Yeah. And the administration is definitely taking away those TPS designations for lots of different countries. But it is an option for some. So it's important to still talk to an attorney or a legal representative. And then the next category is non-immigrant. So these are people in our communities who have permission to be in the United States but for a specific period of time for a specific purpose. So these are people that are here on a visitor visa, people that are here on a student visa. They can be actors, doctors. There's a specific purpose that they've been granted permission to be in the United States and it's only for a specific timeframe. Once that purpose or that time no longer applies or they're overstate, then they will no longer be an non-immigrant and they will move it to the next category which is undocumented. And the next slide just kind of talks about that using the word undocumented is important. We could also say look not citizen non-resident but undocumented is more appropriate than describing someone as an illegal person, right? I know that the administration and the Immigration and Nationality Act are referred to people that are undocumented as legal aliens. But that term is not necessarily correct and it's dehumanizing in the way that I describe that person as being illegal. If I well being in the United States without current immigration status is not a crime, right? Sometimes if you've entered the United States without authorization, you can invoke crimes especially if you're traveling with someone else since you're sharing water, blankets, food, you could be actually committing a smuggling and non-immigrant. So sometimes there are crimes. It's almost different, yeah. Yeah but for the most part being in the United States without permission is definitely not a crime but even if there was a crime committed, we still shouldn't refer to that person as illegal. It's just like, you know, if I committed a crime, if I got a DUI, you would not refer to me as an illegal person. You would, you know, you would refer to me as oh she she got convicted of a crime, whatever. And as far as numbers, there's over 11 million undocumented individuals in the United States. So this was kind of close. So you talked about me and I'm not using the term illegal and I thought it was really cool because ALA did insist or they made a resolution to encourage the Library of Congress subject heading to not use the term illegal alien anymore. And in response, the illegal alien term was replaced with non-citizen and if we're talking about migration without authorization, the terms non-citizen and authorized immigration can be combined together. You guys probably know more about this than I do. But I think it's very cool and it just relates back to that first slide that the words that we made, that we use really do matter. And that what you said in the beginning too that libraries are a place where some undocumented people, they go, their refugees and immigrants go there and libraries are already ahead of the curve from some other organizations and supporting them and being accepting of it and not derogatory. And so the programs are generally good. I think so too. But it's just, you know, before I started practicing immigration law, I didn't necessarily understand the negative connotation associated with the term illegal alien. So it just becomes so common to say you don't even think about it. Right. And it's also used in our federal and state legislation. Right. But as I've been, you know, working more in this field when I hear it, I just cringe and I think that someday we'll all, you know, feel that but it's not the case right now. So, you know, if we're in the library and a patron comes and they're asking a question and they're responding, the response they get as well, are you illegal? You know, that may prevent that person from feeling comfortable and safe in the library. Okay. So another misconception breaker is we've all heard the question. I'm okay with immigration, but they have to do it legally. Why don't they just get in line? Right. We've all heard that. And I talked about before the only way that you can become a citizen is by becoming a lawful permanent resident and then meeting certain criteria. Well, in order to become a lawful permanent resident, you have to start with a certain type of case, a certain type of application. And unfortunately, there's not an application or not a type of release available for everyone. There is not a line that you can stand in, not an application you can fill out and just wait for your turn. That's just not. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't. Has it been set up that way? It has not been. It used to be that way, but it's not that way right now. So. And until the DACA, there was nothing for children like that. I mean, that's why that was created, too, because there wasn't any, wasn't even anything organized for that type of situation. That's right. And there is the DREAM Act, which is pending in front of the legislature right now. The DREAM Act has been introduced in front of Congress a number of times, and it's never been successful in the past. We're hopeful that with all of the controversy around me terminating the DACA program with the DREAM Act, it will have some more positive moments. A lot of people are standing up and coming forward. Voicing their opinions more stronger than I think they ever have before. Right. So it's really important that DACA talk to it and equitable information, try to see if there's any form that's really available for them. But there's likely not, because the reason that they apply for DACA is because there is no. They didn't have, they tried all these and it didn't fit. Yeah. So the four main forms of relief that you can apply for to work towards your permanent residency or the diversity program and employment-based immigration, family-based immigration and humanitarian forms of relief. The diversity program and employment-based immigration, Justice for IndieBus doesn't work a lot in. The diversity program is just, it's a diversity lottery program. People call it the diversity lottery because it literally is like a lottery. It was created to increase the diversity in the United States. But what that means is countries with high migrating rates do not have availability for their nationals to apply for the diversity visa program. The idea is we already have a lot of people coming from there. This is for the countries that we did not have a lot. So we're going to encourage more people So right now, clients from Mexico, India, China, Philippines, countries with high migration rates are not eligible to apply for the diversity program. And some of the requirements just really knock out most of my clientele for this program. You have to have internet access to apply, which a lot of my clients don't in their home countries and some of them don't have internet access here. Unless they go to the library. Go to the library. Our libraries can get to that. And then oftentimes you have to prove educational requirements or that you've worked as a professional for a certain number of years. And when we're working with clients that have been subjected to extreme poverty and violence and things of that nature, they're not able to meet these criteria. So it's not an option for everyone. If it is an option, then it's just simply applying for the lottery and hoping that you become but not everybody does. It's a low percentage of people that apply that actually benefit from the program. Employment based immigration means that you have to have a skill. You have to have an employer that's willing petition for you and they have to prove that your skill is so important because there's not enough skilled workers in that particular area. It's very difficult, but you in these cases, the employer can afford to hire an attorney and so they don't need nonprofit help. So I don't work a lot with employment based immigration. So that in that case, your employer wouldn't do the work for you to try and get that one. Yep, they have to start to get access, definitely. So that's not an option for these two more clients. Family based immigration and humanitarian forms is really primarily what we work with at Justice for our Neighbors. Family based immigration, basically you have to have a family member that's related to you in a certain way that has a certain type of status to apply for you to prove that relationship and the time that you have to wait to get your visa to enter the United States and adjust to a lawful permanent resident depends on our relationship and the person who's applying for you's status. That would be like if you married somebody who was from another country, you're an American citizen and you met someone and married them. That would be how they would eventually become a citizen as well. So the relationship, it can't be just any type of relation like a lawful permanent resident cannot petition for their son or daughter if their son or daughter is married. They're already married, okay. You can't petition, a grandparent can't petition for a grandchild. A lawful permanent resident can't petition for a sister or brother. A husband wife of a US citizen that would be considered a immediate relative and that visa should be available immediately, however the process sometimes can take over a year. So it's not necessarily immediate. When you go down into the preference categories, those are for the petitioners who are lawful permanent residents for United States citizens and the relationship is more extended. So this is a circumstance where if you have the right type of relative who's willing to start this process for you, there may be a line that you can get into to wait for the visa, but the line sometimes is so restrictive it can bump you out and it also is so long that you can die waiting. So the example that I can give is if a United States citizen petitions for their sibling. First of all, the citizen has to be over 21 before they can petition for anyone. They have to approve their relationship with their sibling once they've done it. So it'll depend on the country of origin of their sibling. So if that sibling is a national of Mexico, those applications are currently being processed from 1996. So we're talking like that person. Is that because there's just so many of them? There's so many. And there's not enough visas. There's a limited number of visas that are offered. A little number of openings too. Right. But the thing is that processing does not move with the way that our time moves. So that visa processing chart that tells me that they're processing those type of applications from 1996 is going to stay stagnant for a few months. So what that means is it's not a 20 year wait. It means that the wait is going to get longer and longer as the years go on. So there's been an attorney who's been following the numbers and the processing times. And his estimation is that if someone applies for their brother or sister right now, it will be a hundred and fifty year wait. Wow. So it's not really the route to go. It's not really. Sometimes it's people's only option though. So they're willing to apply and then that's maybe something to change with how the process works or how the system is doing it. Yeah. But another unfortunate thing is like I said, permit residents can't petition for their son or daughter if they're married. Sometimes, you know, families really haven't been advised and so they'll petition for their single children. And then their children will make decisions like you and I make. And we make the decision to be married. And in that decision to get married, we'll kick them off long and we won't know it. So oftentimes, you know, I met clients that come in this day and I have had this application pending for X number of years only to have to break the news that it's no longer a real estate. It's no longer a valid idea for that person. Humanitarian forms of relief are we already talked about refugees and SLAs. However, there are other humanitarian forms of relief, particularly for victims of domestic violence or other specific crime. So valid events, again, women act, self petitioners and you be suited. So these are for victims and it's to encourage the victims to be able to report their crime. Especially in domestic violence cases, if somebody doesn't have immigration status, it's a way that the perpetrator can kind of exacerbate the cycle of violence. They'll use the lack of immigration status to keep the person with that. Yeah. And so these forms of relief are just really a way of saying, you know what, you know, there may be a form of relief available that you can work towards your residency and also, you know, escape the domestic violence or whatever a dangerous situation you're in. There's also special immigrant juvenile standards. That's for kids that have been abused and neglected by one or more of their parents. And that abuse of any one neglect can happen in home country or can happen in the United States. And neglect, even if these kids always say, you know, that their mom or dad didn't intentionally neglect them, not having enough money for food, not having water, not having proper clothing, those things are considered neglectful in our society. So oftentimes, if you have unaccompanied minors that are entering the United States and resettling in our communities, this may be an option. There's one catch though, you have to have a Nebraska or a state court order with certain findings in that order of kind of affirming the abuse of the animal neglect. So that's what we investigated and shown that it's happening. Right. And so in Nebraska, the age of majority is 19. So we have to have that Nebraska state order before the kiddo turns 19. We then have until the kiddos 21 to apply for the special immigrant juvenile stress. But what this means is that there's a young person that you're working with and they're undocumented. It's a good idea to refer them to an immigration attorney to talk because if this is a viable form of relief, they may age out of it and not know it. They gotta get out quickly. Right. There's lots of youth in the foster care system that are aging out of their ability to apply for SIJ status, even though they would qualify for it. So it's something to keep on our radars. A lot of times I get asked where are undocumented community members safe? And by safe, we mean safe from rights or safe from immigration enforcement. So immigration and Customs Enforcement are ICE. That's the branch of the Department of Homeland Security that used to be known as the INS. When people talk about immigration, they're talking about ICE officers. And Nebraska has a history of being subjected to large-scale enforcement operations like raids. This happened 10 years ago in Grand Island where workplaces were raided and moms and dads were detained and children had those. So this is something that our community members are very scared of. It's a very real fear because it's happening for and it could happen again. There has been a memo issued. It's been issued a long time ago, but it's still valid until and it's not at the one of the administration. But I still put a memo out that these types of raids or enforcement actions are not to happen at certain sensitive locations. And the reason I bring it up is because I think there's an argument to be made that libraries should be included. They're not though. So they're not specifically referred to. But because of what we talked about because of the educational programming that libraries provide, I think there's an argument to be made that it should be included under schools but it's not affirmed and really included. So we'll talk in a little bit about things we can do to make our libraries more safe from this type of large-scale enforcement. But it's important that we can let our patrons know that it is safe to take your kids to school. It's safe to go to school. There's not going to be raids at school. It's safe to go to the hospital when you're sick. My apprenticeship was several hospitals here in the Omaha area where people wait until the very, very last minute to seek medical services because they're scared of being reported. They're scared of immigration enforcement. That just, it doesn't happen. Another sensitive or safe location was churches or other religious institutions. So worshiping, going to females, weddings, things of that nature, you should be safe. And also public demonstrations should be safe as well. Sometimes we have large-scale, no-year aides presentations or in response to the DACA program that we've had press releases and demonstrations and those should be safe from immigration enforcement. As long as nothing, you don't engage in anything at those demonstrations. That's illegal. For anybody. That's possible. And so that would be that you're opening yourself up to interaction with local police, local law enforcement and local law enforcement. If you're undocumented, then can you report your document and status to ICE and so they'd be on the radar that way. So safe locations means safe from enforcement, but not specific enforcement. So if somebody has a specific warrant out for them, there's nothing that would prevent an immigration officer from going to a rally to pick up a certain individual. That's different. That's completely different. So what can libraries do? I think like we talked about earlier, it's just having reliable information that your patrons need. And even having it without them asking I think is important because you may not have a patron ask like, hey, where are safe locations? Or how can I find a reputable immigration training? They may not ask. They might just... It might be scary to even mention it. Right. So having information accessible I think is really important. And like we talked about, libraries aren't necessarily included in the sensitive location in the mail. However, if you work with your board and you work with your director and your management to have directed for what if we have an immigration officer come to the library, what would you do? The policies. So having a policy in place I think is a good idea. One thing that's important to mention is that immigration officers can come into public spaces so they can come into the library without a warrant. However, they can't come into private areas without a warrant. So if you have a meeting room or offices or a certain area that's not necessarily open for public, that would be a place where patrons could go to feel safe. And they wouldn't be subjected to immigration enforcement without a warrant or permission to go into that private area. So if your library's interested in learning more about things like that, feel free to give me a chimp. And that also extends to our usual, and I've been just related to immigrants and refugees, but anybody, records, circulation records, information about what they're doing, they need a warrant to get all of that from you at the library as well. It doesn't matter if they're ICE or what they're asking for. They need a warrant to have you provide if you haven't any of that personal information about how anybody has used the library. And I feel like those stances and those policies that have already been developed are in line with also being advocates for preventing just this random type of immigration enforcement that might see happening again. So why is it important for libraries to think about this right now? While earlier this year there were some executive orders that the administration announced that really changed the way that immigration was perceived in our communities. President Obama, he created the DACA program, but he also really prioritized immigration enforcement to start with criminal offenders, recent immigrants that immigrated without authorization, and people that are a threat to national security. The reason that that makes sense is because we talked about before there's over 11 million undocumented people in the United States. We only have the funds to put 400,000 people into removal or deportation proceedings every year. So if you look at the disparity of those numbers, it makes sense to target criminals, people with violent crimes, people that pose a threat to our country. It makes sense to focus on those individuals first. However, that's not the case anymore. So those priorities have been removed and immigration really is now just kind of operating in. Everybody is at risk of enforcement right now regardless of how long someone's been here, if they have children, if they're contributing to our community, if they don't have one of those specific forms of relief available to them, then they're going to be targeted for immigration enforcement. It also did something where if you're an immigration court, you have certain protections. Interestingly enough, you don't have the right to a court or point an attorney though. So unlike criminal offenders who, if they can't afford that, that's always been the way. But we've always, immigrants have always had the right to fair hearing in front of a judge. That's changed. So someone who's undocumented has interaction with immigration officials and they cannot prove that they've been in the United States for more than two years, then they're subjected to expedited removal proceedings, which means they will not necessarily have the opportunity to a hearing or to be able to plead their case in front of the judge. So one of the things in the Rights and Planning Guide that we can talk about too is just giving our patrons the information that it's very important to keep records to prove their presence in the United States for the past two years. In some forms of immigration relief, you need to prove your presence for a longer period of time. So just educating about what type of documents we can use to prove presence. Just giving someone access to maybe checklists that they can use to organize themselves because not having access to an opportunity to be heard in front of the judge is a significant change and it's a concern. The executive orders also talk about funding for the law, that nature. The refugee ban is, and parts have been blocked by injunction motive, parts are sibling through and that's concerning, but the most recent executive order was issued on September 5th and it ended the deferred action for child and the rentals program. Now that one, I, and I read lots of things about all this, of course, that there's executive order and, but I've read that there's also Congress has a chance to not have that go through. There's, it's not like executive order means immediate. It's, I'm telling something about how the Congress can still come up with something in the next six months or something to refute that, to change it, to make it not. And that would be an act of, an act of Congress so that we talk about the DREAM Act. So it kind of gives them an opening too. Yeah, well there's always been an opening and the DREAM Act has been introduced to kind of progress a lot of times, but with. So DREAM Act is separate and I think it's something that some people get confused. The DREAM Act is something different, separate from the deferred actions of child revivals. I think a lot of people are confused. Yeah, so like we talked about the DACA is just a temporary form of relief and it was created by President Obama because of that disparity in the numbers. There's a rather million undocumented people, you can only put 400,000 in immigration proceedings. Should we really focus on the children who are brought to the United States through no choice of their own? Don't have any criminal convictions, haven't met educational requirements? There are a lot of requirements for that too, I know. Right. And so should we prioritize those folks for removal or deportation? No. And so that's where the deferred action for childhood revivals program. It was basically President Obama's way of saying that we're not going to prioritize placing these people into removal proceedings, but we're also going to get them the ability to contribute to our society through work authorization such as creating a driver's license. Nebraska was the last state in the country to allow DACA youth to have driver's license, so they had work authorization but no ability to so that's all going away and Congress can't reinstate the DACA program through executive order, but they can through legislation. And there's other bills that I haven't introduced. There's the bridge act that is similar to the DACA program where it's providing some type of temporary protection and then it allows people to try to find another form of immigration relief after a certain period of time. And there's lots of legislation pending, but taking away the DACA program may actually spur legislation to become successful, whereas in the past and as not. So they didn't have to worry about it because something was already keep making it okay for these kids. Making it okay as well. The way it wasn't as urgent to make something official in the law. Right. So the DACA program, it was temporary and so it's only two years, DACA grants, so these kiddos were having to re-do every two years, and it would never lead to residency, never lead to citizenship. So it was not great, but it was something and it allowed these young people to take the next step in their lives. And I see how it also helps the ICE or anyone involved in, like you said, going after the people who were the criminals or threats to security. Don't waste time and money and energy on these kids because that's a waste of it. We've got these other ones that are more urgent. You really should be talking. You should be focusing on them. This official says just don't worry about it. It's okay. And it helps free up that resources for where they should be going after. Yeah. And it doesn't, I mean, it does not make sense to send a child to a country that they don't know the language, they don't know the culture. They came to the United States, it's a very, very young child and they know nothing but us. But it's a reality for DACA youth now. It's a very, very real reality on September 5th that the program was ended. So DACA youths who have their grant at DACA, it remains valid until it's natural expiration. So like I said, they're two-year grants. So on the work authorization, there's a two-year period and there's an expiration period. So our DACA youths are going to remain in deferred action status until the natural expiration of their DACA. If their DACA was going to expire between September 5th and March 5th of 2018, so September 5th of 2017 this year in March 5th, 2018, then they are able to apply for another two-year renewal. I heard there was some sort of a buffer. But they had to apply before October 5th. So the applications have to be received by officials by October 5th. So at Justice Runners, we're prioritizing DACA renewal applications for just those specific kiddos. If their DACA expired before September 5th and they just were kind of delaying on renewing because maybe they didn't have the $500 application for you or something like that, those young people are out of luck. There is no ability for them to renew. If their DACA expires after March 5th, 2018, they're also out of luck. There's no... This is a very small window of... Yeah, very, very small window. And no new applications are being enforced accepted or adjudicated for DACA. So the American Library Association responded to President Trump's executive orders when they first came out earlier this year. And that's at the top of the site. And then they also responded to the executive order that was just issued on September 5th. And it's basically just saying that they're not in accordance with the harsh executive orders and particularly for an action to tell the arrival of a state. They want to see a solution. So again... Libraries are there to help anyone who is in these precarious situations. We are here. Come to us. We'll help you figure out where you can go, who we can refer you to, which libraries have done with all sorts of topics. So forever. So we'll send out the slides afterwards. Yes. You'll have access to all of this after. So don't... Just try and scribble down all these URLs. This... We don't need to go to it right now, but I've been talking about the rates and safety guide throughout the presentation. And there's two places where you can find it. The Nebraska Immigration Regulatory Services in Tautland or nila.org. It's on the Resources tab. And then it's also on Justice for Our Neighbors website as well. And if we have time, I think we're going way over. If we have time, we can go there. Well, yeah, as I said, we did just hit 11 o'clock, which is our normally our official end time. But we did start late. That was our fault. So we'll go as long as we need to to finish getting through everything that maybe needs to share and any questions you have. Go ahead and type in your questions as we're talking. If you do anything you want to know more about that you might have already heard about or you're wondering, type it in. We'll get to them. If you do need to leave because you did only put into your schedule the one hour, don't worry about it. We'll have recording available for you. You can watch the rest that you missed later. But the rates and safety planning guide is basically broken up into two different segments. The first half is just talking about what constitutional rights or community members have and undocumented people are protected by the Constitution just like residents and citizens are. And so the rights, the Know Your Rights portion has just our basic constitutional rights that everybody should know, but we don't, right? I don't even sometimes. And so it just talks about, you know, if you're undocumented and there's not a form of relief that's available for you right now, what can you do? For example, if you're at home and ICE comes to your door but they don't have a warrant for you that has your address on it, you don't have to open the door. What people don't know is that ICE officers can yell, scream, they can lie, they can listen. And so they have stories about it. And so in the rights and planning guide, there's information about, you know, stay calm, don't open the door, ask the ICE officer to push the warrant underneath the door or hold it up to a window so you can examine it. There's actually pictures of what warrants look like. So I wouldn't know what a real one looks like as opposed to something potentially fake. And it doesn't even have to be fake, it could be an official immigration document. But unless it's signed by a judge, it's not a warrant. You don't have to open your. And then it talks about how your rights are different depending on what you're driving, whether you're a passenger, whether you're walking on the street, what your rights are in an airport, something very tragic, a tragic that's been happening as permanent residents are being asked to kind of denounce their residency when they're at the airport by signing I-407s. And so when you're at the airport, it's already a very stressful environment for everyone. However, if you're asked to sign a form by an immigration officer, sometimes you'll sign a form without really fully understanding, especially if you don't understand English that well. And so one thing that the rights and planning guide is that shows people what the I-407 looks like and what it is and what it is not. And it talks about if you're arrested, what you should do and the way that removal proceedings work within an immigration court. Another important piece of the rights and planning guide is to talk about how to avoid being victimized by an unethical attorney or a non-attorney. So there are bad attorneys in every field of law, every area of law, right? But there's a higher proportion of bad attorneys practicing immigration law. And that's primarily because our clients are more susceptible to being victimized, less likely to report, non-practice, more likely to pay in cash, things of that nature. So the rights and planning guide has a list of attorneys that have met certain criteria and are the good apples, so to speak. So if somebody wants to know where they should start trying to find immigration legal representation, the rights and planning guide is a really good place because it has the private attorneys that has been screened, so to speak, but it also has the different nonprofit organizations that someone can reach out to. One thing that's important to note is notaries in the United States are not what notaries are in a lot of other countries. So someone that holds themselves out as a notary or notary can be misleading to our immigrant. They think they have the ability to do something that they don't because it's different in their country. Right. And so remember I always talked about some people, some unethical people will help community members apply for asylum even though they don't qualify, but they'll get their work authorization and they'll spread the word that this notario or unethical attorney is really, really great and they get more clients. A lot of times it's not attorneys that are doing that. They're helping people fill out forms that they should not be applying and will need the person into remote deportation proceedings when they otherwise wouldn't have been. So that type of information is in the guide also how to report notarians or the unauthorized practices law and what practice by attorneys. The safety planning guide is really just based upon checklist. So this is for someone that's, they may not have a form of immigration relief available to them right now, but they still want to know what they can do to protect themselves and their families. So this was just a scenario about someone who may be a doctor of youth asking for help and you, you're not an attorney, so you can't give legal advice, what do you do? Right. And that's a standard that we all know as librarians. I am not a attorney. I am not a doctor. I cannot tell you what you should, but I can tell you where you can go to get these experts, find these experts who can then. Right. Give you legal advice or medical advice. And so our hopes was that having the rights and planning guide would be an easy way for you to give very, very important information without crossing the line and giving legal advice. Legal advice, it could get you in trouble as a person giving advice, but it also could hurt the patron if it's not the correct legal advice and maybe get them placed into a war proceeding. So the safety planning guide is just something that you can give your patrons to help prepare for uncertain circumstances that may happen in the future. We already talked about the status of the doctor program. Basically the most important thing right now is somebody's doctor experts before March 5th, 2018. Make sure you're referring them to Justice for Neighbors or another immigration legal service provider so we can help review. So you guys, you are based, your office is in Omaha, but elsewhere across the state, are there local offices or how are there more libraries across the state? That's a great question. So these are the checklists that are in the resident planning list. Also there's information on how to apply for justice for neighbor services or other non-profit immigration legal services and it's through the Nebraska Immigration Legal Assistance Program. That's also the website where you can find the rights and planning guide. So this number, the NELA number, is a toll-free number and it's a centralized intake system that five non-profit immigration legal service providers get our cases through. So it's a really easy way for librarians or immigration specialists to give this number and you can give it to anyone. Right? You know, oh, if you know somebody who needs immigration legal assistance, they can call this number. It's a free number. Call it on behalf of somebody. And you can call it on behalf of somebody. A lot of times when you apply for services and you actually have to make the application, this is an exception. As long as you have the person with you or you know enough information about their case, you can call on their behalf. And it's confidential that NELA program has bilingual paralegals that staff the phones, the hours are on the website. If somebody doesn't speak English or Spanish, the NELA paralegals have access to over 50 other languages through phone interpreters that they can get on the phone immediately. The application takes about 20 minutes. If there's a form of immigration relief available, then the NELA paralegals will refer that case to the organization that can help the person the best and fastest. So the organizations are justice for our neighbors, my organization, but also cast like charities, the Women's Center for Advancement, Center for Legal Immigration Assistance here in Omaha, and also Lutheran Family Services. If our organizations can't help that person, then the NELA hotline will send a private attorney referral list, which will have a list of those good Apple attorneys that people can start with. So you don't necessarily have to tell somebody that needs immigration assistance open the phone book, because it's a really scary intimidating thing to do to, you know, to try to get an attorney. They can start by calling this number. So this is like a clearing house where they can then be directed to someone maybe more local to that. Yeah, more local. And it's, you know, our nonprofits help low income individuals. So even if someone's not low income, they can still call this number to get the private attorney referral list. So it'd be a great place to start regardless of your situation. Yeah, that's the thing I think a lot of, I'm sure a lot of people, I mean, anybody looking for a lawyer for any reason, how can I afford that? I don't have money for a lawyer. I barely have money to do what I do on a daily basis. And you guys do this. We do it for free. So justice for neighbors provides our services for free. Some of the other nonprofit organizations charge nominal fees or do a sliding scale. So there's options. Yeah, but to answer your questions about justice for neighbors, so our main offices in Omaha, but we do target communities throughout Nebraska that have a high population of immigrants and their one number of immigration attorneys. So we are providing local services in Grand Island, Lessington, South Sioux City, and Creeds. So we either have offices in those communities where we go there on a regular basis, like, for example, and create loop partnering with the ACC church and where they're at. So we have local presences. Regular, yeah. Otherwise, if it's somebody that lives in a not in the metro area or not in one of those targeted communities, we can do consultations via phone, people can come to Omaha, we can make it happen. But the reason that we're in those communities is we're trying to just remove barriers and make sure people have access to reliable immigration services when that community is transitioning and underserved. I think that was, I mean, I know I went through everything really, really fast, but this is my contact information. If anybody has any questions, if you guys need presentations to record your staff, you can always see if we're available to come to you. I know I'm going to Boston. I think it's nice that you have the library experience and knowledge that you're not just an attorney, because sometimes I know coming into the Azure lots of professions, libraries are kind of a unique institution. The things that we do is very different from some what other. A lot of people attempting to work with us, which is great. Don't understand always how we do things, where the rules are, what we can and can't do. And I think having you being both an attorney and librarian education really helps. Yeah. Understanding really what we do. And I just, I think that the Neal Hotline and the Rights and Planning Guide are so important, but unless we know about them, you know, we can't help our community members. I know that when I was in the prison library, if I would have had the Neal Hotline or the Rights and Planning Guide to help, it would have, it would have helped tremendous. They just didn't have access to those things. And so I want to make sure that everybody has access and making sure that our libraries know about it is in the best way. This is not what libraries do, is provide information in all sorts of areas. And this is another one that we definitely can do. Get the links to these resources out there. Promote that it's available. I mean, in your libraries, you know, if you're in one of these communities that has an immigrant population, or if you have the ones admitted to mention that you know your town has them, because they're coming in to see them around town. Everybody, you know, you know who's in your town. If you're one of those group places, start putting this stuff out, pushing it, put out a display, put it on your racks of documents and things, flyers and brochures, put something together out there for the people that won't be brave enough to come up and ask, or will think that I have a language barrier issue that I don't speak English and there's nobody here that does that speaks my language, whatever it will be. What do I do? Put things in different languages available as well. We do have one question that came in that I do want to answer and I was looking at myself because I wasn't sure. And it relates to, and it's a library question, cool, relates to the Library of Congress change to change a little alien, the subject heading change. Did Congress deny the Library of Congress proposal? And I did see they, it looks like they're, they tried, but I can't see that there was, they actually did. They, there was, yeah, the Republicans, of course, did Trump put in a bill saying, no, don't change it. The reasoning being the law says, uses the phrase of legal aliens. So everything that relates to what these libraries or like the Library of Congress or legal libraries maybe using, shouldn't match up with the law. But from what I see, it didn't go through. It didn't pass. It was unsuccessful. Yes, they tried, but it was unsuccessful. There was luckily a fight against it. Yeah, it was, I wish I remembered the other three Congress, but I know it was spearheaded by Ted Cruz. It was unsuccessful. So the subject heading, it was changed. It was, yeah, it was petition, law makers object to it. House orders Library of Congress to maintain the legal alien, but it didn't, there was a bill put through to do that, but at least had lines of course, a little. That's an interesting point about like our laws use the term a legal alien. California, interestingly enough, amended their state laws to not use the term a legal alien. So that's the one of the states was such a huge but influx of undocumented that I can see, yeah, or unauthorized citizens that they want to be very responsive. Yeah. So my, you know, our laws were written a long time ago in very archaic language and that we need to continue these. It's like lots of other laws that are no longer applicable or need modification. You got a change of the times. That was an awesome question. It's good to bring that out, to remember that some people do know, yes, we did mention that it was a thing, but and yes, there was a attempt to not have it go through, but I didn't. All right. So anybody have any other questions? Everybody's still here. Awesome. Thank you you guys for sticking around. Really randomly. Does anybody have any questions they want to ask them and be anything on the more about? Has there been a particular situation in your town that you want to ask about? Or do you have any tips or tricks or things that you've done at your library that might help other people? Let us know. I know you went through some of these slides quick with the different the lists of. Yeah, so in the safety planning portion. Yeah, checklist. Yeah. And so these are the things that if somebody wants to know like how can I prepare for possible interaction with ICE officer possible detention, right? You're going to want to have these things in a safe place and you're going to want to make sure that you have a trusted person in charge of being able to retrieve these documents if you need them. And at libraries, we can help people get some of these things too if they don't have a copy of their birth certificate. Where do we go to get one? How do I get a passport? Yeah, and then in the resident planning guide, it actually has copies of the applications on how to get birth certificates from our state and then common countries where our community members may have come from. But we have community members that have children that have been born in other states and they're going to need help just to grasp it, you know, getting copies of those birth certificates where they may need help getting proof of presence for the last two years and maybe having a pronoun of when they got their library card is maybe the only thing that they can do that could be medical records for their children, school records for their children or themselves, receipts, photographs, leases, things of that nature. But a lot of times there's limited access to those records for a lot of the reasons we already talked about, maybe having the library card is one of the small ways that we can prove the presence. I got this done in 2012, so obviously I was here then. Yeah, if you have children you want to think about is there someone that you trust to be able to make decisions for your children if you were detained and unable to do so? It's very, very important if there's a situation where both parents or the primary parent is detained and not being able to pick up their kids from school or from take care, then you will have the involvement of the Department of Health and Human Services, maybe unnecessarily. So there's information about that if your child was born in the United States and there's a risk of you being removed or deported and you would like to remain intact as a family then you need to make sure to talk to the consulate of your home country to register your child in your home country. Because if you're removed with your children they may not have access to school, to benefits, medical services unless they're registered. That's something that we can do now and so providing research to prepare. Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of things that we don't think about or you know things like does somebody else have a copy of your car key? Do you have money saved to pay for an attorney if you want? It's just things that if somebody is really feeling powerless right now because there may not be a form of immigration relief, having them prepare for uncertain teachers will just restore a little bit of power makes them feel like they're doing, at least they're doing what they can now. I feel a little more confident that I at least I did what I could, yeah. Awesome. Let's pop out to, I just want to briefly have you show, do you want to show the website where that guy is? Yeah, hit escape there and then yeah, down to the fire fox. Okay, so we're going to go just to quickly show this just for a couple of seconds. You see this is the website that we just mentioned. Yeah, so the Nila hotline, the numbers right here and then the hours are right here. But to get to the guy, you go to the resources town, and then you're going to go to rights and planning. And the table of contents is a great place to start and it's all hyperlinked. So if you know somebody just needs help knowing what their rights are, you can start with that portion. If you know somebody just needs help preparing for uncertain future, you can start with the that is in English and Spanish. Everything's in English and Spanish. Yeah. So if you want to help somebody with their checklist, you can literally just use the hyperlink and get to the checklist. And so right here, it'll say like, oh, we should have your passport. Well, if you don't have a passport from your home country, that can be very intimidating to try to do from here. So you can go, you can go to page 80 and it will give directions on how to get passports from some of the most common countries that are community members come from. Of course, you don't forget the same thing. So it not only is giving the information what our community members should have gathered really accessible, but it's giving information on how they gather those documents if they don't have them. That's good because it's going to vary from country to country. Yeah, right. You're in person to person. Well, country to country means what I'm thinking. Yeah. Okay. It doesn't look like anybody has typed in any urgent questions that they need to answer right away. That's okay. You'll have, well, you have this resource, you have the hundred number from the site. You can, of course, always call Mindy whenever any other questions you might have, it's her contact info. And for anything you do come up with. So I think we will wrap it up for today a little bit overnight. Any last words you want to say before we wrap up? I mean, thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely. We try to share as much on the show and through the library commission to anything, anything that every single library might need to do what they're doing. And like I said, I, you know, I watched the news myself. I've seen what's going on with the situation. I knew it was lots of things were happening that we just don't know what to deal with. And then, you know, I saw you done a session this summer and said, that's it. I'm going to do that on the show. And we're going to get it recorded now. So then now anyone who wasn't able to either attend this in person sessions, you've done on this recording as a resource. So share it with anybody you know out there who might be in this situation or someone who you know might know somebody. All right, so that will wrap it up for today's show. I'm going to pop it back out of game two website. And I'm just going to go here. So that'll wrap it up for today's show. Encompass Live, we have our website here. Luckily, so far, we have the only thing called this on the internet day. So when you Google us as I just did there, all these results have come up for us. So here is our current Encompass Live website. The recording, this is the show is being recorded and we posted probably later this afternoon to our website. Right here is our current upcoming shows, but here's where our archives are. Most recent ones go at the top of the list. So you don't have to scroll down or anything. So right above here, later today, I will post a link to today's show. I'll have the PowerPoint slides will be up there. And I'll add a link to this website as well, since that's the one major website that you mentioned during the show. That'll be in there as well. So you can jump to that along with any of whether there was that resources page in the slides as well. All that will have all those links. Everyone who attended here live today or registered for today's show, we'll get an email sent to you letting you know when the recording is available. But then it'll be possible to put that out on our website and our Facebook page and Twitter to let everybody out there know that it's available. So that will be for today's show. I hope you're doing us next week when our topic is weeding your library collection. Weeding. We weed our gardens. We got to weed our libraries. For some people, this is an easy thing. They do it regularly at the library. For some other people, it's a struggle. But what do you do? How are you supposed to do it? What are you supposed to keep or not keep? How do you convince people that it's okay that you're getting rid of things? Denise Harders is our co-director of our Central Plains Library System. It's a center part of the state here in Nebraska. And she will be with us next week to talk about how to use the tips and tricks for that. And I'll talk about a program they have there that they've been doing for quite a few years. They're a month of weeding. They have a competition amongst their libraries. So you can hear about that. So do sign up for that. And any of our other shows coming up, you'll note here that October 11th is no show that week. This is the one year, one week of the year that we do not hold in public slide. We are here every week, 51 weeks of the year, not 52, because this is the year of, this is the week of our Nebraska Library Association and Nebraska School Librarians Association annual conference. So that way we don't hold the show because everybody's off to conference, including us myself. So if you're here in Nebraska or if you're just interested, registration is still open until the 23rd, the end of this weekend. So definitely register, come out and join us in Carney for this year's conference because we won't be here on Encompass Live. Also Encompass Live is on Facebook. We have a Facebook page where we post when shows are available, when the upcoming shows are, we announce when our recordings are ready. So if you are big on Facebook, please do give us a like there. Here, for example, I posted a notice this morning letting people know they could log in on the fly to today's show. They didn't pre-register. So if you are big on getting your notifications and updates to things through Facebook, like our page for the show over there. Other than that, that wraps it up for this morning. Thank you everyone for attending. Thank you maybe for coming down and joining us this morning. And we will see you next time on Encompass Live. Bye.