 Backward. Back to immigration. If we forgot immigration, we shouldn't have. That's something biblical. This is, you know, at the core of our moral existence immigration, immigration law and policy in this country, we should never forget it. And John Egan doesn't forget it. He runs an institute at UH Law School. And he practices law and immigration. Welcome to the show, John. Well, thank you. Glad to be here again. Well, the reason we're here, at least primarily, is the change in policy that the President made recently, or was trying to make. I'm not sure how far along it is. It's limiting family immigration. What is that all about? Well, you're absolutely right. We don't actually have a policy. We have a number of talking points. He did not put a statute or consideration on the table. What he did is he gave a speech in the Rose Garden on immigration. So we don't really know exactly what's going to come out of this. But it was very interesting that he seems to be taking a completely different tact than what he has in the past. He said, we're going to keep the numbers of legal immigration the same. We're not going to push them down. In the past, he was going to push them down. In the past, it was his intention to slow that down. He has stopped calling immigrants thieves, and rapists, and murderers, and drug dealers, and has said that we're going to have these brilliant people come here and help us with our economy. So there's sort of a change in the way he's looking at this. What he's intending to do to make that happen is flip the numbers from about 65% family-based immigration and maybe 14% employment-based, and flip those numbers the other way, and institute some kind of a merit-based point system to do that. So that's what we know is his intention. How he's actually going to get there remains to be seen. That is so strange, because if there's one thorn in his crown, so to speak, from day one, it's his attack on immigration law and policy in this country, and now all of a sudden, on the face of it, John, it doesn't sound unreasonable. It sounds actually good for the economy. It sounds like it would work as it has worked in other places. How do you feel about that? Assuming Congress agreed, Congress wanted to do something like that, change the percentages around, what would you say that? I think changing the percentages is a perfectly legitimate thing to consider and to do. I think that this is our country. We get to decide who comes and why. I think flipping it wholesale like that is really going to be a pretty radical move, and it's going to disadvantage all the people who are here intending to bring their family members to the United States. I really just don't think that if you're talking about those kind of numbers, I don't think his base is going to accept that we should have a million more people coming in for jobs as opposed to coming in to meet up with families. Take away their jobs. That's right. I mean, if that's the issue that he has presented as being the problem with immigration is that these people come in and take our jobs to flip that over by those kind of numbers and bring those people in specifically because the jobs they're going to do, I don't see that really being accepted. You can make a pretty good case in the 21st century to support family immigration. I'll tell you what I mean. The family in every country in the world is the base of society. It's a fundamental unit of society. You want people to stay together as family, not only horizontally and on the same generation, but in multiple tiers of generations, and that's good for the society. It leads to and it supports the idea of stability to have families stay together. It's love, it's marriage, it's affection, it's it's encouraging your kids to do the right thing. It's all of those home hearth-like values are in family. So if you say, well, not going to let your family's in anymore, and you know, if you want to come to this country, you have to leave your family behind and your parents will not be able to see you. Your other relatives cannot come and maybe they can see you, but they can't join you. They can't be part of your newly established family, as has been the case in this country for how long? It's the beginning. That's really a core value in the existing immigration system is family unification. That's right at the heart of how our system was built. Now, we can tinker with that, we can change the percentages, but to completely eliminate family-based immigration is a really difficult thing to understand. Why would you do that? If you want to take people and bring them into our country and make them part of our country, how better to do that than to make sure their families are here with them? I mean, if you think about the base of patriotism, the base of patriotism is this is my family's place. This is where we belong. And you tell me, no, you can't really do that anymore. It doesn't make sense. So it really is a kind of a surprise that he would come up with this out of the blue after being so mean and nasty on so many immigration issues over the past two years. Do you have an idea about why? What is his political motivation or his populist motivation? Well, I certainly am not going to be able to psychoanalyze that man. But it does seem that there are two different parties that are influencing him. This whole new wave of ideas about immigration seems to be coming from Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and he's pushing it this direction. There's another person in his orbit, Steve Miller, who has the opposite point of view, and they're playing tug-of-war somehow. Just as an example, no sooner did this new, more warm and friendly approach come out than Donald Trump has nominated a truly hard-line individual, Ken Cuccinelli, to become the new leader of the Citizenship and Immigration Service. He's a really hardcore guy. The guy who was there that he's replacing was the guy who said, no, we're going to get rid of the dreamers. He's the guy who said, no, we're going to revamp our asylum system so that people can't come across the border. He's the guy who's pushing people back over the border in that return to Mexico process. The guy who has delayed all of the H-1B visas to keep employment-based visas settled down. He's kicked out international students, and now he wants to go in a tougher direction than that, and that's why he has his fellow Cuccinelli online. So there's really two things going on at the same time, and I honestly can't tell which one is going to be the actual policy of this administration. Well, I think the country has a problem with immigration reform, we've tried to reform immigration laws over many decades, and we really haven't done that. They haven't kept up somehow, don't you agree? Yes. The last significant change, reformation of the statute was in 1996. That's getting to be kind of old now. And that was not really universally approvable. A lot of people felt that that was sort of a hatchet job. What did it do? Well, for one thing, it really took away discretion from the judiciary. There used to be such things as what they called a JRAD, a judicial recommendation against deportation. Someone came in, he's a family member, he did something wrong. Okay, he did something wrong, punish him, but don't deport him because he's going to have to stay with his family. They eliminated that. Now there are a whole bunch more offenses that an immigrant might do that will absolutely positively get them deported. And so that discretion within the judiciary was stripped out in 1996. There were a whole bunch of other things. But that gives you an idea of what they were doing. They call it the Reform and Responsibility Act. They were really pushing on the idea that we have to be tougher with immigrants. I've always felt, at least in my limited observation of this area, that it's very complex. It's very hard. There are so many issues and social, legal, geopolitical issues around immigration that you really have to pay attention to it if you're a policymaker. And Congress has not done that. Congress has not really paid attention to it. And so we have now, I mean, going into Trump term, we have, I think, a Congress that isn't really skilled at this, hasn't really taken the time, hasn't really kept up. And then he comes in and he says, well, I don't need Congress. I'm going to do this kind of stuff myself. I'm going to move much more quickly than Congress. And they don't like it. They can try to stop me, although Mitch McConnell will stop them from stopping me. So I mean, when you talk about limits on family immigration, at least in this context, isn't he supposed to get permission from Congress? Isn't Congress supposed to amend the immigration law? That's their role. Absolutely. I think it's kind of shocking that, I mean, the Democrats haven't really stepped up to the plate here either. And by leaving that space open, he's just walked right in and started to give directives. And nobody seems to know how to slow that down. Now, the courts are doing a pretty good job of slowing it down. But where is Congress in this picture? Boy, I just have to say, we've had this crisis going on at the border for five years now. This is not new, these people coming up from Central America. This is not brand new stuff that just started yesterday. Where is the democratic proposal on how to handle this? I'm not seeing it. Why? Nobody wants to stick their finger in. It's complicated. It's difficult. And you might just get your finger taken off. But somebody has to do that. Somebody has to step up and say, this is a crisis. We know how to handle these things. So let's start doing these things to get it under control. Nobody's doing that. If I was a president bent on expanding my own powers and be damned the Constitution, this is an area that I would pick because there's already divisiveness all around the country. I would go sailing right into this. I would take power. And I would do the kinds of things that he's been doing. And Congress can wait in the wings. I think that's what's happening. You're an evil genius. That's why. I worry that that is what's going on here, that there is some using this crisis as an opportunity to grab power. I hesitate to give our president more credit than he is to, but there are certainly people around him who recognize that that is absolutely an opportunity. So let's look at immigration law in general as it has evolved especially at its accelerated rate since January 2017. You know, I told you before I was walking with my buddy this morning, I said, you know, what what is the state of immigration law? Do we feel comfortable about knowing what the law is, and that it is there is a rule of law here? Because after all, the least equipped client you can have is a client who's an immigration and immigrant who may not have any money, may not have any connections who is under under under the cloud for everything. And he doesn't have in terms of clientele, he doesn't have any power at all. And if he does anything wrong, he's out of the country and he's disconnected from the process, whatever it is. So I guess, you know, the question I put to you is, what is the state of the rule of law? As far as immigration law is concerned? Well, as a lawyer, it's distressing to see how the rule of law is being taken down. We do have a law. It's not a perfect law, but it's there. And just as a perfect example, now you can have your own opinions about the abuse of the asylum system, but there is a law there. And it functions and has function for years and years. And yet, this administration is completely turning it on its head. It is accepted in our own statute that you can come to the border and ask for asylum. And the government is supposed to respond to that in a statutorily determined fashion. They've just cut that off and said, we're not going to do that anymore. You go back over the border, you wait in Mexico until we call you. That's not how it's written in the law. We have a completely different protocol, and they're ignoring it intentionally. So, and that's just one example, you can take that all across the board, where what people were expecting, because it's written in the law is no longer what you are really going to get. That's dangerous. It's not the rule of law. That's right. The country's founded on the rule of law. The Constitution is founded on the rule of law. And if you don't know what the law is, well, you don't know whether people will, the government will enforce the law as it is written. For that matter, you know, make make thoughtful changes to the law. Where are we? Yeah, it's a little disturbing. And that's the way it is in immigration law. As an immigration lawyer, I spend half an hour to 45 minutes every single day reading before I start my day to see what has happened last night or yesterday, that's going to change how I practice law today. Now, I know there's a lot of fast moving parts of the law that people practice, you know, intellectual property and a lot of different things that are pretty fast moving. I don't know anybody who is doing that who has to read before they open up their first email. So I'm going to take a short break and come back and talk about immigration law fatigue in this country and see how all this is affecting the way we collectively think and the way our government operates, you know, and the way the world sees us will be right back after this break. Aloha, I'm Wendy Lowe and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at two o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body and soul, anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means. Let's take healthy back. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Cynthia Sinclair and I'm Tim Apachella. We are hosts here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechhawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. OK, we're back. We're live. I needed a break. This discussion, John. That's John Egan. He's an immigration lawyer and he also runs the Immigration Law Institute at the UH Law School. So, yeah, the question I was posing to you during the break is, you know, how to how do people react to this? This is a serious problem when you begin to lose confidence in the administration of justice. You know, in the New York Supreme Court Courthouse down on Foley Square, there's a building with a big sign on a carved in stone is the most important, you know, the most important element of justice is public confidence. And you really need public confidence. And the question I put to you was, do we have public confidence and immigration is a good bellwether of this because it's what Trump attacked out of the box back in January of 2017. How are we doing? Or do we have what I call fatigue, immigration law fatigue among among the public? Well, I think that is happening. And I think that there's some intent there. You remember in the first Middle East clash that they instituted the program of shock and awe, just keep bombing those people until you until they're just tired of it, want to give up. My thought is that that's what they're doing this administration. Every week there's a new cluster bomb thrown into the immigration law space. And if you're not completely just worn down by it, you're overworked. I mean, I look at my colleagues, you know, there's a good number of working immigration lawyers here in Hawaii, some very good quality people, but they're getting overwhelmed. Nobody is, you know, nobody's taking three day vacations, you know, the three day weekend. No, I was in my office and so everybody else I know is in their office trying to catch up. So there's fatigue and then there's just plain overwork. So yes, I think that that actually is part of their strategy. I think that's a game plan. Just keep busting things down and let's see if they can keep up. That effectively enhances the executive. Then he can do what he wants. You create chaos, including legal chaos, and you move into the space created by the chaos and you take charge because you're the executive. Because what you do by default is the leadership piece. And I think that's what's happening in other areas too, but certainly in immigration. Well, yes. I mean, first Congress is in logjam. They just don't seem to be able to figure out what to do and for them to work for Congress to do anything, they have to be in concert. They have to get majorities. That's not happening. The judiciary is active. They're doing things. You know, we had the Trump v. Hawaii here. There's some interesting things that are happening in the judiciary. But the judiciary is slow. It takes months and months and months. And it's being eroded while we watch. Well, yes, there's that too. Two nominations into the Ninth Circuit this week. So we're seeing change happening there. But all the judiciary stuff takes more time and because the executive is able to act right now, immediately make directives, make executive orders, make talking points in the Rose Garden there and manipulate the media, they're winning the show. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, I always thought that immigration law, the practice of immigration law was a very high minded thing. Because you care about people who are vulnerable. You care about lifting. You know, it's the Emma Lazarus poem. Give me your tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Not just me every time. That's right. So immigration lawyers do that. They have a special cachet for me. And, you know, it sounds like it's a hard road to go right now being an immigration lawyer. Because you don't have the options maybe that you had before. And you don't have the option of the rule of law to know that what's written is the law. Right. So representing a client, helping a client becomes more difficult. Well, that's true. And you know, you mentioned our Institute. That's the immigration law clinic at the law school. And that's what we're really trying to do. We're trying to get more well trained young people into this field. Because that's what it really requires. It takes people who are dedicated, who are willing to learn what's required and keep relearning every day because they want to help this particular population. You're right. They are not just underserved. They are underprivileged. You know, they don't get to vote. So you're not going to get a whole lot of politicians to take their side on an issue. Many of them are working in a second language. English is not how they grew up doing their reasoning. They're working in a legal system that's completely unfamiliar to them. So it does take a sort of dedicated person to do that. But young people are jumping right in, though. It's really good. I'm happy to hear that. It's been interesting. I try to keep them, you know, looking at the reality, you're not going to get rich doing this. This is not, and you're probably not going to be recognized in your Bar Association as being the leader of the PAC. We've never had a bar president who was an immigration lawyer, just as an example. It's not too late, John. Oh, yes, it is. But you see my point that there are young people who are ready to go into this, and that's a good thing. That's what we're trying to do up at the law school, get dedicated people into this practice. Well, that goes to the whole thing about rule of law in general. You know, my brother and others have created a letter to be signed by lawyers and bar officials everywhere who would like to see the rule of law maintained, respected in this country. I'm not sure how much effect it's going to have, but that's what they're out and about doing. And I mentioned too that fundamental to legal education, if it's not ever articulated, it's still there. Is it every lawyer has a duty to abide by the rule of law, to advance the rule of law, to advance our system of justice and our constitution. And query whether that fatigue we talked about is also affecting the bar in general, certainly the immigration bar to the point where, you know, they cannot function in the way maybe we thought they could. Difficult question. I think that fatigue does degrade people's capacity to keep in the fight. It takes a certain amount of dedication to wake up every day and take one more hit on the jaw and say, well, okay, let's go to work anyway. It's tough. But I think that you're absolutely right. If you've taken the oath and this is what you are doing with your life, you've decided I am a legal professional and I am the person who is responsible for this, then you just do it. And in fact, we are. That's what we do as members of the legal profession. Well, you know, I would like to see beside the immigration bar, I would like to see the whole bar rise up to this. I would like to see every bar association in every state rise up to it. I would like to see members of the immigration service rise up to it. In many ways, they're law enforcement officials, aren't they? And they should be sensitive to this issue. Well, you know, on that point, I want to mention one of the programs that we're working on putting together at the law school in the immigration clinic will be a training for non immigration lawyers, other members of the bar, give them just enough background so they can start taking some of these cases pro bono, you know, for the public benefit in immigration court and in front of some of the agencies that are involved, because in fact, there aren't enough immigration lawyers to take all of these cases. And, yes, the whole bar can and should share in some of this responsibility. Yeah, that would be a great place to start, actually. Other institutions around the country that are dead and, you know, nonprofits and all that who are funded and dedicated to protecting immigrants, protecting the rule of law in immigration matters. Yes, there are. And they run the whole gamut. There there are secular organizations, but there's also the faith based organizations, for example, was kind of a target, you know, the Hebrew immigrant services organization. There's also a group, the Catholic legal immigration network. The Methodists have their justice for our neighbors network. So the faith community is in the game. It has been for 100 years. Yes, right, have been in the game for a long time. The secular organizations, well, like, for example, the American Bar Association has a subgroup working on immigration issues. Of course, the ACLU outstanding in this particular area, absolutely, you know, in terms of impact litigation, they're there and they're supporting, you know, they jumped right out in front of the bus with the Muslim ban and said, no, no, stop. That was outstanding. So yes, they're out there. The funding is tough. Because you know, it's hard to figure out how money solves this problem. And that makes it a little bit difficult for people to open their wallet and give. But yes, they're out there and they're doing good work. Well, you know, we in this conversation, we painted a picture that's really a little dreadful. And, you know, there's this no easy light at the end of the tunnel far as I can see. And you have the possibility that the administration will take every success or lack of resistance as a as a success and and move the needle further and further toward individual political power and the presidency and be damned the rule of law, be damned the immigration law, be tamed the Constitution. This is it's a fair possibility. Who's to say what will really happen? Maybe everything will change in 2020, maybe not. But the question I posed to you is let's assume a further degradation of the rights of immigrants. Let's assume a further degradation of the adherence to the rule of law in immigration law. Let's assume a further degradation of immigrants in this country, their opportunities, their possibilities, you know, give me your tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe. What effect does that have? This is a hard question. I'm sorry. What effect does that have on us as a nation? What effect does it have on other nations who perceive us to be a leader to be following that Statue of Liberty? Well, that's a little deep, Jay. Thank you. We'll dig on that for a moment. I think it's really interesting to sort of read our history. The name Hannah Arendt is probably familiar to you, a political philosopher, Jewish woman growing up in Europe during the Second War, made it out to the United States and became quite a thoughtful contributor, took apart the whole question of totalitarianism in Europe. And one of her primary theses was that the origin of totalitarianism in the middle of the century last in Europe was the degradation of citizenship and the scapegoating of immigrants throughout Eastern Europe and into Germany, that that was the beginning of totalitarianism that led to a world war. I think we should pay attention to that history because if you're going to see people just take one group of people and turn them into scapegoats and strip them from their legal rights and their natural rights. I mean, natural rights, you have a natural right to have your family with you. That's that goes beyond even law. It's just not okay to strip kids away from their mothers and put them into detentions. The administration has no problem with it, though. Right. So so when you start to see that become the norm, you better watch out for the seeds of totalitarianism because that's where they live. We get home tonight and they ask you what you did today. Tell them you talked with John Egan and you learned about Hannah Arendt. Very important. Yeah. Thank you, John. My pleasure. Glad to be here.