 to begin the week here at 10 a.m on a given Monday. We're talking about ending the year and we're talking about what year we mean of the ox and starting the year of the tiger with my co-host Chang Wang and our guests Robert Webber and Richard Yu. Everybody in the whole program is a lawyer. Oh my goodness. Robert is an immigration lawyer and Richard is a litigator. You know, you always tell. If you look carefully, you can always tell. Anyway, Chang, can you introduce these gentlemen and tell us the scope of our discussion this morning? Thank you very much, Jake. Good morning and good afternoon. Jay, you're right. Everybody is a lawyer and everybody is an Asian American. So we think to that we have these identities also very important. Thank you for having all of us and I'm very thrilled to have Bob and Richard on board. Bob has been practicing US immigration law for more than 20 years. He has a very extensive experience in green card strategy and citizenship for some of the largest and the most well-known organizations in the world. Before he started Weber Law Form 2.0 and Bob was an equity partner as a very large general parties law form where the Chamber of USA has rated him band one in the area of immigration law. He has been named a super lawyer and a lawyer of the year by many sort of lawyers. Just one quick note, I've known Bob for many, many years. He was the chair of our immigration law section and he has been a leader in our community and he has been a role model for many, many immigration lawyers. I'm very honored to know Bob. Richard is my new friend. Richard specialized in employment law and commercial litigation. He went to university of Southern California Law School and been admitted into law parties in California in federal courts in California. He served his clients as a management side defense lawyer as former CEO of a technology startup. Richard is best crossover between business and law. Richard appears very regularly before both federal and state courts and he's based in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Welcome onboard Richard and Bob. Thank you, Jay. Welcome, you guys. Let me start out with you, Robert. What's the difference between an ox and a tiger anyway? Well, I think we were using that as a symbol of the end of this year and looking ahead to next year. I think most of us are looking forward to next year 2021 not being as much of a change from 2020 as we wanted especially in the areas that I practice in immigration law and I know Richard has seen a lot of dynamic activity in employment law. I think one of the things that we've seen in the last year is how much even with the vaccine in place that society still struggles with the pandemic and in the area of immigration whereas the private sector and individuals have tried to adjust their lives and to work around some of the limitations, the government continues to have a lot of the backlogs and dysfunctions which were a legacy of the prior administration. Yeah, well, I tend to blame a lot of COVID on Trump. I tend to blame a lot of things on Trump and I'm right, by the way. The other part of it is that here we are and COVID has changed, Trump changed immigration law for sure by being a racist and then of course COVID changed immigration law and we talked before the show about giving it up and going home and doing something fun at home. Maybe you could do think tech shows all day, that would be fun but the bottom line is immigration law has become much more complex, more difficult, your toolkit is less effective than it was. I don't know, how's immigration law doing Robert? It seems to me that it's a challenge now because of those two factors, Trump and COVID. That's right and I think that with the election of Biden and now he's almost into a full year of being president, we had hoped that things would change in a different direction. So if you sort of think of the Trump administration as digging a hole, to think that we're getting out of the hole, but one of the things that we've experienced as immigration attorneys and I know Chang has experienced this with his clients is that things haven't changed as quickly as we need them to change and I think one of the things is that government moves slowly and so if it's like a battleship it's sort of facing one direction and Trump got it to move a different direction and now getting it to move back is taking time and seeing this in all different places with the filings at the immigration service, at the consulates, so for most of 2021 people were limited in being able to travel and now as of this morning some of the travel bans are coming back for some of the countries in Africa and what we found is that even after the travel bans are lifted you can't get into the embassy to get a visa in the situations when you need a visa and it's hard to accelerate that process because of a lot of things that have been in place and have been impacted by like you say Trump and then COVID and I unfortunately I think that that's going to continue into the year the tiger although I'm hopeful that there will be some additional policy innovations to facilitate things because I think we also realize how much the economy has suffered and you know as a result of these changes. Oh sure I want to talk about that but one more question before we go to Richard and that is this you know we learned things and I don't sometimes the lessons you learn are not really good we learn things about how to deal with you know people who were dangerous or we perceived to be dangerous to the country by imposing entry barriers in COVID number one I call it COVID number one and I don't know if that was really effective but certainly it seems to satisfy a lot of people politically that we you know shut down the borders or close to it and now we have Omicron nobody knows what Omicron is like yet and you know I don't think we're going to get a clear answer on that for at least several weeks if we do the just but just the outline of what what you know looks like you know there are 50 mutations instead of a handful as we went from you know COVID to COVID-2 was just a handful now it's many times that and the mutation is what you need to track if you're going to make a vaccine so we don't really have a handle on whether the existing vaccines and even including the boosters will work okay and as we go forward it seems to me that what's in the toolkit is what we quote learned end quote in the year 2020 and into good part of 2021 so it's likely that governments all around including the Biden government which is relatively speaking enlightened is going you know to shut down the borders there aren't cases in Hawaii right now but there will be and there will be cases all over the mainland or cases in Canada cases cases cases it's all you have to do is is breathe across the border and there are cases there so we're going to be terrified in a few weeks what what is going to happen I mean the process is going to be worse no and and this is going to affect immigration law and ultimately as you suggested it's going to affect economies because you know these days it's all interdependent and the global economy depends on relatively free borders and relatively free entry what do you perceive how what's your level of concern Robert well it is it is hard to sort out how things will develop I may be a possible transition into Richard's area but we're seeing of course work from home and that work from home concept extends now with with zoom and other innovations to work from home in other countries and so I think that one of the things that we're seeing in immigration I have more and more clients trying to figure out how to utilize their workers who were in the US but needed to go to India for personal reasons and couldn't come back and some of that may become more permanent and it ties into Chang's comment about the number of people who are are quitting because they're worried about the vaccine or they're worried about the pandemic virus but there's so many cross currents I think one of the fascinating things is that those of us who support immigration tend to be you know open oriented but we also maybe are more concerned about the virus than those who would be less oriented to open the border and so there's these sort of cross currents between these values and I think that's going to continue and I think we see it in you know employment law and the distinctions between federal in the US here of course we have you know blue states and red states and employers who operate in both and trying to manage that and for better or worse US immigration lies federal and so we do have one system one screwed up system nationwide but I know an adjective Robert let me move on to Richard Richard you know you know something that Robert said just evoked in me the notion that litigation in this country is different and the courts are different they are whether whether they succeed in this or not is a big question they are right now the holders of our moral standards are norms and therefore every litigator has a every the role of litigators has changed because you're part of what do you want to call it a legal community that in a left-handed way all in recent years has taken on a new meaning in the rule of law you agree with that I do want to say Jay first of all I think you make a very valid point over there as to the role of the litigator to the core and to the society in general traditionally we've seen that and we all know the US legal systems built upon two parties in an adversarial relationship one side advocates something the other side advocates another and somehow you arrive in the middle and the judge makes the ruling at the end or the jury right one thing I do want to say and that's particularly interesting for the year of oxen going to tiger next year is what is COVID doing to this kind of system and if you or anyone else you know in front of the TV watching the news we know that it's a mess right now for everything relating to COVID from regulations all the way to how the courts are reacting to COVID for example right just a couple months ago well actually less than two months ago the federal OSHA announced the rule that now there's going to be a national mandate on vaccination it's called the Vaxor text test test you either do the vaccination or you do a weekly test after that came out the first thing you get in the first three days is more than 26 states coming out opposing that rule saying that's unconstitutional and now you by that time you're seeing various filings going from district courts to court appeals you know different circuits across the country then right after that you see the national labor relations board saying you cannot enforce that rule unless you first bargain with the unions and amidst all of these now basically two weeks ago what we have is all the courts are consolidating their cases to the sixth circuit now here's one thing that's very interesting and fun fact to share the reason I've chosen the sixth circuit is not by you know jurisprudence in that circuit but by lottery they literally put numbers in a hat and through which circuit would be the one that's the rule on these cases and now we're every the entire country is waiting for the sixth circuit to decide whether in governments or federal agencies can enforce this vaccination mandate what's the culture of the sixth circuit well you know the sixth circuit covers a lot of states in the Midwest and is leaning toward the right than the left so it is a an odd draw for this because on one hand you have national security right you want to talk about people's safety for example one of the things we're seeing from various states across the country is a vaccination mandate for healthcare workers and that's no brainer right if you want to see a doctor you're seeing nurses you want to make sure they're safe and you're safe so that entire healthcare system is safe on the other hand you're seeing the states that completely against enforcing vaccinations so it's kind of like an odd draw I may be leaning toward the right but we're hoping and this goes back to your question Jay that the courts and the attorneys who are involved in the case will do their job to deliver justice and equality in this issue to what extent are you doing that in your cases your appearances in the state and federal courts absolutely that's a great question Jay so my job here as a commercial litigator an important litigator is to advise employers as to what to do and one of the things we always tell the employers is you have to watch for where the governments are mandated because if you don't do that you will be a violation of the law so if OSHA if Sixth Circuit upholds the OSHA's rule then not just me but the entire legal industry or community should be advocating for enforcing that rule if obviously on the other hand if the Sixth Circuit says you cannot enforce that rule then the next tier question would be what is your state saying because that's the second question it's California allowing that routine force because states can always uphold a higher level of scrutiny on these rules and for California the answer so far is yes mandates are allowed by private employers and I'm sure you probably have seen in the Fifth Circuit in Texas Southwestern Airlines are mandating their fly attendants to get the vaccinations and the Fifth Circuit in Texas have said yes that is allowed well I think we all have to watch this you know they say Richard that we're not going to come out of this I mean the notion that some courts in this country and possibly at the end of the day the Supreme Court of this country can find that the quote I say quote constitutional rights of people to be anti-vaxxers outweighs the 700,000 deaths we have had so far and I was saying before the show that the you know the 93% of the people who were dying from COVID now are anti-vaxxers which I find really or not vaccinated that is really remarkable and if you ask a bunch of people what they think is going to you know make this rational again they they tell you it's it's a catastrophe that you have to have a war a national catastrophe a climate change catastrophe some kind of thing where we are bonded together again where the social fabric comes together again will we realize that we do better hanging together than hanging separately and I wonder if you see that process coming soon or maybe not coming or coming later yeah that's a great question too Jay and this is probably where Chen can chime in since he's just traveling back from China where the entire country is acting under one umbrella saying you know there's going to be vaccination and everyone you need to get vaccinated you need to have your vaccination closed now within the US given the history we have it's going to be tough right we have seen this repeatedly happening under the umbrella of the second amendment on one hand you have these mass murders you have these massacres happening on school campuses and on the other hand you have the ones who are advocating for the rights as afforded by the second amendment and arguments are very feisty going both ways now here under the same umbrella a similar umbrella for the COVID issues you raised the point that you raised earlier is very valedict that a lot of times there is no time to waste in a exigent circumstance like this by the time the congress or the government has decided which way we should take probably a lot more people are going to die and at the end the COVID might have ended with a lot of people with lasting results or consequences that they cannot otherwise afford to have so for to going back to your first question here Jay is what are we going to do as a country so right now under the Biden's administration and within the umbrella of the employment law we can see that the government's leaning toward mandating vaccination or regularly having tests we know that for sure if the six circuit rules that you know this is going to be allowed then we may see the first national mandate of all vaccination mandates but now coming back to you Jay and Chang tell us what do you think about China and doing comparison between various countries because I think Chang just mentioned that Japan has closed all its border to foreigners today yes you know Chang you know Xi Jinping would have told Joe Biden in their meeting a couple weeks ago that whatever the systems are Xi Jinping's system is better because he can get things done okay and you know there's a certain amount of resonance because we can't get things done sorry and with all our mechanisms and our rules regulations and bureaucracy we are you know what do you want to call it unable to get things done so my question to you is does that resonate is that is that a clear picture where are we going on this should we be adopting Xi Jinping's approach well Jay first of all appreciate you having me on the show to talk about you know my travel experience and inviting Bob and Richard to talk to summarize what we've been witnessing in 2021 and expecting what are we going to expect in 2022 first of all I can't comment on anything on the president of China and it's beyond my capacity and I don't want to comment something I'm not very have a very clear picture but I I spent 60 days in China recently I just got back from China 36 hours ago what I can tell you is people feel safe here people feel very very safe you know it's it's parallel universes it's completely different different mentality as Richard said it's under one umbrella the it's order and control but one quick clarification they do not mandate vaccine they strongly encourage it there's a local city mandated vaccine they check your health code on your mobile phone whether or not you've been tested negative in the past you know 48 or 72 hours whether or not you have any close contact with any suspicious covid positive case and whether or not you've been vaccinated but only lack of vaccination will should not ban you from entering any public facility or public transportation there was one city they did mandate that they changed the color of your health code and if you are not vaccinated and they've been challenged in court and finally the actually they withdraw that mandate it's very amazing but everybody I know everybody I met for the past 60 days they've been vaccinated so the government obviously strongly strongly encourage it back to our situation here and I went back I when I arrived in Shanghai put on international airport I was greeted by health workers and a very strict process you know in the first 28 days I've been tested 10 times for covid and I mean my body temperature was taken twice a day it's a it is there is a you cannot expect anything can be you know if there is a covid positive okay there's absolutely no chance you're going to spread it in China because the system works so well but when I return to the United States and arriving in San Francisco as a trusted traveler and it took me very little time to go through the US custom and immigration there was no testing there was no quarantine and there was nothing obviously I enjoyed it I appreciate it but our there's the individualism versus collectivism in most Asian countries is collectivism they have a collective men's side people need to sacrifice their individual liberty and well in a world of interdependence yeah in a world where we all there are so many of us we live so closely that's true but China locked effectively locked down for almost two years and in the foreseeable future they will continue to lock down because the system they believe the system works so well we have we have you know so some kind of lockdown but it's not really working you know when we declared in the band the flights from South African countries seven of them and we give like a time time limit we have a you know three five days advance notice according to our system and also we allow citizens and green card holders to return without any additional processing but if you mean lockdown they do lock down they locked everybody out where we're going to lose we're going to we have we're running out of time let me go let me go for last comments here Robert you know are we going to see more lockdown in this country I guess we are but you know the problem is if you look if you look at the immigration laws and practices over the over the Trump years anyway you find that it's highly political not rational and often racist and nationalist so query if I made you the director of immigration maybe if I should why not let's make you president how would you reform the immigration laws in the United States going forward wow that's a big that would be a big magic wand it would be a great up the to to reform the system I think it's in need of reform I think one thing that we have to keep in mind as Americans is that the whole world is struggling with migration issues there's a there's something going on between Belarus and Poland now there were some people who died very recently in the English channel going from France to the UK immigration just in the New Yorker I think in the next issue of the New Yorker there's a big article about European Union is paying some thugs in Libya to detain people so this is not just an American issue but it's a it's a struggle on how to humanely allow people who are from countries that are are struggling would be able to better themselves but to do it in some sort of organized way and it just and I think that we we don't have a good system for that now there's clearly more demand than the supply allows for I'm not sure that we'll end up anywhere near what the system is in China but I do technology could play a part in improving things in terms of awareness of of of options and processing of paper but it's going to take more more than the year the tiger to probably make that happen yeah you know I'm not that we can get into this now but just for a provocation it seems to me that the United Nations should spend more time and effort trying to determine global immigration and migration policy it has not been effective in doing that but going forward seems to me there should be at least a collaboration between countries at the United Nations level to generate more equitable immigration and migration policies let me go to you Richard you know the American Bar Association really never took a position against Trump the American Bar Association is sort of a wallflower on the sidelines it was a disappointment to see that all these violations of rules and norms you know happened without without the American Bar Association weighing in and I feel that the I feel that the community of lawyers the you know the bar around the country should be stepping up as we discussed earlier so my question to you is how do we fix this we are losing public confidence with the exception maybe of the Arbery case we are losing public confidence in the ability of the courts to generate just results and the appellate courts to generate just opinions and decisions how do we achieve new confidence in in American justice I might add that on the on the Supreme Court courthouse at Foley Square in Manhattan um it reads the the true the firmest pillar of government is the true administration of justice the implication there of course is public confidence how do you feel about that well first of all Jay I thought you're gonna ask me what would I do if I were the president you know I'm the president Richard you can be the attorney general I can be the president I can be the attorney general that is true but going after your your comment and question earlier Jay we are seeing that courts at least in the employment realm that's leaning toward progress in this year as well as into the next year and that's the trend happening right now we're talking about a systematic wage increase for many states in the United States and for the first time ever California is going to be $15 an hour throughout the entire state Hawaii it's increasing to I believe $10.27 for the next year and we're what we're also seeing it's a systematic increase in the power of workers going forward and we're not just talking about employment workers but we're also talking about labor union workers if you've been following the news you'll see that there's a lot more organizing efforts strangely in the last two years when everybody's working remote because usually that doesn't happen usually when you have workers staying at home being absent you have a lack of union organizing efforts but for the last two years it was not the case and especially for the healthcare workers since the 1950s you have not seen workers sentiments this high and their bargaining powers this strong and this is not just with wine union but with multiple unions in this country so going back to your question Jay we do see that a system is turning we do see that more cases in favoring and now with more courts being reopened and allowing more in-person vaccinating individuals in-person testimonies and court hearings you are seeing more cases being filed into the next year and that's going to be likely the trend for the year of tiger. Are you going to be busier going forward Richard do you have a perception of that I mean as we move ahead and these things have to get sorted out as they get sorted out a lot of that will be in court do you see the role your role the role of litigators around the country is being busier going forward? Absolutely Jay um so for the year of ox 2020 we are seeing a check-shaped trend going upward so we had a dip in the middle of the pandemic because most courts are closed and a lot of people are staying home and they're working remotely but as more courts are reopening our policies are coming into effect we're seeing an upward trajectory trajectory for more cases being filed so we are expecting that 2022 it's going to be a busy year. You know Chang this will suggest that maybe the year the tiger is a year for a little optimism can you summarize and give us your thoughts about that? Thank you so much Jay and thank you Bob and Richard we've talked about immigration travel employment and vaccination for the past 30 minutes. I just want to emphasize that you know as a first second third generation immigrants we are extremely proud of our legal system for us the law means equal protection which is one of the top issues in richer specialty employment law and means due process which is one of the top issues in Bob's specialty immigration law and but other country and agriculture have different understanding of what the law means for other cultures the law probably means law order and control and which might in the short term very effective in combat the pandemic but for us we have the pandemic is both some vulnerabilities of our system and even the legal system but at the end of the day I think we should all be cautiously optimistic and the year of tiger supposed to be a year of big change and I can only hope it's going to be changed for something much much better thank you. I'd like to weigh in on that too but I'm going to wait till I find out exactly how many mutations the Omicron has and then I'll give you my level of optimism or pessimism thank you Robert Weber thank you Richard Liu thank you Chang-Wai it's been a great discussion I really appreciate you guys coming on the show thank you