 Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. You can go to love in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to love in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German or Turk or Japanese. But anyone from any corner of the earth can come to love in America and become an American. Welcome back to A Nation of Immigrants, a new talk show program featuring the life of immigrants, knowledge, diversity, and inclusion. Brought to you by Kingsfield Law Office and Think Tank Hawaii, we invite renowned immigrants to discuss their life stories, immigration adventures, and the contributions to cultural diversity. Today's guest is our good friend, Robert Weber. Robert Bob Weber, a second generation Korean American, has been practicing US immigration law for 20 plus years. He has extensive experience advising on visas, as green card strategies for some of the largest and the most well-known organizations in the world. He recognizes that in the current political and policy environment, clients want immigration attorneys with both subject matter expertise and also process and project management excellence. Prior to starting Weber Law Form 2.0, Bob was an equity partner as a large general practice, EM Law 100 Law Form, where he was rated by Chambers USA as band one in the area of immigration law. Bob has previously been recognized as super lawyer and attorney of the year by Minnesota lawyer, a legal industry publication. Welcome back, Bob. Thank you, Chang, thanks for this opportunity. And I'm wearing my Hawaiian shirt in honor of being on Hawaiian TV and also against the very cold weather we're having here in Minnesota in the middle of April after Easter, when we should be able to be in shorts and flowers should be growing, but I think it was snow this weekend, at least in my house. Yeah, it's in Paul as well, so that's our life, I guess. Well, we've been knowing each other for several years and you were the chair of Immigration Council at Minnesota State Bar Association. And I had a privilege working with you on the council and you are one of the most active Bar Association leaders in the state of Minnesota and you'll be very well recognized by our peers, but we never had a really opportunity to sit down and talk about yourself. Now I want to, I know you are a second generation Korean-American and I understand you have been part of immigration law for more than 20 years and your mom is Korean-American, but to tell us about your family and how your family settled in the state of Minnesota and what was the story behind this second generation Korean-American label. Yeah, thanks, Chang, I appreciate it. Well, my grandfather on my father's side was born in Nebraska and he, after college, he was the first person in his family to go to college and he got a job at the US Department of Agriculture and they transferred him to Minneapolis just before my dad was born. And so my dad grew up in Richfield, which as you know is a South suburb of Minneapolis. Actually, I believe that for part of the time that my grandfather worked for the US Department of Agriculture, his office was in a federal building in downtown Minneapolis, which for some point was also the USCIS office, the Immigration Service Office. Now the Immigration Service Office has more recently moved to a second building downtown, but I guess my heritage goes back to that building. But my dad grew up in the Twin Cities in Richfield and then he actually went to college at Iowa State, not a very good student, and he dropped out of college and he joined the military. He was supposed to go or potentially could have gone to Vietnam because that was around the time that people were going to Vietnam, but he actually was assigned to Korea between Seoul and what became the DMZ. And my mom was a waitress in the mess hall where he was stationed and somehow they got connected. And then I was the bona fides of their relationship in terms of eventually immigrating to the United States. So yeah, that's how we ended up in Minnesota. And then I grew up moving around a little bit but ended up going to school at William Mitchell and then staying in Minnesota for my entire career practicing law. Thank you very much. Thank you, Bob. It's, you went to Mitchell and tell us a little bit about Mitchell and Mitchell is now a Mitchell Hamlin School of Law. You were, I don't factory at Mitchell, I understand. No, no, I never, I never taught there actually but I went to Mitchell, I did the night program there. It was a little unusual for me because I was right out of college and most of the students in the night program are older, maybe what they call non-traditional students but I really wanted to get different kinds of work experience. I wasn't sure, I certainly didn't think I was gonna be an immigration lawyer. To be honest, I didn't even really know what immigration lawyers did but in my, after my first year of law school I got a job at an immigration boutique, Ingebur and Aronson. I worked pretty much exclusively with Jerry Ingebur who was one of the very first immigration attorneys in Minnesota and really had an excellent practice and reputation and was just a good, be introduced to the practice of immigration law. He's since retired and actually has a very retirement life, I last saw him at the airport. He volunteers at the airport. I think he just likes being around international people and so being at the airport. I mean, this was pre-COVID, I haven't seen him since COVID but yeah, so I was at Mitchell at night. I worked at Ingebur and Aronson from there. I went to a firm which is also, now that I look back a number of firms that I worked at went out of business. I don't, hopefully it wasn't because of me but Doherty, Rumble and Butler was an old law firm, long-standing law firm and at that time I worked with Scott Wright and Peter Yoast actually went on to go to Fagery and Benson which is a very big firm here in Minnesota. And then after that I went to Oppenheimer for a year which is a big firm, now it's Fox Rothschild and then I worked at Myers-Thompson. So I had several jobs in law school and out of law school at different immigration firms. I'm really grateful though to have had those experiences because I worked with some really top lawyers in the field and they had very different approaches and you're able to, I think one of the advantages when you do that is you're able to see how different people practice law and create your own route but you can learn from that. And so I'm grateful to have had that experience and I would encourage, if there are people listening who are thinking about going to law school or in law school, it can be a great experience to work for different people. And I would also say that early in your career, I mean, maybe you don't want to be changing jobs as much as I did but it is okay to work a few different places and get some different experience. But yeah, and then in 2004, I went on my own, I had my own practice from 2004 to 2019, then I merged with a big firm. Big firm life wasn't for me. And so in September, just six months ago, I went back on my own as Weber Law Firm 2.0. I realized there aren't a lot of law firms named 2.0 but it was my second iteration of having my own practice and I named it that as a way of trying to remind myself to learn to be better than the 1.0 version of myself. I feel like that's one of the goals of the new law firm. So thank you very much. That's terrific. It's, even you have changed places a couple of times but the one consistent theme is immigration law. We don't teach immigration law at law school. Not all the law schools teach immigration law. And I got the interest into immigration law is quite natural because I went through the whole process from an international student F1 to OPT, H1B, when the EB1 and green card and naturalization the entire process. So I founded the entire process just like our subject title of this, your episode is immigration law makes me laugh and the cry. I think it's quite to be honest, immigration law makes me laugh and the cry but tell us why you think immigration law makes you laugh and the cry. Well, I think that you have to keep your sense of humor in practicing probably practicing all areas of law but an immigration law because there are so many policy changes and demonstrations. Obviously we've seen some extreme examples here but I started practicing immigration law before 9-11. People forget that September 11, 2001 greatly changed the practice of immigration law. After 2001 was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and a lot of things happened during that time. And I focus on employment-based immigration. So I work with tend to be skilled immigrants and we see how the economy and recessions and economic forces really change the practice of law and how over time policies become more difficult. I mean, things that used to file that were four or five pages have become hundreds of pages as a result of the complexity. And so I think you have to laugh sometimes at these things that happen and try to keep a sense of humor or you'd always be crying because of how frustrating it is. But I do, I mean, obviously I've been an immigration lawyer for a long time and I don't plan to change anything but I do like the practice because I sometimes think about the generational opportunity you have. You can work with a client and think about where their parents or what their lives of their parents or grandparents were and then you look forward to what the lives of their children or grandchildren. It's really an interesting way in which you can play a part in a family trajectory and also as a proud American, I think it's great that we are able to bring these talented people to the United States from all over the world to contribute to the United States. And as you said in the beginning, the United States is a very unique country in that people can come from all over the world and within several years be an American and contribute and their children very much identify as American but in other countries that wouldn't always be the case. I mean, there's only maybe a few other countries that have that phenomena. And even though people have developed pretty strong attitudes about immigration and some people are sort of strongly opposed to immigration, I think that consistently you see polls that people support immigration, they might have issues with certain things. And I do think that's one of the things that hopefully I like to add to the discussion of immigration is trying to be honest about what the options and situations are. And as best as possible to try to be respectful of different viewpoints, I think that immigration maybe is the quintessential issue right now in the US where people have such strong positions that they can't even engage with other people. They just either one side, I mean, there's just such strong views that it's hard for us to make progress as a society because nobody wants to be called a racist or maybe being a globalist is a compliment in some times. But I think that we have to try to engage on these issues and not necessarily agree with the other side but try to understand their perspective. And I think that that's an important part of the kind of democratic experience. Very well, Thad. Thank you very much for the answer. You and I are aware of that the UICIS is such a pivotal agency and when we're practicing immigration law and they changed their mission statement in the past few years several times. Trauma Administration and Trauma Administration they changed the mission statement basically deleting a nation of immigrants from the mission statement. And the recently they changed it to a new version. The new version I will quote, UICIS upholds America's promise as a nation of welcome and the possibility with fairness, integrity and the respect for all we serve. Your comments? Well, I'm glad that they made that change. You know, I think that I try to as best as possible understand the perspective of the Trump people on immigration. I think one way of understanding it is that they view immigrants in a non-zero sum way. So every immigrant that comes to the United States is somehow taking a job or a benefit from a native, from a native born American. I think those of us who are maybe more on the pro-immigration side would say, no, immigrants, I mean, the economy in the country is not zero sum and immigrants add, they're a multiplier but that doesn't mean that everyone gets to come and it's just a free-for-all, we have to have some kind of a system. And so I think that the change made by the new administration, the Biden administration is a positive one. I will say I've been a pretty strong critic of the immigration service for a long time even predating Trump, but very recently the Biden, the new director of USCIS have really seemed to be making some positive changes. We had the Trump administration who in some ways they were delivering what they promised which was dysfunctional immigration, they were delivering to their voters what they campaigned on. Then the Biden administration came in and promised to be something different, but I think COVID had created such a challenge for all the government agencies and it took 12 months to sort of get their footing and now we're in the second year of the Biden administration and we are seeing some improvements. Now, of course, there's not gonna be any immigration reform through Congress this term. I mean, at least this first two years, probably not the second two years to be honest, but the Biden administration can do a lot of things through executive action and I think they're trying to do so. I think USCIS, they're implementing more types of premium processing, they're cleaning up backlogs, they're trying to allow for electronic filings, paying by credit cards. These are sort of common sense adjustments to improve things. The US Department of State, I mean, notwithstanding some of the challenges in China, but in other parts of the world with waivers of visa interviews, there've been some pretty impressive things done to accommodate the Ukrainians right now. I see you've got your flag there. I think actually the one place that now I'm focusing my critique is on the Department of Labor. We have a national labor shortage and I think the US Department of Labor could contribute on the margins by making the processes that involve the Department of Labor faster and more efficient to accommodate employers and immigrants who basically wanna work in this labor market and we clearly have a shortage of workers. But I do think that mission statement, I mean, to the credit of the Biden administration, I think that they are trying to deliver on that change statement. Hopefully that'll be sustained here for the rest of the term and if there's a second term. Thank you. I totally agree with what you said and also a shout out to the State Department. And recently I read some, you know, policy, temporary policy put in place by the State Department that people departing Shanghai. And if you're a US citizen and a green card holder and immigrant, new immigrants, you don't need a COVID 48 hours PCR test result, but you can just evacuate immediately. And also CDC suspends even for the past rule from you can bring dogs and the cats from China and the temporary waiver for the CDC, you know, import permit requirement. I just a big shout out to both State Department and the CDC. And in term of immigration law parties, we talk about the challenges of partisan immigration law. And in the foreseeable future immigration law will continue to evolve under whatever administration and hopefully continue to be improved. But from what I see in the past decades, you know, immigration law is such a complicated area and it requires a massive capability of empathize with your client. And that is a very unique quality I see from you and from other in the top immigration lawyers. And we all hear this AI going to replace a law parties. And but in my view that the immigration law is probably one of the hardest parties area to be replaced by AI because the AI, they have IQ, but they do not have an EQ. They do not have emotional intelligence. And I feel like you are a people who possess this tremendous emotional intelligence can empathize with your clients in order to party the immigration law. So what do you see the immigration law parties in the next 10 years, 15 years or 20 years? Well, I don't pretend to know what the future of the practice is, but I do think that what you talk about is a part of the conundrum. I mean, clearly there are large employers, Amazon and Microsoft to have hundreds of workers on temporary work visas. And they want to basically process these things efficiently and everything I think Amazon tries to do, they try to do efficiently. And so you have that pressure because they're not in the business of processing visas. So I mean, I'm sure they already spend millions of dollars, but they're hoping not to spend tens of millions of dollars. And on any individual immigration case, people who can afford an attorney, they want advice and strategy, but how do you provide that and still be cost competitive? And it's definitely a challenge. I think that the fundamental thing is that there's just a disconnect between supply and demand. There is a lot of demand to come to the United States and a limited number of supply in the ways in which people can come legally. And that's the core of immigration law is trying to figure out how to position your client in this very strict environment. And I don't know that that's going to... I mean, there will be changes in the rules, but this fundamental construction of supply and demand, hopefully is not going to change. Sometimes depending on the administration, you do wonder whether people are going to still keep wanting to come to the United States. There was a period of time that I was joking that I'm 49, so hopefully people will still want to come for about 20 more years. That's all I need, but I mean, that is a question, but that's the thing about the United States is that the pendulum shifts. And of course, right now we see what's going on in different parts of the world, in Ukraine in particular. And for all the problems that the United States has, it's still a great place to live and to raise a family and to pursue professional excellence. And I think that people know this all over the world. And so they will still keep trying to come here, but I do think figuring out as attorneys how we can utilize technology. But I too, like you and skeptical that AI or the bots will replace us. Although I do think that as attorneys, we should be open to the use of technology to make our representation more efficient or more precise. But I might be regretting this, maybe there'll be a bot who's laughing at this show in a few years, but hopefully not. Hopefully are the EQ aspects of our role and also the fact that so many things fall into gray areas. And so discretion and judgment and experience a matter, also the complexity and changing dynamic of immigration law, like having a sense of whose profile is good enough for EB-1 or whether somebody can get a visitor's visa or the right way to position things for a student visa to an H-1B, these are hard things, I think, to teach an AI. Precisely, I totally agree. And talk about how many years people still want to come to the United States. I will give it another 200 to 300 years. Okay, good. I like the quotation, it's a simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many people want in and how many people want out. And so I have total confidence in the next 200, 300 years, people still want to come to the United States. But we normally end our program with a question to our distinguished guest. If you will give some advice to yourself in the 20s, what would you say? And finally, is there any particular recommendation you want to recommend to our audience? Well, I've been thinking about this and actually my answer is the same, they tied together, I had been recommended this book a while ago and didn't really pursue it until recently, it's called Atomic Cabots. And to be honest, I actually think that this book is something that would have been great for me to read in my 20s. The concept makes total sense, which is that you just do small things incrementally in your life, you build up habits and over time you have a return on investment. So it's a little bit like put me into your one month and then benefiting from the compound interest or the savings over time. And I think there's a lot to that in professional life and our personal life. One of the things that really struck me and I think again, if I maybe knew this in my 20s, I might have thought a little differently. There's somewhere in the book where they're talking about people who are successful and people who fail, many of them had the same goals. They had the same goals, but some succeeded and some failed. So it wasn't the goal. Sometimes people will say, well, you have to set goals for yourself. And it's like, okay, and I've actually known that for most of my life, you have to set goals for yourself. But actually the hard part is not so much setting a goal for you, it's for achieving the goal. And many times the goal is very hard to achieve without just incremental daily effort towards the goal. And so I think that one of the things, and I do think it kind of counter to the culture right now, I have three kids and two of them think they're gonna be YouTube stars or something and as their occupation. And there are some famous people, and of course it's in the news, these tech people who are in their 20s and make a billion dollars. But a lot of things in life just take a long time to develop expertise or ability. Law is one of those areas where over time you have more and more experience with clients and with situations. And hopefully that experience translates into wisdom for the next kind of generation of clients. And so I feel like in my 20s, if I would have had a better sense about some of those things. And I really wasn't as bad as maybe some people, but just this idea of investing over time and not expecting home runs in any year, but rather just over time developing and knowing that there are setbacks both in professional life and personal life, but just continuing to move forward. I know that recently you made me familiar with the Chinese proverb of them taking the horse. Taking the horse. Yeah, old man loses his horse. Yeah, yeah, why don't, I mean to me that's such a great, that's a great, can you tell me again how it goes? I know. Yeah, we think we are running out of time. Oh, all right, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. We talk about the old man loses his horse. That is a Chinese proverb means that blessing in disguise. Sometimes misfortune might be a blessing in disguise. That's right, yeah. I wish I knew that proverb in my 20s. That's good. Terrific advice and terrific recommendations. Thank you very much, Paul. You know, since we haven't really have time to talk about Korea, but my recommendation gonna be about Korea, Korean culture. I'm a dictator to Korean culture, both Korean food, Korean music, Korean movie, Korean pop, K-pop. I really want to recommend two movies about Pensoli. The Korean folk song, storytelling folk song. The first one is CBNJ, CBNJ 1993 film about Pensoli. And there's a 2015 film, The Sound of a Flower. It's a fantastic historical movies. I watch all, every single historian Korean drama on Netflix and the Weki Rekuten. Believe me, I know all of them. And those two are my all-time favorite because they are about Korean folk music, Pensoli. So we are, it just, you know, always fun to talk with you, Bob. And I wish you can, we can invite you back and we can talk more about Korean culture and, you know, your cultural roots in Korea. But thank you again for taking time to be on the show. And today our guest is our good friend, Bob Weber, immigration attorney, principal of Weber Law Form 2.0. And today's story is immigration law makes me laugh and cry. Thank you so much, Bob. Aloha. Thanks. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com. Mahalo.