One immigration lawyer's view

I asked a friend of mine who practices immigration law in a major Midwestern city what he thought of the immigration bill. I know him to be a conservative Republican and a supporter of President Bush. This is what he wrote back, which I post with his permission:

My initial answer is: I am pulled in two opposite directions. When Iago cried "My daughter! My ducats!" he could not have been more torn than I.

On the one hand – and I won't kid you – the personal financial possibilities arising from this bill are incredible. I have a very real possibility of becoming wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.

I have a friend who did immigration law in the 2000-2001 time frame. Bill Clinton, by decree, extended something called the "245(i) program" (the old 1986 amnesty) by four months between January to April 2000.

In that four months my pal’s little law firm made $50,000 off of 245(i) applications.

A day.

Every day.

For four months.

Each application took 90 minutes to do.

Each brought in $1,000 in fees.

Ka ching.

And yet.

On the other hand, this bill is a terrible, terrible idea.

It's amnesty, pure and simple. No b.s. No, it goes beyond amnesty. It completely cuts the legs out from under immigration enforcement.

Look, I have no love for la migra. BICE – the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement – can be real Nazis. They have the power to pick up aliens and hold them in detention indefinitely. They can say someone is a 'security threat' and they are not required to show any evidence that this is so. The only hearing the alien has coming to him is via TV set from the jail. I'm not even allowed to consult with my client in the course of the hearing. I can't tell him to shut up; I can't tell him to explain his answer; I can't talk to him sotto voce to hint to him or to advise him.

All I can do is shout at a TV screen in front of opposing counsel and the judge. That's Soviet justice.

It's purely Orwellian, and it's why I do immigration law. It's just un-American how the Gov't does things in the immigration world.

Last year I represented a young woman in an asylum case. She was arrested at the border fleeing sexual slavery in her homeland. She had been in detention for eleven months. I could not even sit next to her–the entire hearing was from a jail cell via teleconference. And had we lost, she would have died. (We didn't lose. This time.)

But much as I hate their methods, we need these guys, we need BICE, for the same reason we need a lower intestine; we need something resembling an excretory function as regards illegals who flout visa and immigration laws. But now every time that la migra picks up someone working illegally the illegal can smile and say "I have a Z visa application in the works." Once this bill passes – no, ever since the bill became public knowledge – the BICE lice have been completely demoralized. They know that the dam has burst and they are the first ones to be swept away by it. (You can tell. I was just there at [my city's] BICELand yesterday and they were actually polite.) And I'm sure it's worse in the Mexican reconquista areas, SoCal, AZ, NM, and (ahem) Texas.

The long an the short of it is this: this bill has no enforcement to it at all.

Look, it says, in effect, that 'no Y [guest worker] or Z [amnesty] visas will be issued to anybody until the following steps are taken to seal the borders.' But in the mean time, provisional Y and Z visas will be issued, with exactly the same effects and benefits except that they can't be turned into LPR (green card) status.

There is no requirement that the border be 'sealed', just that they hire more people (yay*) and build a tripwire fence (double yay*) and throw out a few more 'criminal' aliens (no yay here, this means that more misdemeanants with US citizen kids will be thrown out).

*((insert the sounds of cheering made when they ate Robin's minstrels here))

And as for the Great Wall of Texas? Forget it. Won't never be built. Not while the Dems are in office.

Furthermore, there are about 30 million non-citizen immigrants, and eight to twelve million illegals in this country. There are 180,000 Homeland Security bureaucrats, of whom about 40,000 or so work for BICE, from border patrol to Homeland Security paperwork drones, for the whole country. I work in one of America's biggest cities, and here, with a half million aliens in this state, BICE and its sister organization, US CIS, have together – count 'em – 30 people processing papers. It takes five years to get a marriage green-card interview. Five years.

Look, this is the crew that gave Mohammad Atta a green card six months after he destroyed the North Tower. And they expect these people to process twelve million Z visa applications in the next three years??? WHO ARE THEY KIDDING?

And yet. And yet.

This debate as to whether they should be here at all is over before it started. They're here. End of story. Throwing them out en masse would require we act like Romans or Germans, not Americans. Short of losing Baltimore or Seattle to a shipboard nuke, we're not going to have boxcars to the borders. We must therefore do what is necessary. You build a sidewalk where people walk.

Real comprehensive immigration reform – seal the borders, amnesty those here – is never going to happen. The Democrats don't want to seal the borders, ever, because immigrants (eventually) vote Democrat (legally, if we're lucky). One third of the Republicans don't want to amnesty because they're immigrant (and Muslim!) hating know-nothings (I'm a conservative GOPer myself and I've learned this the hard way). Another third want to amnesty and also don't want to seal the borders because it is good for the economy. And the last third, who want a balanced approach, don't have the power to win on the issue, being one third of one half. Oh well.

So lacking border sealing, and lacking a working immigration agency, amnesty is, given the current political constellation, likely an inevitable necessity. But since we are not going to seal the borders, we can kiss a major city goodbye to Al Qaeda in the next five to ten years. If that.

It has become painfully clear to me since the bitter defeat in November that the American people have decided to have a collective fit of amnesia about a recent certain act of mass terrorist criminality, and to pretend that crucifying George W. will absolve us of our sins. Well, there's a saying in the criminal defense law community: "You can't save your client from himself." If the American people choose to be stupid, then stupid they will be. But then it will take losing a port to wake us up. All we can do is be prepared for the consequences.

And one more thing. It is also clear to me that a million Mexicans flying Mexican flags in L.A. and Dallas and Houston means a significant possibility, maybe even likelihood, of eventual civil war. Not now, not tomorrow, but soon enough. Twenty, thirty years. Sooner if we lose in Iraq. But anyway, in our lifetimes. I'm sure that amnesty by itself will neither delay it nor speed it since whether amnesty is given or no, they'll still be here regardless. Only sealing the borders can delay it to keep things from getting worse. And if we don't seal the borders, it is coming.