As an immigration lawyer, I am frustrated with the lack of nuance in the public conversation about immigration. For example: people say “Immigrants that came here illegally broke the law. Now they have to pay the price- deport them.” Do those people know anything about “the law?”
The mere fact that a person entered the US without permission and got caught by ICE, does not mean s/he will be deported. “The law” provides the framework for deciding who gets deported and who gets to stay. If you are going to talk about THE LAW, know what you are talking about.
Immigration law makes little common sense. Immigration lawyers are a bit like veterans or ER nurses: We feel no one understands our bizarre world; and that is usually true. In our world, tragedy brings hope; the difference between life and death can hinge on a newspaper article.
Around the general public, we immigration lawyers talk to each other about the twisted reality in which we operate quietly, maybe to protect others from uncomfortable truths, maybe to avoid being thought of as overly cynical.
Amongst our own kind, we congratulate each other on uncovering tragedy in our client’s lives. “I was sure he'd lose, but now his wife has cancer!” or “He has proof his dad was murdered, isn't it great?” or “As it turns out, she was raped as a child, so that helps her case.”
We help our clients navigate a byzantine labyrinth of laws that scrutinizes each aspect of their existence and requires it to fit a mold of exacting standards that lack imagination or tolerance for the normal messiness/complexity of human life; the outcome is often arbitrary.
A man, who has lived here for 25 years, never committed a crime, has worked and paid taxes, and has 3 US citizen kids, all of whom are healthy, will be deported. If he was convicted of DV, but one of his kids had a serious illness, he might get his green card. That is the law.
A woman, who was gang raped in her home country and will certainly be killed if she returns and who has her asylum hearing in Atlanta will be deported. If she has her asylum hearing in New York, she could be on a path toward citizenship. That is the law.
A woman convicted for a drug offense in one state because the police stopped her for speeding and found the Aderall her friend forgot in her car will be deported. A woman convicted for a drug offense in another state because she sold heroin may not be. That is the law.
“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty,” is a quote often attributed to Thomas Jefferson (...though apparently erroneously so). Regardless of who said it, it rings true to me.
I don’t expect others to go that far, but I do think it is fair to expect those, who tout our immigration laws to know what they says, and to be willing to explain and defend their arbitrariness.
My father's relatives perished in concentration camps; my mother was born in Gila River Relocation Camp in Arizona during the Japanese internment. Their captors followed the laws of their respective lands. The comparison is somewhat hyperbolic. But I have learned my lesson.
