The Juvenile Docket

“Isaac” is seventeen years old, but looks more like thirteen or fourteen, slightly built and quiet. Until last October, he lived in a small town in Honduras with his aging Aunt. He left school a few years ago to go to work, but every time payday came around, he was afraid for his life. That was when a gang of eight to twelve boys and young men would wait by the bridge he had to cross on his way home and attack him to steal his money or whatever he had been able to buy before reaching them. Sometimes he could outrun them, finding his way to the relative safety of his home. Other times, he was not so lucky. He estimates that he was badly beaten at least eight times—punched in the face, kicked, even attacked with a machete. His aunt would treat his wounds, but he never went to a hospital or even saw a doctor because he couldn’t afford the cost. The gang threatened to kill him unless he joined them, but he refused.

Finally, last fall, Isaac fled. Somehow, he made it through Mexico and into Texas. He was driven across the border and then left to find his way on foot. After walking for two days, he was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who kept him in detention for eighteen days. They eventually released him to his mother, who has lived in the U.S. most of Isaac’s life (his father died when he was too young to remember). He now lives with his mother and siblings on Long Island, and attends ninth grade at a public high school.

This week Isaac was one of dozens of kids in immigration court for the “juvenile docket,” a special day for minors in removal proceedings. The rules are a little more relaxed in order to make the court system a little less intimidating for young people but the goal is the same: the government has determined that these kids should be sent back where they came from. “Aliens” facing deportation have the right to legal representation, but because it is considered a civil matter, the state is not required to pay for a lawyer. Instead, Isaac and others in similar situations depend mostly on local immigration lawyers who show up for the juvenile docket to take cases pro bono. This week, like most juvenile docket days, there were far more children than lawyers looking for cases.

The judge who presided over the docket was clearly concerned first and foremost for the children’s well-being. He asked each one who came before him for evidence that they were in school, and told them how important it is for them to remain in school and do well. He was very lenient in granting postponements to allow the kids time to find lawyers—and thereby postpone deportation for months at a time. (Many of today’s cases had their next appearance scheduled for December.) But for these children and their volunteer lawyers it’s mostly a question of finding ways to delay the inevitable. However sympathetic the judge may be, he is constrained by the law as it is written, and by the fact that the government has chosen to pursue these children.

Isaac might be eligible for asylum based on his legitimate fear of being killed by gangs if he returns to Honduras. But that would require proving that he is being targeted for one of the reasons enumerated in our asylum laws—in the end, whether he is allowed to stay in the U.S. with his mother and siblings will probably depend on the judgment of an asylum officer or judge. I heard from one of the lawyers about another teenager in court that day, an eighteen-year-old girl from Korea whose father sent for her, promising permanent residence through his marriage to a U.S. citizen. When his fiancée left him because of his alcoholism and abuse, he returned to Korea, leaving his daughter with no legal status here. She is a star student, and hopes to go to an Ivy League college—but can only do so if she finds a way to be here legally. The best advice the lawyer could offer was that she marry her boyfriend.

Sitting in the courtroom, I watched child after child appear before the judge, while a few sympathetic lawyers tried to do what little they could to help them stay in this country. I couldn’t help but wonder: Why? Whatever your opinion about immigration, and whatever you think about the millions of undocumented immigrants here, why is the government making it a priority to expel these “illegal” children? Surely, there are more pressing issues for our law-enforcement agents to focus their attention on. Meanwhile, the best hope for Isaac and the other children in the system is that their lawyers will be able to delay their cases longer than Congress delays immigration reform, and that whatever compromise eventually passes will provide some kind of relief for them.

Randall Chamberlain, Lobbyist

I’ve never been a big fan of Washington, DC. On my first visit there, the government buildings, especially the Capitol, turned me off. The big imposing structures, designed to awe and even intimidate, rather than to welcome the populace into the workings of government, seemed to me the antithesis of “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Since moving to New York 14 years ago, I’ve been to Washington many times for many different reasons, and my opinion didn’t change much. As an adopted New Yorker, I am required to regard our neighbor to the south with a degree of disdain: The District of Columbia does not have the diversity, the vibrancy, or the grit of New York; it barely even qualifies as a city.

So I was surprised to find how much I appreciated Washington on a recent visit. Perhaps part of the change in my opinion came from the reason I was there: I traveled to Washington to take part in the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s (AILA) National Day of Action. Several hundred immigration lawyers converged upon the capital to meet with congressional staffers (and a few members of congress themselves) to press for passage of comprehensive immigration reform. That’s right, I was a lobbyist for a day! (More about that below.) Previously, I had gone to Washington to attend conferences, to meet with colleagues, to visit friends, and even to go to a couple of swim meets. But this was my first time there directly related to the town’s raison d’être, the democratic process.

I’ve had a bit of a change of heart about the city, starting with the architecture. The Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the buildings surrounding them and housing the various other functions are all clearly designed to convey the message that “This Is An Important Place.” While I wish they had found a way to communicate that message without also expressing exclusivity, it is true that governing a huge country is important; I have begun to appreciate that the buildings themselves help to preserve the gravity and specialness of what goes on inside them.

Walking around Washington, I even came to appreciate the city—at least as an appropriate place for the seat of government, if not as a place I’d like to live. Washington in many ways mirrors the rest of the country quite well. It is a pretty big city, but like most American cities has many more people in the suburbs than in the urban core. The city itself has beautiful mainly white residential neighborhoods, but more than half of the population is African-American. It sits right on the border between the North and the South (although Maryland is below the Mason-Dixon Line, it did not join the Confederacy, and I’ve never met a Marylander who considered herself a Southerner). So while New Yorkers (particularly the eight million of us who live in the five boroughs) walk around in a physical and social environment quite different from the rest of the country, Washingtonians’ day-to-day lives look a lot like those of much of the country, which I guess is a good thing for the people making decisions about those lives.

Like the United States as a whole, Washington is also full of immigrants. As of the last census, 11.9% of people living in the United States and 12.9% of Washingtonians were born in a foreign country. (Check out this publication from the Census Bureau for all kinds of nifty facts on the “foreign-born population.”) And that brings us back to why I was in our nation’s capital. Along with a few hundred other lawyers, I spent the day meeting with congressional staffers to encourage them to pass comprehensive immigration reform this year.

The immigration system in the United States is broken. More than 10 million immigrants are undocumented. (The number is impossible to measure accurately, but estimates range from 10 to 20 million. The figure I heard most often was 11 million. See this paper by the Immigration Policy Center for estimates of where they live by congressional district.) Many immigrants seeking permanent residence based on a job offer are forced to wait up to seven years—even after everything is approved!—before getting a green card. Up until last year, all of the H-1B visas available for temporary skilled workers were used up on the first day they were available. (In 2009 and 2010, because of the economy, there were far fewer applicants.) For family-based immigration, the wait to bring a relative to join you ranges from four years for a spouse or child of a permanent resident (spouses and children of citizens can get a green card immediately) to 22 years if you want to bring a brother or sister from the Philippines. And immigration for same-sex partners? Try Canada. (More on LGBT immigration soon; if you can’t wait for my take on it, check out Immigration Equality.)

Nobody believes this is a good situation, but there is a lot of disagreement over what to do about it. The biggest controversy is over what to do about undocumented immigrants. Many advocate simply deporting them all. Aside from being heartless, and completely impractical, it would have devastating economic consequences: most undocumented immigrants are working, many in jobs that nobody else wants to do. And then there’s the question of letting in more skilled workers: most of the people who would like to come to this country on an H-1B or other work visa would do jobs that we don’t have enough qualified domestic workers to fill. In most cases, they have to prove this to get a visa. And yet, we have arbitrary limits on the number of visas available each year, unrelated to the actual demand for foreign labor.

The argument against immigration reform tends to boil down to this: If we allow more foreigners into the country, they will take jobs away from Americans. But the truth is the opposite. More immigration tends to expand the economy because legal workers earn more, pay more in taxes, and spend more. And the experience of the last couple of years has shown that when there are fewer jobs available here, there are fewer immigrants—either legal or illegal.

President Obama has committed to making immigration reform a priority, but there have been a few other things on the legislative agenda. My day in Washington happened to coincide with the final House vote on health care reform, which was interesting timing for me, but wasn’t great for the lobbying effort. Virtually everyone we spoke to in Washington was so shell-shocked from the battle over health care reform that they did not expect the House and Senate leadership to take on another controversial issue before mid-term elections this fall.

Yesterday, however, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised to take up immigration reform when Congress returns to work this week. Chuck Schumer, our senior senator here in New York, and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina are working on a bill to be introduced in the Senate. So far, no other Republican senator has shown interest in the issue, but immigration does not necessarily cut across party lines in the same way as other issues. Some “pro-business” Republicans see the economic benefits of a more rational immigration process, while organized labor leaders, who overwhelmingly support Democrats, tend to want to keep foreign workers out. It should be interesting.