Real Talk on Immigration

It is ok to be scared. Bad things are going to happen. As you probably know, I have adopted Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower as a handbook to end-times, and profound as the hard-fought hope is in that book, the amount of suffering makes it all really hard to take in. And our ability to envision all the specific ways the bad events may play out in real life is seemingly endless.

So when I say the following, it is not because I believe there will be no suffering, no shocks, and no horror. It’s because I believe we should be freeing as much space as the times allow in our minds and hearts to be human, to keep our bodies and souls strong. As Howard Zinn wrote, “The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

So on to my own take, so far (and I reserve the right to change when change is needed). Just looking at the one thing, immigration, where I can plausibly claim some expertise, I think what we need to do now is almost all “keeping on keeping on.” And if you want to jump to what you can do, just scroll on by to the end.

Let me explain, with two examples.

Example 1: Temporary Protected Status

One change that will come quickly: the dismantling of “temporary protected status” (TPS) which offers a work permit and, basically, a medium-term promise not to be deported for people from a handful of countries. Roughly a million people have had TPS for years, and in some cases even a couple of decades, so this will be a huge shock. What do they need?

• They may lose jobs, so we need support for local community organizations like Small Things Matter, so they can meet some of the concrete needs folks will have. These organizations know how to do this; they just need resources to keep doing what they do.
• They could use small business consultations to see if, instead of being an “employee” at a corporation, they can become a contractor, setting up their own business, or they can start a co-operative. Neither of the latter categories need work permits. Small business resources still exist in communities across America.
• And they will need immigration consultations, ASAP, trying to establish if there is anything else they were eligible for, that they never pursued because TPS gave them enough to get by. We already know how to do this, and it’s a great place to involve and incorporate volunteers who can do the consults under the watchful supervision of immigration experts.

So then, next step, all those folks with TPS might enter removal (“deportation”) proceedings¹, and there will be a lot more people in the already-backlogged immigration courts. No matter how quickly they add more judges, they won’t get through this backlog for a long time. There will be efforts to do away with having immigration courts at all—but surely such efforts would fail, because it would require a change to federal law, and thanks to the filibuster in the Senate, that seems not impossible, but highly unlikely for now.²

So we need lawyers, and we need skilled people who can help multiply the efforts of lawyers

Free lawyers are already really hard to come by. (I see you all, and I know your caseloads, and yeah, you’re not exactly a fungible resource.) So we will need expanded self-help options AND for communities to rally around their community-members to pay for good lawyering. The Annapolis Immigrant Justice Network is an amazing model of this, born from 2017’s trial run for the present. They do a ton of direct support, but they also fundraise to help people defray the cost of private immigration attorneys, for their own community members, and the find ways for nonlawyers to be involved. We can replicate models like that all over the place (and fund them and existing legal service providers as much as our pocketbooks allow). And in the meantime, people with means can put money into local nonprofits who are already doing the work, and who fear their grant-funding will be cut.

Example 2: Birthright Citizenship

Since the late 19^th century, it’s settled law that basically all children born on U.S. soil are citizens, no matter the status of their parents, thanks to the 14^th Amendment. They could try undoing the Fourteenth Amendment, but yeah, constitutional amendments are hard to pull off. They could also try making the shoddy, ahistorical arguments of which our Supreme Court is fond—and that’s the more dangerous approach (see: SCOTUS penchant for shoddy, ahistorical amendments), although the leading architect for this legal theory was disbarred because he was lawyering from cloud cuckooland. Nonetheless, we need smart, ready impact litigators to fight this, and lo and behold, the ACLU just let us know they are not moving to Canada. Fund them, the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, the American Immigration Council, and more. And if and when that happens, the rest of us can mobilize popular outrage against this desecration of what the American Dream means if it means anything at all; organizing is not my area of expertise, but happily, I know plenty of people for whom it is, and I’m glad they’re there. And this is cool about the 3.5% rule for change.

I could substitute any number of other policies for both of these examples, but the bottom line is we know how to do these things, and the need is simply to keep the people and organizations DOING that work strong and well-funded. Panicking does not do that.

What We Can Do

We have about two months to build ourselves back up. Although the response will be hard on immigration lawyers who do either direct representation or impact litigation, what we need is investment from other people who are not already depleted from doing this work nonstop for a decade or more. That investment can be money (I promise, it may feel lame to you, but not to the executive director who cashes the checks), but it can also be:

• imagination, helping us think how to creatively, effectively involve volunteers in expanding our capacities
• lending computer expertise so we can figure out smart, effective, safe ways to share resources
• hosting a safe, internal generative AI tool so we can do adapt any adaptable boilerplates without violating client confidentiality
• driving people to know your rights presentations
• figuring out which is your closest and best immigration legal service provider and seeing if their website needs updating, or their website mentions needing help with people’s material needs
• and so on and so on and so on

There will be plenty more to do, and plenty more opportunities to become someone who is trusted when the hardest times come. And none of it is possible if we walk around with activated-amygdalas, exhausted by our own capacity to predict horror. So for now, build. For now, breathe. For now, hold sacred every moment that has beauty in it.

And when the bad policies do come, which they will, I leave you with John Lewis’s words:

“Choose confrontation wisely, but when it is your time don’t be afraid to stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice. And if you follow your truth down the road to peace and the affirmation of love, if you shine like a beacon for all to see, then the poetry of all the great dreamers and philosophers is yours to manifest in a nation, a world community, and a Beloved Community that is finally at peace with itself.” John Lewis

Must have footnotes, or else I am not a real lawyer.

1. The people who already had removal orders in the past are in far more fragile positions, but the vast majority would be placed in the creaky, slow court process. ↩︎
2. My “for now” horizon is about two years. And anything could change, but this post is all about what we are facing now, and not the world of things we might face if…if…if…. Unknown, and unknowable. ↩︎