Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every
Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most
Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more
Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple podcast, SoundCloud
Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. President Trump's new
Speaker 1: immigration proposal seems to be over before it's begun. Even
Speaker 1: Republicans are not taking it as a serious effort to
Speaker 1: pass legislation. Here's Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, well, I
Speaker 1: think it's obviously just a start, but rather than have
Speaker 1: these debates over how do we compromise between border security
Speaker 1: and and immigration, uh, you know, benefits, I think it's
Speaker 1: a clear statement of what our immigration policy should be.
Speaker 1: Joining me is Leon Fresco, a partner at hollanden Night
Speaker 1: and the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office
Speaker 1: of Immigration Litigation at the Justice Department. Leon. Under Trump's proposal,
Speaker 1: green card applicants would be evaluated on this new points system,
Speaker 1: with a two step process beginning with the Civics test
Speaker 1: and a background check. How would this work? Well, the
Speaker 1: the quite frankly, would be very very difficult to administer
Speaker 1: because at the end of the day. What happens is,
Speaker 1: in a lot of these countries that use point systems,
Speaker 1: you would normally have to reach a certain threshold the points,
Speaker 1: and then you'd come into that country. But here you'd
Speaker 1: have to first go through the civics and background tests.
Speaker 1: Then you'd have to start giving all of these different
Speaker 1: credentials and proving you have them, like that you have
Speaker 1: a work offer, that you have a degree that qualifies
Speaker 1: that your age is your age, etcetera. That would all
Speaker 1: be given a certain amount of points, and then you'd
Speaker 1: be ranked amongst other people also applying for a limited
Speaker 1: set of green cards, and then every six months or
Speaker 1: so they'd have a sort of okay, let's take the
Speaker 1: top fifties thousand people who are ranked for this six
Speaker 1: month period. And the point is from beginning to end,
Speaker 1: that will actually end up taking two to three years
Speaker 1: before someone who actually started this process would be able
Speaker 1: to get a green card from this process, so it's
Speaker 1: actually almost impossible to administer today. A federal appeals court
Speaker 1: ruled against Trump ending the DOCKER program, saying the administration
Speaker 1: acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner, but there is
Speaker 1: no plan for the Dreamers in Trump's current proposal. What
Speaker 1: kind of a gap does that leave, Well, it leads
Speaker 1: a huge gap, because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it has always been very, very difficult to get bipartisan
Speaker 1: consensus on immigration unless you have basically three elements. You
Speaker 1: need to have something on enforcement, something that makes it
Speaker 1: for better for the economy, for the business community, and
Speaker 1: something for the compassionate side of the immigration equation. And
Speaker 1: those are the only bills that I've ever actually either
Speaker 1: passed in the House or the Senate, the ones that
Speaker 1: have something in each of those areas. And if you try,
Speaker 1: I believe, one of those critical areas out of immigration legislation,
Speaker 1: it never passes. Is there any proposal in this legislation
Speaker 1: for what the Trump administration Republicans have complained about, what
Speaker 1: they call catch and release, Well, they're certainly trying to
Speaker 1: In all of these Republican bills, including this proposal, they're
Speaker 1: trying to get at two or three things. Number One,
Speaker 1: that families who are apprehended at the border can be
Speaker 1: detained together, regardless of how much the length of time
Speaker 1: is until their case is decided. Right now it's limited
Speaker 1: to twenty days. And the other main one that they
Speaker 1: try to do is that unaccompanied miners who are currently
Speaker 1: not able to be removed on an expedited basis would
Speaker 1: be re permitted, so the law would return to what
Speaker 1: it was before two thousand and eight, to be removed
Speaker 1: on an expedited basis, meaning within ten days or so
Speaker 1: if they cannot clearly articulate an asylum claim. Looking at
Speaker 1: a recent poll, this surprised me. According to the poll
Speaker 1: by a animist you gov that was released earlier this month,
Speaker 1: Americans that immigration was the most important issue for them
Speaker 1: that trails only healthcare among the top priorities. Does that
Speaker 1: mean that President Trump has succeeded in bringing it to
Speaker 1: national attention across the board? Absolutely? Uh. I tell people
Speaker 1: this all the time, which is, this is the first
Speaker 1: president in my lifetime that's actually had immigration as their
Speaker 1: most important issue. And this is since the internet. This
Speaker 1: is the first president that's had immigration as an Internet
Speaker 1: page issue on the White House website. And so certainly,
Speaker 1: when the president talks about something constantly, it's going to
Speaker 1: become a top issue in certain people's minds. But I
Speaker 1: think even amongst those people's minds, well, they look at
Speaker 1: it and they say, well, what's actually been done on
Speaker 1: this issue in the last two years, and people start
Speaker 1: to realize that whether you take a compassion only or
Speaker 1: enforcement only solution, it won't work. Just why the enforcement
Speaker 1: only approach so far has led to more people being
Speaker 1: apprehended as opposed to less people being apprehended. There was
Speaker 1: a series of tweets from Trump after his speech suggesting
Speaker 1: new actions to crack down on illegal immigrants. In one tweet,
Speaker 1: he said, please do not make yourselves too comfortable. You
Speaker 1: will be leaving soon, and a White House spokesman left
Speaker 1: open the possibility that Trump might use an arcane law
Speaker 1: called the Insurrection Act to allow him to use the
Speaker 1: military to remove illegal immigrants. Is that even doable? So
Speaker 1: for hundreds of years, we've had this concept called post commentatives,
Speaker 1: which is that you cannot use the military to enforce
Speaker 1: US domestic laws. And secondly, we have statutes in plays
Speaker 1: that when someone is coming to the United States to
Speaker 1: seek asylum that certain processes have to be followed until
Speaker 1: that person can be moved. And so by using an
Speaker 1: alien and Insurrection Act, unless you've actually seen evidence that
Speaker 1: some significant group of people are trying to actually overthrow
Speaker 1: the government of the United States by pours, then that
Speaker 1: would not work. In fact, we've had threats much worse
Speaker 1: than this during the Cold War and no such actions
Speaker 1: were used, and so there would be no basis, No
Speaker 1: judge worth any law degree would ever actually allow alien
Speaker 1: and insurrection laws to be used during this period when
Speaker 1: it's just people are seeking asylum. Leon, we've seen a
Speaker 1: term where the Supreme Court has evaded a lot of
Speaker 1: controversial issues. Are they likely to take up data well,
Speaker 1: if there ends up being a circuit split on DOCCA,
Speaker 1: I think for sure. But even if the administration says
Speaker 1: that this is so important to the government you have
Speaker 1: to take it up, then still it's highly highly likely
Speaker 1: they will take it up. But the only thing is
Speaker 1: by the time DOCCA gets decided, which would be sometime
Speaker 1: in either June of or later, then there will basically
Speaker 1: be a referendum on this issue as part of the
Speaker 1: general elections, and so at the end of the day
Speaker 1: we won't really know the fate of DOCCA until the
Speaker 1: next presidential all right, thanks so much, Leon, As always,
Speaker 1: it's great to have you on. That's Leon Fresco. He's
Speaker 1: partner at Holland and Nightne. He was the former Deputy
Speaker 1: Assistant A G. For the Office of Immigration Litigation at
Speaker 1: the Justice Department. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast.
Speaker 1: You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso.
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