Speaker 1: When Donald J. Trump began his campaign for president, he
Speaker 1: said that people coming into the United States from Mexico
Speaker 1: were quote bringing drugs, They're bringing crime, their rapists, and
Speaker 1: some I assume are good people unquote. He also said
Speaker 1: that as president, he would build a wall along the
Speaker 1: border with Mexico and that he would get Mexico to
Speaker 1: pay for it. He first called for a bandoned immigration
Speaker 1: by Muslims, then called for a suspension of immigration from
Speaker 1: countries that sponsored terrorism and extreme vetting of immigrants to
Speaker 1: the United States. Throughout the race, undocumented immigration remained a
Speaker 1: central theme of his candidacy, and he discussed it during
Speaker 1: the third presidential debate. One of my first acts will
Speaker 1: be to get all of the drug lords, all of
Speaker 1: the bad ones. We have some bad, bad people in
Speaker 1: this country that have to go out. We're gonna get
Speaker 1: them out. We're going to secure the border, and once
Speaker 1: the border is secured, at a later date will make
Speaker 1: a determination as to the rest. But we have some
Speaker 1: bad ombres here and we're gonna get him out. Today
Speaker 1: we're going to be discussing what policies President elect Trump
Speaker 1: is likely to pursue on immigration issues. After January twenty
Speaker 1: when he is sworn in. Our guests are Harland York,
Speaker 1: an immigration law expert who is the founding partner of
Speaker 1: Herland York and Associates. And Stephen Lylegomsky, Professor emeritus at
Speaker 1: Washington University Law School, who was senior counsel to the
Speaker 1: Secretary of Homeland Security. Welcome to both of you, Stephen,
Speaker 1: Why don't we start out by talking about what we
Speaker 1: can expect President elect Trump to do immediately upon taking
Speaker 1: office about immigration. Well, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1: One of the first things that I would predict he's
Speaker 1: going to do, because he pled to do this during
Speaker 1: the campaign, as one of the logistically easiest things to
Speaker 1: do is issue a memo or have the Homeland Security
Speaker 1: Secretary issue a memo formerly resending the dock of program
Speaker 1: the docer programs to one in which people who were
Speaker 1: brought here as young children, had who have lived here
Speaker 1: several years and who passed various back ground screening checks
Speaker 1: and so on, would be very low priorities for removal
Speaker 1: and would be permitted to work during the time that
Speaker 1: the low priorities are still in effect. So he could
Speaker 1: just issue a memo revoking data. One tricky issue if
Speaker 1: he does that is what happens to the people who
Speaker 1: currently hold it. It's one thing to say we won't
Speaker 1: issue any further grants of dacca. But if he seeks
Speaker 1: to withdraw the work permise of the people who already
Speaker 1: have it, uh, there's a very complicated procedure for doing so.
Speaker 1: The regulations say you have to send an individual notice
Speaker 1: to each of what would be more than seven hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people. You have to give them reasons, you have
Speaker 1: to give them fifteen days in which to respond. And
Speaker 1: even if you do all that and formally revoke it,
Speaker 1: collecting these pieces of paper that provide optimization to work
Speaker 1: as another matter, and that would be very, very difficult.
Speaker 1: My guests would be he's going to do this, but
Speaker 1: allow those who currently have data to continue to enjoy
Speaker 1: it for until they expire on their own, which would
Speaker 1: be at most two years from now. Carlan, you have
Speaker 1: have an immigration law prid this in New Jersey. UM,
Speaker 1: I'm interested to know both whether you agree with what
Speaker 1: Stephen just said about his expect expectation and also what
Speaker 1: just what you've heard from your clients and perspective clients
Speaker 1: over the last few days. I understand you've you've heard
Speaker 1: from a lot of them. Sure, thanks very much for
Speaker 1: having me. Yeah, I think it's reasonable to conclude that
Speaker 1: what Stephen just said is foreseeable. I think we all
Speaker 1: knew as immigration advocates in the United States that the
Speaker 1: DACA program could see an end. However, when the DACA
Speaker 1: program started in I cautioned everyone who we personally represented
Speaker 1: in that process. In my firm, which as you say,
Speaker 1: works out of New Jersey but handles cases all over
Speaker 1: the US, we let our DACA recipients know that this
Speaker 1: was not a permanent program. And there are many many
Speaker 1: programs historically like the DACA program, that do have an
Speaker 1: end date insight, sometimes it's not firm. These programs do
Speaker 1: come and go under all presidencies. And regarding your other question,
Speaker 1: is far as what we've actually hurt from our clients. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there has obviously been a bit of heightened anxiety for
Speaker 1: a portion of immigrants in the United States, and we're
Speaker 1: certainly hearing that. However, I have been reminding everyone of
Speaker 1: the following. Twenty years ago, when I was a young
Speaker 1: immigration lawyer starting out, Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration
Speaker 1: Reform an Immigrant Responsibility Act on September thirty and all
Speaker 1: of that periods veteran immigration attorneys who I spoke with
Speaker 1: as a relatively new lawyer, we're telling me it was
Speaker 1: the end of the world. All immigration law was being eviscerated.
Speaker 1: Courts were being stripped at their discretionary powers to hear cases.
Speaker 1: The aggravated felony definitions were widely expanded to three and
Speaker 1: ten year bars were placed into the law, and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. And we've been suffering with the
Speaker 1: effects of all of those rules that became law in
Speaker 1: April of for the better part of two decades. And
Speaker 1: we've been fighting as an organization in the American Immigration
Speaker 1: Layers Association, thousands of us have been dealing with that reality.
Speaker 1: And one final thought is that when George Bush left office,
Speaker 1: the pending number of cases nationally in the deportation context
Speaker 1: and the immigration courts was that about a hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty six thousand. Under Barack Obama, it's tripled to right
Speaker 1: now five one plus thousands. So well, it's not just
Speaker 1: it's not just the you know what, we're what the
Speaker 1: country is going to do about people who are here
Speaker 1: undocumented that President electrump has been talking about. He's also
Speaker 1: sketched out a number of things about how he's going
Speaker 1: to stop illegal undocumented immigrants from coming into the country, Steve.
Speaker 1: The most prominent of these, of course, is the wall.
Speaker 1: How likely is it he's actually going to be able
Speaker 1: to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it? Well,
Speaker 1: I think both are extremely unlikely, and by the way,
Speaker 1: I agree with everything that hardam I just said extremely well. Um.
Speaker 1: Two reasons for that. One is that it would be
Speaker 1: prohibitively expensive. Despite Mr Tom's claims, all the empirical estimates
Speaker 1: put the number somewhere between fifteen and forty two billion
Speaker 1: dollars just to construct the wall initially, and that doesn't
Speaker 1: take account of us as sums of money that would
Speaker 1: be be required for annual upkeep. Trump has said he
Speaker 1: wants the wall to be a thousand miles long and
Speaker 1: high and made a solid concrete, which is unrealistic. Congress
Speaker 1: will never fund uh that kind of wall, and Mexico
Speaker 1: certainly won't pay for it. If I had to make
Speaker 1: a guess, it would be that President Trump, in order
Speaker 1: to say face, might be able to strike some type
Speaker 1: of deal. Is Congressional Republican leaders whereby they agree to
Speaker 1: some modest extension of the existing border fence. Um, but
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to imagine anything more drastic than that, Harlan.
Speaker 1: How about the Donald Trump's comments about banning Muslims from
Speaker 1: coming in the country. He's he's modified that, But is
Speaker 1: that something that uh uh, You know, Muslims who are
Speaker 1: either in the country or want to come in the country,
Speaker 1: or are people who come from a heavily Islamic countries
Speaker 1: should be legitimately worried about. Look, I will again go
Speaker 1: back to reality and the history of my time twenty
Speaker 1: years in this practice. In the aftermath the nine eleven attacks,
Speaker 1: the government created, of course, the Department of Homeland Security,
Speaker 1: and one of its first measures, even before DHS had
Speaker 1: its formal let's say, initiatives placed, was the Special Registration Program,
Speaker 1: where nationals in four different enumerated groups were given notice nations.
Speaker 1: During the presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump promised to overhaul
Speaker 1: the nation's approach to immigration and take a hard line
Speaker 1: on undocumented immigrants and also on people seeking to come
Speaker 1: into the country. He uh promised that he would um
Speaker 1: first suspend immigration of Muslims, then spoke about suspending immigration
Speaker 1: from countries that sponsored terrorism, then said he was going
Speaker 1: to engage an extreme vetting of all immigrants where his
Speaker 1: administration would We're talking about what to expect from the
Speaker 1: president elect when he takes office with immigration lawyer Harlan
Speaker 1: York and Professor Stephen Lagomsky of Washington University Law School. Harlan,
Speaker 1: we were talking about what realistic to expect in terms of, uh,
Speaker 1: the suspension of the possible suspension of immigration from countries
Speaker 1: that are predominantly Muslim, What do you think is going
Speaker 1: to happen? As I was starting to say, um, you know,
Speaker 1: we had a program like that already in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of nine eleven. It was called Special Registration, and at
Speaker 1: that point in time, in September of O two, the
Speaker 1: Bush administration put in place a program that grouped I
Speaker 1: think I said twenty six before the commercial breaks, actually
Speaker 1: twenty five countries back then nationals from those countries, twenty
Speaker 1: four of which were predominantly Muslim countries. And the registration
Speaker 1: program went on for many years and mails over the
Speaker 1: age of sixteen were required to register with immigration. I
Speaker 1: remember taking down people, taking people that is, down to
Speaker 1: the immigration buildings um to register them. And then the
Speaker 1: program essentially was suspended because the government, I guess, determined
Speaker 1: that it wasn't really effective in terms of the I
Speaker 1: guess vetting, if you will, to use the word that
Speaker 1: Mr Trump has used. So it's nothing new so far
Speaker 1: if I look back on the last fifteen or sixteen
Speaker 1: months of his campaign. UM, I note that a journalist
Speaker 1: pointed out recently, and I think I put this on
Speaker 1: my Twitter that Mr said many things, like all political
Speaker 1: candidates have said that contradict one another. I just don't
Speaker 1: know in reality when you look at recent history and
Speaker 1: you look at what they're talking about doing. People who
Speaker 1: think about vetting, if you will, well, securing the homeland
Speaker 1: we all would agree is a very important thing. That's
Speaker 1: why we have a Department of Homeland Security. At the
Speaker 1: same time, we've had recent historical examples of types of
Speaker 1: things like this already in place, and whether or not
Speaker 1: they're successful or not is subject to controversy on or debate. Stephen,
Speaker 1: We're going to have a Republican president and a Republican Congress. Uh.
Speaker 1: Does that improve the prospects for some sort of comprehensive legislation? Uh?
Speaker 1: And if so, what will that look like? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a great question. Um, I tend to think it might
Speaker 1: improve the chance that some type of comprehensive bill um
Speaker 1: simply because so much of the opposition of the previous
Speaker 1: bill came from Republicans who are bent on forting just
Speaker 1: about anything that President Obama was supporting. They hopefully will
Speaker 1: be more supportive of a good comprehensive bill if President
Speaker 1: Trump introduces it. My guess is it would somewhat follow
Speaker 1: the lines of the bill of the Senate pass in thirteen,
Speaker 1: which had three main pillars to it. One was massive
Speaker 1: increases in both border and interior enforcement. A second big
Speaker 1: pillar was a pass to permanent residents status an ultimately
Speaker 1: citizenship for a large chunk of the current undocumented population.
Speaker 1: And then the third main pillar was reform of the
Speaker 1: criteria for legal immigration to the US. The one thing
Speaker 1: that I can imagine having to give up if the
Speaker 1: bills introduced this time, uh, it concerns timing. There are
Speaker 1: many Republicans who were saying we might be able to
Speaker 1: consider legalization down the past if we can first quote
Speaker 1: secure the border. That to me is very problematic because
Speaker 1: the boarder will never be one secure. He will never
Speaker 1: be able to prevent people from answering illegally or from
Speaker 1: overstaying visas UH. And if legalization is conditioned on that happening,
Speaker 1: that it would never happen to It would be hard
Speaker 1: to define when that would take effect, but it is
Speaker 1: possible that in the new political environments some pass will
Speaker 1: be found. Can also just comment on the previous questions,
Speaker 1: I thought hardly answered it very well. A couple of
Speaker 1: points on the Muslim ban UM. From a purely political standpoint,
Speaker 1: I think UH President of Left Trump is going to
Speaker 1: have to do something in order to avoid being accused
Speaker 1: of preaching his campaign promises. UM. I don't think he
Speaker 1: will issue an order that explicitly bans Muslims by name.
Speaker 1: The reason I don't think that is that even though
Speaker 1: there is a provision of the statue which gives the
Speaker 1: President of the power to ban any class of aliens
Speaker 1: or class of aliens have the way it's word it,
Speaker 1: whenever he finds that their admission would be detrimental to
Speaker 1: the interests of the U S. I know that sounds
Speaker 1: a very broad grant of power, But if the president
Speaker 1: were to try to do that on the basis of religion,
Speaker 1: in particular to single out of particular religion, then a
Speaker 1: serious constitutional question would be raised. And so rather than
Speaker 1: bar Muslims, what I could imagine him doing a saying
Speaker 1: for immigration from the following countries, and then they could
Speaker 1: be a list. We will uh, we will increase the
Speaker 1: number of security checks, although our practical matter, I don't
Speaker 1: know what he could add to the many checks we
Speaker 1: already have. Thank you to Professor Stephen Lonomsky of Washington
Speaker 1: University Law School and immigration law expert Harlan Yorke coming up.
Speaker 1: President elect Trunk, also besides immigration, talked about prosecuting Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton about her use of a private email server. Should
Speaker 1: President Obama pardon her to prevent prosecution. This is Bloomberg