James Pittman: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode two of Immigration Uncovered, the docket wise sponsored podcast where we dive deep into the dynamic world of immigration law, shedding light on the latest developments, cutting edge practice, management strategies, and the transformative impact of legal technology. I'm thrilled to be your host on this exciting journey as we empower immigration practitioners with invaluable insights and explore the intricate intersection of law and society. My guest today is a very special guest. I have with me professor IRA Kurzband, legendary immigration lawyer, author of Kurzband's Immigration Law. Source book. IRA, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.

Ira Kurzban: Thank you, James. Thanks for having me.

James Pittman: IRA Kurzban hardly needs any introduction. He's a partner at Kurzband, Kurzband, Tetselli and Pratt, a law firm in Miami, Florida for over 40 years and is the chair of their immigration department. He's an adjunct faculty member in immigration law at the University of Miami School of Law. Professor Kurzban is a past president and former general counsel of ayla the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

James Pittman: So, IRA, please, I want to just give our introduction. You will be familiar, no doubt, to a large portion of our audience, but please, in your own words, tell us a little bit about yourself and your life and your career in immigration law.

Ira Kurzban: Sure. I started out not as an immigration lawyer, but as a civil rights lawyer and a labor lawyer in the late 1970s here in South Florida. And then I was asked by the National Council of Churches and the Christian Community Service Agency to represent Haitians who were coming into the United States. 1972 was really the 50th anniversary of the first boats of Haitians coming into the country. It started in 1972, and I started representing people by 1977 or 78 and as a civil rights lawyer. And as a result, I became much more involved in immigration law. And over the next probably 15 years, I began doing cases involving Haitian refugees, major class action lawsuits. There were about ten or twelve of them. Some of those cases went to the United States Supreme Court. John v. Nelson, Haitian refugee center versus McNary. Commissioner versus Jean cases. I argued ultimately in the Supreme Court in the 1980s and 1990s, and I began writing the Immigration Law Source book, which, by the way, unfortunately, or fortunately, is now two volumes. It was one volume. But the practice of immigration law has been so dynamic and has changed so much over the years. When I started, the book was probably about 300 400 pages, and this was in large print in 1990. And then, as you may know, it's over 2800 pages today. And so the combination of doing litigation and we do everything as a practical matter in immigration, whether it's business, immigration or petitions for review in the Supreme Court or petitions for Sir Sharari in the Supreme Court or petitions for review in the courts of appeals, federal litigation, deportation know, kind of the whole, you know, it's kind of a symbiotic relationship between working on the book and doing the work, because you get a much better sense of what's going on in the field. And over the years I then wound up getting involved with the American Immigration Lawyers Association, became its president, and more recently, I've spent a good deal of time with something called Immigrants List, which is both a political action committee and a C Four organization that is the major pro immigration pack and C Four organization in the country. Because elections matter. And we certainly know that today, much more so than maybe we even knew it 20 years ago.

James Pittman: Let me just ask you a couple of questions to elicit some details on these. How would you compare today's Aila which has grown enormously in membership even in the last 20 years? How would you compare it to when you first got involved in terms of its focus, it's the scope of its activity. And looking back historically, the whole concept of lawyers aiding immigrants. I mean, I know Ayla was founded in the 1940s, but I think it's a phenomenon, really, of the 20th century of lawyers aiding immigrants. If you can shed any light on that. Historically, I think it's very interesting because today we think of it as an area of law. That is, an area that one might practice in like any other. But it wasn't always the case that attorneys took it upon themselves to aid immigrants.

Ira Kurzban: That's right. Really, when a law was started in the 1940s, a lot of it was really quite political. People were either being persecuted and of course, that reached its height in the early 1950s during the McCarthy era, where people who had been residents for many years, for example, found out that they were subject to deportation retroactively for something they had done 20 years before. So the original founders of Ayla, I think, have a very proud tradition of helping people, helping immigrants for both political reasons and other reasons. It wasn't as much a business oriented thing as it really was a civil rights organization in many respects. Not that people didn't do the normal immigration type of cases. But just to give you an idea of the dimension of this, when I started the South Florida chapter of Aila probably had about 20 people. I mean, we sat around the table literally. And there were by that point when I started, I think, maybe only one member who became the president of Ayla who was not from New York. So it was very kind of East Coast. New York, Philadelphia, washington, DC. Organization. I think Charles Forster may have been the first president of a law from Texas and from outside of the Northeast Corridor. And in Miami, we had 20 lawyers. There's probably now 2500 immigration lawyers in South Florida. When I became president in the 1980s, Ayla had about 3000 members. Today, of course, they have about 16,000 members. And that doesn't even account for the many people who aren't members of ayla right who were practicing immigration law. And of course, today it is not only a field, I think, that we can be proud of with respect to defending the rights of people who are less fortunate and unable often to defend themselves, but it's also a practice that involves many other areas of law. It intersects with business law, family law, it intersects with corporate law, and of course, civil rights and criminal law. There's a whole area, for example, today of what we call crim immigration that didn't exist until actually quite recently in terms of immigration. So it's changed it's much more dynamic. I always do this thing with new lawyers who come in. I show them the 1977 CFR, which was probably about an inch or maybe an inch half in width, maybe had a couple of hundred pages. And now, of course, it's thousands pages of regulations and policy manuals and other things. And the field's grown tremendously. I mean, we have things that range from EB five to representing people on the border on asylum. To give you just another dynamic of this, when I started, it was before the 1980 Refugee Act. People don't realize that before the 1980 act, if you came into the United States, unless you were coming from certain designated socialist countries, there was no law. The only law was what we called the United Nations Convention and Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. So if Haitians came into South Florida in the 1970s and came to a dock, the person at the dock would say, well, what do we do with these people? And they'd be told to call the State Department to determine what should happen. That, of course, was all changed after the 1980 act, which said, number one, we're not just going to accept people who are fleeing from communist countries. It is going to be non political in the sense that no matter where you're from, if you have a well founded fear of persecution, you would be eligible to seek asylum in the United States. And then, of course, we set up a procedure to seek asylum in the 1980 act, so that whole area of law didn't exist. I guess to give you just one other example, one of the cases I did actually established the right of work authorizations. There were no work authorizations in the 1970s for people seeking asylum in the United States. We sued the government and said it's unfair to have people wait for months or maybe years in the United States until their asylum claim was decided without having the ability to survive. So the first regulations were a result of litigation that we did on behalf of Asians, and it was at HCFR 108. So many of the things that we wound up doing in the ultimately became kind of normal, routine matters today was business.

James Pittman: Immigration as well, developed back in those days. I mean, the investor visas, that's a more recent creation. How about some of the business visas like the H one B, the L? Did they exist when you first got involved?

Ira Kurzban: No, I think a lot of the law was changed in a profound way. I think in 1990, we had the O visas, the P visas came into practice. That was the last positive piece of immigration legislation. You think about it, it's now 33 years down the road. We haven't had one really positive development of a comprehensive nature of immigration law since 1990. But in those days, there was an H one B. I'm not sure when the H one B's actually came into effect, but many of those visas were used in a very minor way. I mean, I don't think H two a's, h two b's, h ones were really used in a substantial way. And before 1990, remember, there were different quota systems. And before 1977, if you were from the western hemisphere, all you needed was a job letter to come into the United States. And it was only when they changed the quota systems that we began to have different categories. We used to have what was only six preferences, and there were family and employment based. But generally, I would say the way that people came in once they had the quota system was a labor certification. There wasn't EB five. The use of EB one didn't exist, and so forth.

James Pittman: I believe it grew with globalization. As the economy globally became more integrated, the need for a larger, more varied number of categories just appeared, and we were able to tackle that.

James Pittman: I mean, comprehensive immigration form is an enormous topic that we could sit here for days and talk about it. But let me just kind of encapsulate, I mean, if you could pick a couple of major reforms that you think are the most pressing that need to be done, what would your short list of maybe two or three be?

Ira Kurzban: Well, I think the major problem has been, as I said, since 1990, there hasn't been a major effort to change immigration in a positive way that reflects our society. Part of this is, quite frankly, the Republicans have said that they would not support the issuance of one more visa in the last 33 years. So the major change has to be the issuance of more visas, period. You can do it in a lot of different ways. You can stop counting derivatives. If you stop counting derivatives, we would have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of more visas. Let's take EB five, the investor provision. It says 10,000 visas a year for investors, but actually there are only about 3300 because the rest go to their family members. Those are derivatives. If we stop counting derivatives, if we count each visa as one for the whole family, we would free up hundreds of thousands of visas. So that's one way of doing it. But the bottom line is the waiting times are absurd. I mean, if you're from Mexico and you want to bring your brother into the United States you're talking about 20 plus years. So all of these people who say, I think, almost tongue in cheek, well, they should wait online like everyone else does. They shouldn't come to the border. Well, look at the waiting times. I mean, I'm looking right now at the July 2023 Visa Bulletin. Let's take any category. If you're an American citizen and you want to bring in your unmarried son or daughter the waiting time right now is eight years. The F two a category that is a lawful permanent resident who wishes to bring in their son or daughter where they'd have to wait at least a couple of years. So the categories depending on which ones are available and which ones aren't available f four, the waiting time that is, a brother bringing in his sister generally worldwide is right now 15 years. F one, generally worldwide. If you want to bring in your sonder daughter who's over 21 21 or over it's right now, under the best circumstances, it's seven years, six and a half years, seven years.

James Pittman: I think it's clear that the waiting times are absurd. And so, clearly the point that you've made is that the numbers of visas need to be enlarged. Any other major reforms that you think are just on your short list?

Ira Kurzban: Sure. A number of these, I have to tell you, are things if people go to immigrantslist.org, they'll see a number of the things that we're proposing. Another thing that we've been proposing for years is a statute of limitations. And let me tell you what I mean by that. Every area of the law has a statute of limitations with certain exceptions from murder or rape or other things. But both criminally and civilly the only area of law that has no statute of limitations for virtually everything, there's a couple of minor exceptions, but virtually everything is immigration. So if I made a misrepresentation on an application coming into the United States 30 years ago, I'm permanently barred right now. If I had a criminal conviction and we have many of these people here in South Florida, it was estimated that there may be over 100,000 people here from Cuba since the 1960s who have a conviction that would bar them from getting residency. So a statute of limitations becomes extraordinarily important not only for people who commit crimes that occurred many, many years ago. They've reformed. They've had their own businesses. They employ American citizens, and they can't get anything but also for things that are non criminal like making a misrepresentation 20 years ago upon entry. So we think a statute of limitation is very important. Another issue that we've talked about is in the 1996 act they did a number of things, which, by the way, was what ultimately started us in working on immigrants list. One of them we're talking about Iro. Yeah. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 has many horrible provisions. One of them is mandatory detention. We have no mandatory detention in the United States except in immigration. This has blossomed into a kind of immigration industrial complex where we now detain more immigrants than we detain anyone else in any single area. I mean, Ice and DHS are the largest now jailers in America. And why many of these people have no active criminal record at the present time. They may have had a crime a number of years ago, they're now picked up, and they're subject to mandatory detention even if they pose no threat to society or are not likely to obscure. There's no criteria, in other words, which would satisfy their being released. This is a major problem, but became even a greater major problem with the current Supreme Court and some of the lower courts, particularly people appointed by Trump, who seem to be willing to have long term detention of people without being released at all. So mandatory detention is a serious problem. It also has serious financial consequences. We spend over a billion dollars a year detaining people. Many people have died in detention. I don't think most people realize that.

James Pittman: And some of their auctions are outsourced to private actors. There are privatized prisons involved in that. Correction corporations of America and others.

Ira Kurzban: I believe that's correct. I mean, this all started in the 1980s during the Reagan administration. The Corrections Corporation of America became a major source of detention for immigrants. So did Core Civic, which is now Core Civic, actually. And so did Geo. So those are the two. It's a billion dollar industry now, and there's really no reason for it because there are alternatives to detention. Virtually everyone who's detained can be released. When I started practicing, there were very few people who were detained. And when they detained Haitians, we went to the United States Supreme Court and got their release in a case called Jean v. Nelson. So detention is a new phenomenon. It really sprang from the 1996 act.

Ira Kurzban: Another area I think that's very troubling is the three and ten year bar. And I don't think people really appreciate how this dramatically changed immigration law. The theory was if you overstayed a certain period of time, we're trying to discourage you. To overstay or to enter illegally. So if you did, you would have to go home for a certain period of time, and it said you would have to go home for three years, or if you stayed for a year, you would have to go home for ten years. And then they added a kicker provision, which I think was really aimed at people from Mexico. I really looked at it as kind of a racist, anti immigrant, anti Mexican provision that said if you entered and then you left and reentered, you're permanently barred for ten years. There's no waiver, so you have to go home for ten years. In theory, well, maybe it was a good idea to discourage people from coming in. In practice, what it has meant is nobody leaves. So it's ironic when the republicans talk about we have all these undocumented people in the United States, they're here because they can't leave. Before 1996, the penalty was if you entered illegally, but you had a way in which to become a lawful permanent resident. You were married to a us. Citizen or you were married to a resident, the penalty was you would have to leave the United States, get your immigrant visa abroad, and then return to the United States. So before 1996, just to give you an example, somebody had a US. Senator, a federal judge, had somebody in their home who was elderly, an elderly parent, and they had somebody taking care of them. They needed to try and legalize them. They wanted to do the right thing. How do I make this person legal? And what we would do is we would do all the paperwork, and at the end of that process, they would go home for a week or two, get their green card, and come back. And so many, many people on the labor certification side, because there were no u. S. Workers able, qualified for many of these positions then and now, and they would simply go home. The last step of that process would require them to go home. Now, of course, they can do all the steps of the process, but in that last step, if they go home, they can't come back for ten years, so no one leaves. And so this was theoretically a good idea, but it's actually done exactly the opposite of what was intended, which is it's forced people to stay in the United States, forced them not to be able to have a lawful way of becoming a resident, where before 1996, it was very easy to do. So one of the things they need to do is to get rid of the three and ten year bar and what we call the permanent bar. And then I think one other issue that's very troubling is the lack of waivers. In 1996, the IRA law was really passed in secret. It was written by members of fair, which was an anti immigrant organization. It was all written in secret. It was given to most members of congress literally 48 hours before they were to vote on it. Most people had no idea what they were voting on. And one of the things they did in this law is to take away the ability to get waivers. They would change a word in one of the waiver provisions. For example, take out hardship to children. Well, most hardship is to children, right. Huge change.

James Pittman: It's one word, but it works. A huge change.

Ira Kurzban: Right. So what they did is very slyly. I think and dishonestly made certain small changes. And then there were other provisions for which there's no waiver. For example, a false claim to US. Citizenship, which can arise very simply when you go into the Driver's License Bureau and you ask for a driver's license and the person behind the desk checks off that you're a US. Citizen and you don't pay attention and you sign it, you've now gotten a benefit for making a false claim to US. Citizenship. That person is permanently barred forever. There's no waiver. There's nothing. So one of the things that we have proposed is a general waiver and a more liberal process of getting waivers for people on the three and ten year bar, all these permanent bars changing it. So you have a general waiver based on family unity and some other generalized criteria.

James Pittman: Let me get a little bit theoretical. I just want to get this question in. What about making the immigration courts, article One courts taking them out at the Department of justice? Right now, practically speaking, that's probably a pipe dream. Do you think there's any possibility that that could ever happen, and do you think it's desirable?

Ira Kurzban: I think it should happen. Many organizations have been pushing for an Article One court for many years. It makes sense to have them do it. I think the hold up is what would be the appellate process, in part. In other words, if you have an administrative law judge making the decision, where do you go on appeal? Will there be order of immigration appeals? Will there be some other appellate process, and will there be a petition for review? Which really gets me to my last point about the changes in the 1996 act. In the 1996 Act Fair and the people who really are anti immigrant took away most of the rights to petition for review. 17 different preclusion statutes that is, precluding people from going to federal court were passed. The current Supreme Court in Patel, which is a case that we did, unfortunately, in the Supreme Court and some other cases have now made it virtually impossible to do anything. In other words, if you're denied an adjustment of status because the officer has decided some fact totally incorrectly, totally incorrectly, there's no judicial review of that. There's no judicial review of discretionary decisions under 242 a two bi. There's no judicial review under certain circumstances. If you have criminal convictions, there's no judicial review of expedited removal at the border. In other words, what they've done is taken away what all of us as Americans regard as kind of a fundamental right. That is, if an agent of the government is acting improperly or just wrong, it's made an error. You should have the right to challenge that. Immigrants do not. They have virtually taken away most avenues of challenging erroneous decisions, whether they're legally erroneous, factually erroneous, done in bad faith, done for reasons of racism or otherwise that those, for example, expedited removal. You can only challenge those at the border for very limited reasons. And they're not reasons that have anything to do ultimately with the decision. That is, if you were really a citizen or a resident, you can challenge it. But if they made a totally erroneous decision as to your reason for coming in, and they claimed you committed fraud when you clearly did not, there's no basis to challenge that any long. So the 1996 act had profound consequences with respect to our ability to challenge erroneous decisions, and the current US. Supreme Court has made it much worse.

James Pittman: So do you think that action in the Mean has really been hamstrung now by the judicial appointments of the last administration? That's one question and tied to that. How would you grade the Biden administration on undoing some of the abuses that took place during the Trump administration?

Ira Kurzban: Okay, with respect to, I think, the first issue concerning appointments to the know, I've told all the people in my office that from my book, I literally read every published decision that's made, whether it's in the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court, or the District Court. And I can tell you within the first three paragraphs, I can tell you if the judge was appointed by Trump or Mean. Now, I know who these judges are. But there are judges like Judge Van Dyke in the 9th Circuit, or Judge Quadobaum in the Fourth Circuit or Judge Menace in the Second Circuit. These are people, in my view, who clearly have a very strong anti immigrant bias. I mean, almost at the same level about abortion and so forth, the manner in which and they're very intelligent people. They're not to be considered just political hacks, but it's clear when you read these decisions that they are very anti immigrant.

James Pittman: Now, a lot of them come out of the Federalist Society. Do we know whether Federalist Society do they have a unified position on immigration? Do you happen to know?

Ira Kurzban: Well, that's interesting. I think immigration like abortion and maybe one or two other issues like the EPA and doing away with judicial deference. I think these are the highlights of the Federal Society, and these are all federalist judges. I think there clearly is a bias with respect to immigration matters. I have yet to read opinions where they really strongly supported immigrants rights. I mean, I think most of it is interpretations that challenge immigrants rights in many, many different contexts, whether it's asylum, whether it's people who have criminal records, and they're seeking review of these determinations. There are very few opinions among federalist judges appointed by Trump who support immigrants in any of their decisions. I think it would be an interesting, I think, endeavor for some political scientist or social scientist to take a look at the immigration decisions of federalist judges and see where they wind up.

James Pittman: So it looks like progress on expanding immigrants rights through the courts is going to be arduous and probably not altogether productive, given the number of appointments Trump made to the federal bench. I mean, immigrants list, your organization is involved in electoral politics. That's a whole separate can of worms.

James Pittman: But before we get to you, how would you grade the Biden administration?

Ira Kurzban: I think the Biden administration generally, I think actually Joe Biden's done a terrific job in many areas of the law. I don't think one of them is immigration. I think they could have done a lot more. I think the situation with Backlogs is out of control. I think there were things they could have done not only to do away with all the things that Trump did, but do a number of positive things. And let me give you just one example that I was complaining about yesterday. It's clear that the rank and file in immigration is still a leftover from the Trump years. Their main focus is fraud. They look for fraud anywhere they can find it. They don't have a really that is, the Biden administration does not have a good grasp over the rank and file of immigration officers and what they're doing. And I think that's a tremendous problem within the agency, because the things that they're doing, I think, are not oriented toward approvals. They oriented toward how can we find anything that would be a basis to deny a case? And that is often reflected in these very long RFEs or Notices of Intent to deny. Now, one of the things I proposed, for example, to the we've made a number of administrative changes. One of the things we proposed was simply giving people more time to respond. The agency now will spend months and months and months not do anything, not make a decision, and then hit you with a 20 page single space notice of Intent to Deny, for which you only have 30 days to respond. And often it's 20 days to respond until you actually get the document. So we propose, well, why not give the applicant 90 days to respond, which is what we did during COVID They've refused to do that. I mean, simple administrative things that would at least make the situation a little bit more balanced. And that's not even the big issues. I mean, there are many things they could have done with adjustment of status. They have done some good things, and I don't want to take that away, but there are many, many more things that they could have and should have done. For example, there's no reason why we can't interpret the adjustment of status provisions to allow many, many more people to adjust their status in the US. And avoid the three and ten year bar. They can do it. The attorney general can do many, many things with respect to reversing the horrible decisions of the Trump era and their attorney generals. But there's some positive things. One example, our definitions over the years of particular social. Group in asylum and our definitions over what constitutes a conviction over the years is really out of line with reality. For example, if your conviction is vacated, you may still be considered to have a conviction under immigration law. If it's expunged, you may still be considered to be a conviction under immigration law. That should all be changed. And that's something we've been asking the administration to do for years and they have declined to do anything about behind.

James Pittman: This investigation of Director Mayorkas. I mean is this pure mean? It doesn't seem like it's really going anywhere, this attempt to impeach Majorcas. But what do you think about that? I'm just curious.

Ira Kurzban: I think it's crazy time in the House of Representatives. Quite think. You know, yesterday they were attacking the FBI, they were attacking the Director, who's a conservative Republican, by the way, and he kept saying during the course of know, I just think they don't want to really address any serious issue. They're driven by the most extreme elements. So I think the majorca discussions of impeachment of Majorcas and others is just part of that same kind of crazy time in the House of Representatives by the Republican majority. I think Majorcas under the circumstances has done a very good job. The numbers of people coming across the border have been dramatically reduced. But one of the problems here is that while they're doing things, they're then getting sued by the red states in Louisiana, where there's only one judge appointed by Trump, or they're getting sued in Texas, where there are many judges appointed by Trump, and they're trying to hold up things like know, in other words, in order to get people off the border. My York has said let's have a parole program where people can be paroled in if they stay in their countries and they do the right thing and don't just show up at the border. Well, that was immediately subject to suit and it looks like there's going to be an injunction on that program saying that Majorcas doesn't have the authority to parole people in in that way. And this is just typical of what has gone on in the last two years, which is every time the administration tries to do something that's positive, they immediately get sued. And then the crazy time in the Republican House is to say you're not doing anything. I mean, I assume they think that Americans are just stupid or not paying attention to what's going on. But when you try to do something positive and then you're sued by the very people who are then claiming you're doing nothing to prevent you from doing something, I mean, eventually, hopefully, Americans will catch on, right?

James Pittman: It's an absurd sort of game that they're playing.

James Pittman: Looking at the electoral politics, as we said, your organization that you founded, Immigrants List is involved in supporting candidates for elected office to advocate for immigration reform and positive immigration policies. Looking ahead at the 2024 presidential election. I mean, what do you see on the Republican side? First of all, do you think a second Trump term is possible? Do you think it's likely? Do you have any thoughts on whether any of the other Republican contenders that are currently in the race, whether it's DeSantis or Chris Christie or Mike Pence, are they better, worse, the same? Any thoughts on that?

Ira Kurzban: Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on them. I think, first of all, a lot of this depends on the Democrats and their ability to organize on a very grassroots level. I believe if they do and they're successful on it, we're going to have a blue wave in this country for the 2024 election. Because many of the things, whether it's abortion, whether it's guns, whether it's even immigration, I think that most Americans are not anywhere near where the crazy Republicans are on these issues. I think most Americans don't believe that we shouldn't ban assault weapons and high magazine weapons. I mean, look how many people have been killed just this year alone. Kids have to learn drills to hide in schools. I think Americans are fed up with all that, and the Republicans are still taking the same position of our thoughts and prayers go out to you after people are slaughtered or refuse to do anything about it. So I think on that issue, I think on the abortion issue, they're way out of step with the American people. But it really depends on how organized the Democrats are as to whether or not they can get out to vote and do it. But if they do, and you've heard it from me here first, I'm predicting I really believe there's going to be a blue wave. Same thing with lgbtqt issues. I think they're way out of line on a number of those issues. Same thing with the economic issues in America. I think Americans are fed up with trickled down economics because they've seen what it's resulted in in the last 30 years, which are billionaires becoming uber billionaires, the country's falling apart, and Biden, to his credit, is really focused on that. But they don't get the message out. So they got to get their message out. And if they do, I think that's going to be the consequence. I don't think Trump is likely to win any election. But I have to tell you, I am deathly afraid of Ron DeSantis. I don't think people know exactly who and what he's done. So my hope is actually that Trump gets the nomination and not DeSantis. DeSantis has banned books in Florida. He has his own private army now in Florida. He's obviously done some horrible things on immigration. He's passed a six week abortion ban in Florida. He's obviously stigmatized LBGQT people. I mean, I can go on and on and on, but I think he is the scariest politician in my lifetime.

James Pittman: It's clearly a very hard right agenda and one which one can say lacking in humanity, let's put it that way.

Ira Kurzban: Most vulnerable people. I mean, I think that what really characterizes him. He's sought after and went after the most vulnerable people in our society, including, for example, not giving Medicaid to people in Florida. Florida has hundreds of thousands of people who would be eligible for Medicaid, and he's refused to do anything. And as a governor, we have one of the worst health care systems. We have an educational system that doesn't have 100,000 teachers. I mean, I can go on and on, but it's really florida has become the haven for the ultra conservative, rich Republicans. But for the rest of us in Florida, it's not really a pleasant place to live.

James Pittman: Right? That's right. That is your state. That's right. Yeah. And it's a lot worse than the sort of right wing Orange County Republicans under Reagan. It's gotten a lot nastier, I think. Less country club and more militia.

James Pittman: One of the things we try to do on this podcast is to sort of push the boundaries of the discussion a little bit. I'm going to ask you a little bit of a theoretical question just to expand everyone's mind. Every immigration system reflects certain policy choices of the country that is promulgating that policy. If you could design an immigration system, what do you think the policy imperatives are in an immigration system that the United States should have? I mean, how would, you know, family unification versus attracting, meritorious people, capable people versus humanitarian concerns. How are we deformed, and how should we be reformed in the abstract, in terms of weighting these policy factors?

Ira Kurzban: Well, I think one thing we're clearly deformed is our need for labor in the United States. I mean, it's absolutely clear that without having immigrants in the United States, we would lack innovation that's at all levels. I mean, right now we have about a 10.5 million shortage of workers in the United States. 30% of our healthcare workers are immigrants. We don't have enough healthcare workers in the United States. We don't have enough service workers in the United States. Farm workers, for example, as a result of what's happened in Florida, are literally fleeing the state. So we're not going to have people to pick the crops. So at all levels, it's all about jobs. It's about getting people to come into the United States. But that innovation. Not just workers at the lowest levels and workers at the highest levels. The idea that we only can get people who have PhDs and those are the people we should be attracting. We should be attracting those people. I think we don't do enough to do that. We don't do enough to make it easy for Stem workers to become residents. But I want to remind people, and I always say this, I say Google, and they say, well, what are you talking? I say, well, you know, Sergey Brin didn't come into the United States. The inventor of Google, he didn't come into the United States with a PhD. He came in as part of a refugee family. And I think one of the things we need to remember in all of this is if you go and look at all of those people who came into the United States as part of refugee families or just regular immigrants into the United States, they didn't come in as people in the EB one, EB.

James Pittman: Two national interest waiver.

Ira Kurzban: Right? That's right. And so this idea that somehow we just need to have a system of employment based and not considered family is just wrong. And I think the problem also is that we really don't appreciate the numbers. That is, we are a huge country. Our birth rate is declining. We need people in the United States. This isn't know be humanitarian and be nice about it. From an economic point of view, this country will decline sharply without the influx of immigrants. It's always been like that. It certainly was like that at the turn of the century. I always point out that when immigrants came in in the beginning of the 19th century, their children wound up going to the City College of New York when they came. York, the City College of New York has more people who won Nobel Prizes than Harvard and Yale and all the other schools. And so it says something about what America is about. And we often lose that because we don't understand that people who come in as immigrants value this country. They want their children educated, and that's why they're coming here. They want their families to have a better life. And those people are the ones that are the spurring, really, forefront of economic development in the United States. So one of the things we need to do is dramatically increase the numbers of visas of people who can come into the country. Trump was great at scaring people when 7000 people came to the border in Texas. And the reality is, if you put those 7000 people in a football stadium, the stadium would be empty. But somehow people have this idea of thousands of people coming to the border would make a difference. We have the capacity to handle millions more people coming into the United States. Doesn't mean you have to have open borders. But people shouldn't be waiting 20 years or ten years or eight years to bring their children into the United States. It only encourages illegality. It doesn't remedy the problems that we have in the country. So from beginning to end, we need more family visas, we need more employment visas, and we need to have a policy that welcomes people and our asylum policy. One of the darkest days in American history was the decision to not allow people during the Nazi era to come into the United States. We choked off the visas. We prevented the State Department, which was then largely anti Semitic, prevented Jews who were trying to flee Nazi Germany from coming into the country. We have a sad history in that regard, and what we need to do is to open our arms to people who are really fleeing persecution. The difficulty is how you determine who is and who isn't. But if you open up other pathways, as I think this administration has tried to do, we can separate those people who will really seek asylum and have bona fide asylum claims from others who want to come in, but we shouldn't play one off against the other. I think that's my vision of what we should be doing.

James Pittman: That's wonderful. That is very enlightening.

James Pittman: Let me ask you this question. If you could create a roadmap for what an aspiring immigration attorney should do in order to become an excellent practitioner, what would that be? What do you think? Someone wants to get into this field and really excel at it. What should they be doing?

Ira Kurzban: First of all, I think the best immigration lawyers I've known are people who often did other things. That is, they were litigators or they were tax lawyers or they had some other kinds of background. So I think you shouldn't think that in order to be in an immigration lawyer that you had to be doing it from day one. As I said, I was not an immigration lawyer when I started practicing law. But secondly, we immigration lawyers often rely too much on oral representations of other lawyers. Instead of going back and doing the difficult work of reading the statutes, reading the regulations, reading the policy manuals, et cetera, people need to do more of that. They need to be better lawyers at what they do to represent their clients. And so my advice is, if you are going to be an immigration lawyer and you're just starting out in the field, get the materials that you need in order to become a competent immigration lawyer.

James Pittman: What do you think of the technological changes that have sort of really changed the way that law is practiced? Does it astound you do you find it easy to keep abreast of the technology? Are you interested in it? Are you impressed by it?

Ira Kurzban: As someone who started before there were computers being used by lawyers, we used to have an electric typewriter when we did our briefs to the courts of appeals and the Supreme Court. So it's kind of mean, I think, now with these OpenAI systems, I think it's going to present many problems, as some lawyers have now found out, by relying on it without even checking what they were doing, but also many opportunities. And I think people are going to have to master it in the future. I'm probably too late to do it, but there are certainly people in my office who are doing it and trying to master it. And I think it's going to be an essential part of any practice, whether it's immigration or otherwise.

James Pittman: Well, Professor Kurzman, it's been a fascinating discussion. We've covered a lot of areas and I want to thank you for joining us. How often do updates to the source book come out? Is it annually or every two years?

Ira Kurzban: The source book comes out every two years. It'll be out again in June of 2024, summer of 2024. And it's a difficult process to keep up with everything because there's so much going on.

James Pittman: Do you have a team that helps you just on that?

Ira Kurzban: Well, actually I do everything. I mean, in other words, I read everything, put it in the first draft of the book, and then we have a team of experts in each of the fields to review those sections to make sure I haven't meet some huge error. But I read everything, so I've got a pretty good idea of the field.

James Pittman: Well, it's really a unique legacy that you have there with that book. There's nothing else really like it. And I try to even think in other areas of the law whether there's anything like that. I mean, there may be some other parallels, but it's a unique legacy.

James Pittman: Do you still have a full caseload at this point?

Ira Kurzban: I'm still practicing law. I'm fortunate enough to take the cases that I want to take. But yes, I mean I'm still practicing law full time and I'm still working on the book, still teaching and spending a lot of time doing immigrants list. Because our goal is to elect pro immigration people to Congress. We've been pretty successful. Over 75% of the people we've supported have been elected. We just got last year, by the way, a member of ayla we helped her get elected in the Western district of Michigan. I think it's elections matter. I think if the one thing we've learned in the last ten years is that elections really matter and I think people need to start paying much more attention to it, including immigration lawyers.

James Pittman: So besides donating to candidates, are there other activities that you think both immigration lawyers and just interested citizens should or other people should get involved in to aid in having reform on these issues? Besides just donating, what should people do?

Ira Kurzban: Absolutely, I mean, I don't think it's just a matter of donating. I think it's a matter of getting organized, doing stuff on grassroots level, talking to people in the community during election cycles, going out and doing door to door work is probably the most important thing that anybody can do. Trying to educate members of Congress, writing to them, calling them, making them aware of a number of these know a lot of members of Congress. All they've ever heard about is either comprehensive immigration reform or we're flooded at the border. They don't know very much about the details of some of the issues we've talked about today. Like the three and ten year bar, like a statute of limitations like the lack of judicial review. They need to be educated on these. And I can tell you, when it came to not counting derivatives, I've spent the last couple of years talking about that. And it's finally appearing in more and more legislation now because people are realizing that we really aren't giving as many visas as we think we are. And this is a way of creating more people, more visas, more people to be able to come into the US.

James Pittman: That's very interesting. As we said, that's something which it seems like something that people wouldn't think is that the repercussions are so large, yet they are. So it's getting in and doing this grassroots work, doing this steady, nuts and bolts grassroots work in order to push forward some of these reforms, which at first glance you might not think are so important, but actually do have a large impact on how the law gets administered and the benefits that people receive. So go to Immigrants list and find out about it. Also, the American Immigration Lawyers Association has its own lobbying department and certainly they have a wealth of resources. But I want to again thank Professor IRA Kurzban, my guest today, legendary immigration attorney IRA Man, for joining me. And it's been a fascinating discussion. Join us again for our next episode of Immigration Uncovered.

Ira Kurzban: Bye.

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