says the returning to this issue just this morning president obama told a meeting of business leaders quote there's no reason why we can't get this done before the end of the year and quote find out if he's being overly optimistic a little too much hope or maybe we can really get something meaningful done before the end of the year there's also a lot going on in this issue right here in our own county santa clara county and we're going to talk about those issues as well because they affect us even closer to home and we have a wonderful panel here tonight to take us through all the variations of this rather complex issue starting at the far end of the table i'm pleased to introduce and welcome to the program teresa custody on those two races the coordinator of the immigrant relations and integration services a service of santa clara county very so welcome the other voices thank you thank you for being here next round the table is men chel new un staff attorney for late asian law alliance communities religious and cultural gap and yes part of that is and we are not funded by the foundations is because we do a lot and they tell a fad that if you focus on a narrow issue you would exactly so and you're an immigrant yourself or i've been immigrant myself yes and proud to be all things that i am a pakistani by you know birth almost slim by choice and religion and american by choice and i'm proud of all these things so for me if there is anything that's concerning any of these things and all the human beings i'm there all right  the do so is lions is a nonprofit based in santa clara county we do a lot of work and housing a mystic violence public benefits and i primarily focus on immigration and so that's why we're concerned because a lot of the issues especially with immigration reform will affect our client are you an attorney yourself i am yes i do help people with their immigration yeah a lot a lot of our work is focused on citizenship and we also do a lot of which are the students who came here and through no fault of their own before they were sixteen and they've they've known no no other country rather than the united states you know we're going to get into all that in with people who are being threatened with deportation unfortunately we don't so we were usually refers those people out because we don't actually have the capacity to go to court for them  time very expensive and a lot of the time attorneys take advantage of you know these dreamers or people like doing the you know special legislation when people had to find attorneys there were so many attorneys that were really groups services is a tell me agency is at the county program yeah and where the only one that exists in the nation at the county level is that right now other county has a program that is like this i'm afraid of new york has a program the thirty of new york the state of illinois in the state of washington but we're the only county that invests in immigrant intercalation nationwide so we're a nationwide model well that's great the name kind of implies what you do tell us a little bit more about you know the actual sorts of things you might do the key thing that we is that we find agencies to provide immigration legal services and to provide citizenship services and so as part of that we can be in the agencies to do a citizenship bay in fourteen languages we are the only county that's able to convene in fourteen languages most counties can do two three four five but we get up to fourteen we also do a lot of policy we do research we do community farms on different issues happening in the immigrant community and we do a lot of community education what are the issues what's happening with county over two hundred spots in the state of california and i'm writing that number down there that it's just stunning yeah and in santa clara county over fifty percent of the population speaks another language other than english at home so we have wealth and diversity of the world in silicon valley and it's one of the things i really like about living here but you know some numbers like that really the reality is just tell the verses yeah how do you find people do the outreach and they know these services are available well what's unique about our work is that normally when when government does a project in an american community they keep kind of starting from scratch over and over again and because we exist and we've exhausted for seventeen years that's seventeen years of building a relationship so for example in the pakistani community we want only have one leader that we work with we'll have a group of leaders that we work with and we're always building those relationships and so that that feeling of trust exists between the immigrant community and santa clara county which normally doesn't exist in other places and so it's just that idea of a continuous relationship versus starting stopping starting stopping starting stopping and you get to see how how communities change because they're not always the same what a committee looks like when it first immigrate is very different than what it looks like ten years later is very different than what it looks like twenty years and it is the younger generations coming out ours and kind of the myth around immigration is that it's like a peter myth they never grow up not true communities learn english communities establish themselves communities buy homes communities become americans and the countries they're coming from are undergoing changes yet all the time and that drives that you know specially the undocumented on a burden they're not they actually contribute sadly they cannot use those benefits that they should be there's you know before we get into what's happening in washington and then coming back to the county it's you know i remember in school when i was growing up to the point that you're saying the melting pot of america was one of the points of pride that that we were taught about and that it was one of the strengths of work and then you get to the debate in washington and you hear all this vitriol and just hate speech directed toward immigrants  and not even just immigrants but non whites basically it's racism what happens between grades when people get out into the world very you know this is probably a question you can answer but it just makes me it could that's that's what we're dealing with right now is as i think i think it's key were fighting over what is an american and so is an american the values that we've had for the last five hundred years which is hard work iain family focused innovative leader willing to contribute or is that race and language and religion and religion yeah and that's kind of what we're fighting over right now because i think there is that when you look at the population it's the same population that has decided oh i can try something new somewhere else and so that means they're willing to try things that means they're innovative that means they're strong that means they're smart otherwise they home but we're not recognizing that it's the same population but what about the economy because you know you hear oh they the immigrants are taking our  he tried to be a migrant farm worker and he lasted less than an hour i think and they they had this massive call please americans take our jobs and i think two people came out out of the  population for the type of work that they're doing and so it's the push pull effect we also have passed many laws that we've that we've taken to other countries about in our relationships and we've also forced that migration i mean we had migration from that it means we had migration from the central americans based on our policies that we had so it's this it's the people who are impacted by the global phenomenon and also by our policies that we decide when we decide to pass nafta and we displace all the farmers because we ourselves we are sending our corn well those people go to the city and there's no jobs in the city so with them where do they come next so i mean in my work i'm like ok wherever we passed the next nafta next free trade agreement that's where our next immigrant population is going to come because we know we're displacing people and we know we're forcing them to come and that's apparently going to be in asia with the trans pacific they are the leaders in innovation they are the leaders in just you know creating new companies and all that america has not really invested that we are benefiting from their knowledge from their talents they started in their countries back home and brought all that you know we're getting the cream of the crop for pennies yes we'll think about it the founder of yahoo a well you know from population exactly the knowledge and wealth of the world is here and we are the economic nation of the country because of the world knowledge and diversity that we have here and different from other communities because we're comparable to new york san francisco l a chicago in those communities the immigrant populations are segregated on top of being segregated by class in here all the poor people live in the same place all the middle class people live in the same place and all the rich people live in the same place so you're able to organize in conveying people in a way that you don't have to deal with the barriers of them ethnicity in language and that's really fascinating here because you can go to any part of town in in in silicon valley and you can have a choice of six different restaurants to eat from because they're all next to each other and that's a really interesting one and other myths i want to break is that you know a lot of the time i keep hearing that even very valid meaning people saying that immigrants have this very low level jobs that is such a myth immigrants are in every area you could imagine that not just your nannies that gardeners and you know restaurant workers they're everywhere they're your teachers they're your sister they're doctors they're your exactly all right well let's talk about what's happening or not happening or might happen or could happen as i read the quote from this morning president obama is determined to  it done shortly after the infamous government shutdown even a number of republicans in washington started saying we can get immigration reform done i think they need to burnish their reputation a little bit after  the government shutdown so who wants to handicap this for us are we going to see any kind of meaningful in an immigration reform by the end of the year as the president says he's hopeful can happen so i think we're cautiously optimistic because there would be no way that we would do this kind of work if we weren't optimistic that something could happen and i know that you know i think yeah so as you may or may not know injury at the end of june the senate passed a bill actually to overhaul the whole immigration system and it provides a pathway to citizenship for actually undocumented immigrants it you know also strengthen the border it provides for mandatory even five which is an electronic verification system for employers that they have to utilize it changes the family immigration system or some you know let's talk about a little bit later it changes the employment based system it integrates agricultural workers into society allows the dreamers that we spoke about before i mean for pathway to citizenship as a while so there are a lot of different changes in this bill and it's already passed the senate but was the vote in the senate i was actually sixty eight or thirty two so it's gripe about it but how would you rate this bill is i mean is it something that you can really enthusiastically support or is the best you can get or are you going to be fighting to make it better what congress has how it is right now it's you have to work with people who hate immigrants and want to deport everybody and then you have to work with people who only want citizenship for everybody so it's kind of a balancing act and you've heard nothing it's going to be perfect there's going to be stuff that we don't agree with that it's going to make it very difficult for people but something is better than nothing at this time if you go all or nothing sometimes you get nothing i would also add that this is the furthest we've gotten in twenty seven years that's a good the last time we do this is in one thousand nine hundred seven and there hasn't even been a little teeny tiny crack in the window so i think this is an opportunity number one number two communities will always organize for more they're not going to stay satisfied with this they're gonna keep asking for more because that's what we do with human beings we always want to improve the quality of life that we have in so i think getting something passed and of course the communities are still fighting for more  they haven't just rolled up their sleeves and say give me whatever you want they're still organizing they're still making demands are still writing letters i think the commute will always fight to improve their quality of life that's why they're here for the day that assuming something passes the day that's really similar to the senate fellas a while and so there are one hundred eighty nine co sponsors on it three of them are republican so we actually have three republican co sponsors the border security so the border security amendments in in the senate bill are really restrictive and they they actually call for a lot more funding so the funding numbers like forty six billion dollars to secur border so they want twenty thousand more border patrol officers along the border which means one agent for every thousand feet and they want a seven hundred miles of fencing that includes double fencing so that's three hundred fifty more miles than we currently have and they want to raise the budget they want to increase the technology regardless of actual need so surveillance unmanned aircraft drones yes thermal imaging they want to we're talking about border security one of the phrases that you keep hearing in and be honest i don't know where it has ended up in the legislation is secure the borders first and then everything else will click and then and there is this debate about well how do you determine if the border has been made secure and it sounds like a way that they can put all this military hardware basically on the border and not do anything else for years is that still part of the the mix here or so what yeah what's in the senate bill is one hundred percent surveillance of the border and ninety percent effectiveness at not letting people in so because as long as rules like nafta and all the other things that they're been human beings cannot support their families they cannot provide food for them the hard going to find ways to cut get into america people have all these barriers that's right and to make their lives better and so that has to be part of the conversation to absolutely i you know it may almost come out across as a cliche anymore but the reality of the military industrial complex in this country drives a lot of this insane spending i don't think anybody actually cares whether spending forty six billion dollars actually secures the border not there  appropriating that money for campaign donors who run who manufacture drones and heat and the imagery devices and stuff like that that's always part of what turns through washington well and we also have to say we have a choice you know as well as citizens as taxpayers as people who live here we can say no we'd rather spend it on education right or we'd rather spend it on health or we'd rather spend it on the aging population a lot of times we  i think we get to the point where we think that things just happen you know things don't just happen we let them happen and so we also have to stand up to say no this is not work for these reasons and i think going back to the issue of immigration reform is it is so broken that u s citizen children are being forced to choose do i go up with my parents or do i go do i have to leave my country of origin because as a u s citizen child i no longer have this right to have both things with me and so it is that broken and so we need to look at the issue we are forcing we are creating a generation of youth that will be second class citizens because they will be going to have lost their parents and have had to raise themselves or they will have to leave to another country that they don't even know that they don't even understand that up here were in school were doing well in school and the parents were getting deported and the kids were being sent to a country they knew nothing about had never been there nothing and when we went with them to ice office said well they're citizens they could stay here and we looked at them ok just really can't is i think at the time they get this was five years old and the oldest was fourteen how are they going to manage you know so they deported the kids were crying it was h path to citizenship so it's a thirteen year path to citizenship actually so in order to become what's called an r p i a registered provisional immigrant you need to have come to the united states before december thirty first twenty eleven you need to have paid your taxes not committed significant crimes like felonies or aggravated probably needs are not three or more deal wise and you know not it not committed you know just just other crimes that make you eligible otherwise and you also have to pay what's a thousand dollar fine so that fine can be split up i mean into the blake five hundred dollars segment so you can pay a portion now and then a portion with not a gap of more than sixty days or you have to mistakenly yet if in the second to me are you have to prove that you had it you made like an average of one hundred percent of the federal poverty level so for a family of one i think one hundred percent of the federal poverty level is eleven thousand roughly five hundred dollars you know you can also be a full time student so there are exemptions if you're a student if you are on maternity leave or medical leave or if you have  physical or mental this abilities and there's waivers for children under twenty one as well so after that after you and you already paid your thousand dollars you know in order to get your green card you've had your your r p i status for ten years and so you pay in order to get you're going higher that's another thousand dollars fine so you have to pay another thousand dollars and then you also have to fear that you know you've actually at one hundred yeah there is an extreme hardship waiver and the whole document whether you're related to a u s citizen child or other things so it is there are discretionary waivers as well and and then after three years with your green card you can become a and they'll be a civics and history current no matter what so that's also driven and i think one of the big shifts that samina can also comment on is we're going from family based immigration to merit based immigration right and so that means right now the focus of immigration is that if you have family in the united states you can immigrate family members merit based would say we take into account your education and we take into account your relationships we take into account your contributions you have to take in a bunch of criterion to account before we decide whether you can come or not so for families let's say you know i'm a u s citizen and if i wanted to petition for my siblings my parents parents who could still do good in the new world under the new lot but for siblings and for your children who are married or  over thirty one i no longer will be able to petition them so imagine when you come to a new country you want to have some people in your lives that you can always count on because each individual needs people around them to support and you know to just be their base and if you if you separate that you are breaking normal you know ties to the families and all that and i don't think it's you mean for us to do that basically again we will only allow you if we need you basically that's what you're telling yeah and i think added to that is is this idea that workers don't need their families people are going to immigrate in successfully when they have family support or if we think we can just take workers without everything that comes with them we're creating a false dichotomy that doesn't exist i don't know that i would guess that those people who come here looking for work are community or you what do they think of this extremely long arduous very difficult to meet path to citizenship i think i mean we knew it was going to be difficult and this it's remains to be seen exactly are has has said publicly that he wouldn't allow the senate bill for a vote and that's pretty similar so republicans are actually working on what's called a kids act which is which it works that it's for dreamers but it's hit a little snag because once the dreamers become citizens they're not sure if they want to allow citizens to petition for their parents or their family members as well because the whole premise of being a dreamer is you came in through no fault of your own if you're you know that's how you got a lot of them on board so now if they're rewarding their parents after they become citizens then there's a little bit of discussion in the house whether that's feasible or whether it will pass if because that's particularly in my community people are saying why are you working for these people who are undocumented and you're supporting them they didn't come legally and they are going to get citizenship before  all these things relate you know divisions within the communities and all that the culture has to address that concern by you know eliminating the backlog within seven years and also doesn't allow anybody to get their green cards  not like five years ten years it's fifteen to twenty five years before you can immigrate parents or siblings and i depends what country you're coming from i remember i petition for my mom when she was here so once you send in their placation you cannot go back that was rule at that time i don't know what is it now but my dad god and so my mom had to go back so they did not allow the special you know so that was the end of the that was the end of that and sadly  my mom passed away in two thousand and five and last year i do see a letter from ice saying that your number has come again so if you want to just you know that has been poured twenty years you know so each country yes we base it on one on the memories of people that are here and titian into immigrant so for china india mexico the philippines there's what's called a visa cap for each country so depending on how many people senate but it's incorporated into this bill so syrians are people who came here before they were sixteen completed their high school diploma got thirty of it completed two years of college or four years of military service and you know again passed english requirements and background checks and a lot of the same crimes that i listed before they can actually get their green card after five years as an r p i so they would apply t a landslide in the last election because they didn't have latino voters so there's a lot of things i think yes the balance and he's trying to be smart but if you legalize a bunch of people who typically vote democrat then what are you what do you have you know in thirteen years down so also i think there is a sentiment against immigrants right to a lot of the people who would like all of us to disappear but they cannot talk about us because we have the citizenship we have the right to vote so i think that's why a lot of the anger in the brain comes to undocumented because then they could just talk about anything and say anything treat them any beach way and sad things are  people take advantage of them and they don't have you know a path to citizenship and they don't have the legal means i know of a woman who told me that my boss made me work for six weeks but didn't pay me a swirling around here but i do want to we have a very small audience here but part of other voices store include all the voices so if anybody in the audience has a question about the federal legislation now would be the time that we're going to jump in the count is definitely community organizing around it we're seeing civil disobedience begin to take place i think all of this organizing creates the pressure to not only look at the issue with to address the issue obama has the power to address the issue i mean he cannot pass immigration reform but he can address this issue and what i see happening in the community is organizing from workers students mothers children and so i think he will have to address that sooner rather than later and  obviously connected to all of this is that people have to continue to organize you know the silence but just let it happen it will continue but the organizing and now we're seeing civil disobedience is going to have an impact that's that that is how i was forced to address the issue of childhood arrivals was because the youth started taking civil disobedience actions and so they continue to organize and be politically engaged so that is exciting  national day on november twenty seventh and i'm going to provide more information about that a civil disobedience i mean if you can i would reach out to members who are typically supportive of it my question for me i know a lot of people have a really expensive networks and so if they could reach out across the country as you know representatives actually only only really i mean listen to other people but they mostly care about what their for them that they are not able to do that they feel that the cost of living i would nationally fifty percent of the kids who qualify have applied locally only twenty five percent have applied so that means over seventy five percent have fees so they're not funded by anything so they run us fees so they kind of interest and they have an incentive to jack up the fees and what we're seeing with back eyes that for the most part you're talking about eighty percent of the kids are in high school so there has school children who are not going to have jobs yet their parents are probably undocumented two of the child's undocumented so they probably don't have any extra income they normally have one or more children that are around the same age so how do you judge who gets to apply who doesn't get to apply and so in silicon valley only twenty five percent of the kids who qualify have applied and so that that means that for people who have been a relief for a response they will get us all security number they will get they can get a driver's license they're not doing it and so that is also where we when the immigration reform happens when that happens will people step forward because part of part of being undocumented is it's the psyche of being climbed this thing you survive because you're able to hide and now you have to asked to bring and that's hard to bring it forward and so we're doing a pilot project and east east east side high school district where we're trying to engage teachers parents and students to be able to create some kind of support network because what we saw is that for the students that did step forward there was a lot of mental health crisis there was a lot of stress there was a lot of worry of why do i get to do this and my parents don't some soon as we're finding out for the first time  document even though i was undocumented and then some kids you know sixteen fifteen year olds are rebellious you know they don't want to be told what to do that's normal in this age range and then some of them are thinking oh my god now i'm responsible for a family of five that's a lot for a fifteen year old so it has created a sort of a crisis in the families that we haven't been able to address so that's why we have a pilot project going on in eastside to see can we set up some support system some standards too that we can then pass on to other school districts i would love my community to just sponsor a student kind of program so because this is going to help all of us you know the more educated these kids become a better economy would be the more they would be able to contribute so rather than just you know buying bigger houses i would say fi have the money i would say let's invest in these kids even if you could just do one student five hundred dollars a student to become you know i just a little quick math and i warn you i'm not good at this thirty thousand students roughly five hundred dollars each is fifteen million dollars just in this county is that is a national policy where immigration and f b i fingerprints are checked and then based on the check immigration can say oh make a request hold that person for us and then we will investigate for so if at that point they were holding over four hundred people for over six months they said no we don't have the money to do this this is a federal issue let the federal government deal with it so what they decided was that they would not they would not honor detainers this was about two years ago they really looked at the issue today and they confirmed that they want to sustain that issue at this time and so that is something that's very important because as we're seeing this broken immigration system what we saw before the trust act was passed in the state of california is that women who are calling the police already be issues if they were undocumented not also yes could also be arrested and placed in deportation proceedings because the police happened to find out they were  same thing with children of child protective services found and they find out that there is no abuse but the parents are undocumented they could also report the parents and so we were seriously seeing a series of currents being split up or if you were driving without a license and you happened to get arrested you could be deported for that and so we're seeing a series of issues happening across the state where people were afraid to call the police or people were being victims of crimes or were not addressing these issues and so that's why they this policy was instituted in santa clara county and we ended up being recalled even speak up as witnesses yes no yes yes and so we ended up being the most progressive county in the nation and today we are firm that we will continue to be that it's great well results are exciting it was three two three two two and there were over sixty community leaders who stood up to say this is important for this reason we cannot set up a two tiered system we cannot do racial profiling and immigration status cannot be the only reason that we deport people and there are systems in place there's bail there is there's charges there's there is judges so you can keep a person in jail if you need to or you don't have to be part of just based on immigration status do you know of him and can you list who voted  long list of county things here that we're not going to get to in our remaining seven minutes so well what's most important that we should talk about like you guide me here is there's there's a one day hunger ok so maybe i'm behind a lot of this there is a lot there are a lot of people who aren't lawyers who are actually not ario sider are committing fraud be just because a lot of immigrants are coming out they're hearing something about immigration reform but nothing has has been implemented yet nothing has has passed and nothing signed into law and a lot of people are getting swindled they're getting to it and they're paying all this money and then they're just turning out you know maybe somebody many different languages we once had a an immigration attorney on our board of directors and she said that's always a problem is what you're saying this is increasing a really countries are lawyers they're not lawyers here you know and so they're also taking advantage of that cultural knowledge of oh in my country there are lawyers so here they must be lawyers to learn that anytime there is a crisis just you know some people were al tony's that we can go to so we have about three minutes left so i just want to go around the table and ask you to give our audience and our viewers and future viewers on the internet and current viewers who are live on the internet as well some encouragement what they can do to help move this process forward to get and meaningful immigration reform with which are we doing thirty or forty seconds i think we need to engage with our legislators we need to let them know what's happening in not only the people who are impacted the last time this happened we saw wages increase not only for immigrants but for u s citizens we saw home ownership increased we saw spending on education increase thought revenues increased and so there's a lot that will benefit our community if we address this issue yet so this is actually supposed to reduce the budget by one trillion dollars over twenty years so i mean like i said before i just pleasing would like to say that it starts appear david each person so you start treating immigrants that you meet the best way possible i think that acceptance is a start and then you is going to be left out of immigration reform we have other programs too but you know i think it is crucial and that information will be and simeon is website i hope you've been paying attention to all the websites that are on line  and check them out and get involved in this very important struggle that coming up we've been talking with starting again at the far interest because the jambos of the immigrant relations and integration services of santa clara county thank you so much for your december i think we're going to be talking about the iran peace process crate i don't know yet but i hope so thanks for joining us other voices brought to you by the mental peace and justice center live on the first tuesday of every month thanks for coming