we have joining us attorney david a highly respected authority on immigration david thank you for joining us very welcome thanks for having me david before we start to get into the nuts and bolts can you give us a little bit about your wonderful extensive background sure absolutely first of all thank you very much for having me today really appreciated and just to tell you a little bit about our firm i'm one of the managing attorneys at the law we have office is located in ridgewood new jersey and we also have a small office out in indianapolis and what makes us a little different from other immigration states is we have an office located in mumbai and we also have an office located in canada so we're also doing outbound immigration work as well as inbound because as you can imagine sometimes when there are no immigration options in the united states we have to help people by sending them outbound and then bringing them back  let's talk a little bit about the current state of immigration law a number of people or most people are excited negatively about what just happened in the supreme court can you share with us the current status sure well as you may be aware the u s versus texas case was decided by the supreme court it happened last wednesday and in that decision it was a split decision for four supreme court judges four for supreme court charges against and it was a one line decision it was not very exciting at all we were expecting of course to have this matter approved especially in light of the fact that the prior program which mimicked the program that was under question in the supreme court case which was docket deferred action for childhood arrivals is already online and has been online since december of two thousand and twelve so it was very disheartening to see that they could not make a decision but in light of the political climate number one it's an election year and obviously there are parties who are very interested in getting the hispanic vote namely you know i don't have to tell you resistance and i think that this this decision was a culmination of bad politics i think that in addition in a different year you would have seen something different happen so what does this decision do for immigrants undocumented you entered the united states before they were sixteen years of age and who had been in the united states for five years the opportunity to apply for work authorization and to be deferred essentially from removal and it's it's a beautiful came out of you know who came to us and who had been here for so long and then they didn't know what their status was and then all of a sudden we were working with them to try to rectify their situation now what what this supreme court with the supreme court new that was the new announcement that was made by president obama in november of two thousand and one a time or so dop was deferred action for parental accountability and that allowed any individuals who were in the united states who had green card children or u s citizen children to be able to get deferred deferred action or prosecutorial discretion exercised such as they would be able to get work authorization and be allowed to stay in the united states with the individuals in their families who had  status so it was really and it's kind of interesting i mean it's really about family unity that's really what it comes down to and so you know so unfortunately now these five million or so people who would have been able to get a benefit from these two programs are now left in abeyance unfortunately the case has been kicked back to judge jane in in the fifth circuit down in texas who and the restraining order unfortunately stays in place and we just have to wait and see what's going to happen so so would you say we have five million people that are living in fear of being deported in this country where we have a lot more than that in this program only addresses those particular five million who would have been able to benefit from top and dhaka supposedly and i believe that the last census came back with something like thirteen million my humble opinion is it's even more than that because even the  know the u s census is not perfect and i think it could be closer to something like fifteen million people so really fifteen million people here in the united states are without some form of status and need to rectify their situation so let's go to something very basic what is and who legal immigrants and is it the same as an undocumented immigrant well so yeah i mean if they're used interchangeably and it's a really valid question i think that when you say in the illegal immigrant to me it means someone who has entered the united states without status they have entered you know what we call you we entry without inspection those are usually people who have come over the border or have not presented  in what we call legally inspection it means that they haven't talked to an officer at the port of entry and said who they are and they're a different group of people from folks who have come in who were with documents and then whose documents have later expired and i don't know that i've ever seen any statistics on how many people have entered without inspection and overstayed versus how many of the people who are here in the united states are what we call you know again entered without inspection i think that the  the big issue is you know of these people who came in entry without inspection who are they and obviously in this world where security and our borders and knowing who is here is a big concern we don't know those people are we don't and what what i think the benefit the great benefit to our country would be is to put some type of benefit in place for these individuals to bring them out of the shadows and allow us to know who they are we want them to pay taxes because you know there have been i think i believe it was pew the pew group had done the pew consulting group in washington today they did have been reporting found out that obviously the payment of taxes by these individuals would only benefit the economy and knowing who these people are and bringing them out of the shadows would only benefit us from a security standpoint so i think that there's a lot to be said for knowing who these entry without inspection folks are now on the on the flip side of course then we have these all these other people who have entered with inspection they have documentation but what they've done is they've become what are called overstays and these overstays is very interesting now because this kind of feeds into the politics of what's going on today these overstays the way the law reads is that there's a section of the law which was actually written in one thousand nine hundred ninety six under what's called the ira ira i don't know that i'm going to be able to tell you exactly illegal immigrant and reconciliation act of one thousand nine hundred six something like that and that was signed by president clinton and in it is a section called to twelve a nine to twelve a nine is the three in the ten year bar if an individual enters the united states and remains in the united states out of status for hundred eighty days or more road then they're barred if they leave the country and try to get back in so it's an automatic form of deportation so they won't so what sense does it make to leave the country so if you are exactly in the process that's exactly what the problem is so if you have as you have these people have entered they've overstayed and they they're being told that if they leave the country if they've overstayed by hundred eighty days then then they end up being barred for three years if they've overstayed by one year they end up being barred for ten years so they don't leave that's exactly correct so it doesn't matter if they stay beyond the day knowingly or  unknowingly well a lot of them you know a lot of people you know a lot of people when they go and seek legal advice with regard to their options they're told if you over i hope they would come and see a qualified immigration lawyer in time to be able to make the decision to leave in time so they don't become subject to the bar and that's and that's what we try to as what you that's what you would hope that's that's what we have and now what president obama has done to ease the pain of these bars ok is that he's  implemented certain types of provisions are there called waivers so there are ways to get waivers of the two twelve a nine provisions ok where what you can do is if you have a qualifying relative and you can show hardship you can get a waiver of these bars and we do quite a number of waiver applications as do many of my colleagues the key is that you have to prove that you have a qualifying relative and what they're doing now is they're also opening up this waiver opportunity to the number of qualifying relatives is being expanded so president obama is doing the things that need to be done to be able to alleviate the pressure and to allow individuals to be able to get the the benefits but it's a slow slow process unfortunately and waivers are very restrictive they're very discreet parameters on being able to obtain a waiver is there a time limitation on when you can obtain a waiver there's not a time limitation on it it's more that you have to be able to apply for a particular benefit so for example if you marry for example if you've entered the united states let's say hypothetically you've entered the united states without inspection and you marry a u s citizen and you don't have any other way to adjust your status then what you can do is you can apply for a waiver so now they call it a provisional waiver where what you'll do is you'll know whether or not you have a waiver of that bar before you leave the country so they'll tell the consulate that the waiver might be granted the individual can go out visit the consulate and then they can re enter the united states so let me make sure i understood understood because i might have missed this it must it be before the bar that you apply for a waiver or can you apply for the waiver as an illegal immigrant so so the way would work is that if you're in the united states and you know that the bar is going to apply to you what you can do is you can apply in advance of the of your departure to be able to get the green card or the visa abroad and then to reenter the united states without that that three year ten year bar applying to you so i call it the no before you go provision because you'll know before you leave whether or not you're going to be able to make it back in if you don't apply for that waiver and you depart again what happened in one thousand nine hundred six is that if you leave you just can't get back in so it's almost again a form of self deportation and again that was under president clinton so and i think that if you listen to hillary clinton's campaign rhetoric now a lot of it i believe i remember back about four or five months ago is really interesting one of the speeches that she gave as she said we are going to eliminate the three in ten year bar within the first ninety days of my administration that's what she said and i was saying well that's really interesting how you're going to do that i'm not exactly sure because it's regulatory but if that's what you're promising that's going to help a lot of people so obviously i think that that statement she made was clearly catering to the need of a particular population so i think that you know she's on the right track if that's what she actually wants to do this is absolutely fascinating so right now we're going to take a break and then we'll come back and talk about a few more pointers of our viewers to help our viewers navigate the system absolutely great we are here with immigration lawyer david nominee talking of course about immigration issues we talked earlier about illegal immigration tell us a little bit about how illegal immigrants can become legal or what is it that they can do in this period of time about their status right so i usually start when we sit down i think probably the best thing to do is to tell you sort of when we sit down with an individual major color our office because they might not completely understand the process and how it works we have a little chart that we put in front of them and it's like a snapshot of the u s immigration system and i explain that you know you can look at the immigration system sort of as a spectrum and a lot of people don't realize that there are different forms of status that a person can have so for example on let's say the far right sorry the far left part of the spectrum would be that an individual has no status at all and then as you move across that spectrum you have what called non immigrants non immigrants or individuals who come to the united states for a particular purpose to do something and they have what's called non immigrant intent nonimmigrant intent means that they intend to leave and go back to their home country it's actually a provision of the called to fourteen b of the owners grant and also have you know they have nonimmigrant terry it's a great question so the way you decide it's like everything else in law is that you take a look at what obviously what the law is is a an objective manifestation of subjective intent that's actually what the law is what we do is we help them to understand that the government is looking for certain things such as do they have assets at home do they have family members at home do they have ties to the community at home and these are the types of things that pull them back so it's not really as important as why they're coming but what pulls them back to their home country and that's what allows them to get what are called nonimmigrant visa so we do things like get nonimmigrant work visas like h one b  s an intra company transfers als and o's for extraordinary ability in peace for performing artists and you know and so on their whole actually nonimmigrant visa classifications run from a through you on the so makes it very easy to do the analysis and i go eight through you for every single person to try to figure out what options are available for them ok so you know you were going to also give us the so that's just one portion of it that's one right and then right and then moving to the next part of the spectrum you would have what are called lawful permanent residents commonly referred to as green card holders ok ok and those are individuals who come to the united states who want to be here and live here and work here and usually what our job is  as immigration lawyers is to sort of move people back and forth between the nonimmigrant visa classifications to buy them enough time to be able to jump over into the immigrant application world or the immigrant petition world and what we do is we focus on what are called pre certified classifications while i love the u s department of labor to death and i know i think they're doing a great job it takes a long time for us to get our cases through the u s department of labor where you have to prove that the no able willing in qualified u s workers to take a job however many of the people who we have are highly highly skilled workers i mean some of these people are coming to us with like thirty five page resumes top folks at some of the pharmaceutical companies are unbelievable so explain to me you used the word pre certified how does that right i mean really as exact so that means that what we're what we're able to do is essentially go around the department of labor and to make applications in various visa classifications to avoid having to do a labor certification so for example an individual with extraordinary skills and abilities or an outstanding researcher who might be working for one of the top pharma companies here in new jersey or one of the professors who's working here these folks qualify for probably be outstanding research or classification which doesn't require us to go to the u s department of labor and to show that there are no able willing and qualified u s workers who can take the job and so there a whole gamut of green card applications that we would apply for and then there are also investor visas in there also religious worker visas and those all fall into the green card what's became a shock a what is an investor so investor visas are a visa classification that allows individuals to make an investment of a certain amount usually it's between five hundred thousand and a million depending upon where they're investing in the state and they're able to generate ten jobs for u s workers and they're able to actively be investing in the business and they can get green cards for that ok so you're if i understand you correctly these fall within the green car classification because these are not considered immigrants these are not it well they are they're actually immigrants  citizenship so the things that i get the call in the morning every morning going to work and i get the call from the individual says i have this nanny and i wanted to be a citizen and i'm like well guess what there are a couple of steps that you have to go through before you can become a citizen so we have to get them through all of those steps but going back to your first question which really is what options are available to people who don't have status yet so the first thing i think i really need to point out which is the realistic view of the world is that not everyone has an option and oftentimes people leave our office and i have to say to them well you know unfortunately you may not have an option today but that doesn't mean that the law is not going to change tomorrow and so you know that is some advice that we can you know that we can provide but there are many many programs and the only way that i can know what benefits might be able to be used for someone is if i sit with them and explore their background and just by way of an example one of the things is if you if a person has a member of their family who's in the u s military what they could do is they could apply for what's called parole in place for military personnel so if you have an individual in your family who is you know who is and in the active military or a veteran they can apply for military parole in place so that's one option another is that and this is kind of interesting this goes back to two thousand and one we always ask our clients if they ever filed if they were in the united states before two thousand and one if they ever made a qualified filing before the either the department of labor or the immigration service back in two thousand and one were allowed to use what's called the it was called the life fact and it was also something that president clinton had implemented actually what happened was president clinton and again this is kind of historical precedent right here president clinton back in one thousand nine hundred six really did not do tremendous justice to the u s immigration system it was really hit really hard to understand and yeah it was very bad but what happened was in two thousand and one when he was leaving office i think he felt guilty for what he did and what he did was he implemented this thing called the life act and life act gave people the ability to make a filing a qualified filing before april thirtieth of two thousand and one and we see many people come into our office who actually have these filings and if they made these filings what it does is it allows them to take that grandfathered benefit and to carry it forward and to use it today so what they can do is for example they can apply for a benefit today and they don't have to leave the country they can pay a penalty which is one thousand dollars penalty stay in the united states and apply here without having to leave the country so what essential you does is it allows them to circumvent those bars that we talked about for the three in the ten year bar and right so to forty five i was a wonderful way for people who are undocumented in the u s to be able to get status so works out very well another thing that we talk to people about  especially if they've been here in the united it's for a long time is the u visa the u visa is a it's a nonimmigrant visa but it gets you sort of into the direction of applying for a green card because once you have your visa for two years you can apply for green card works out very well these are victims of crimes so individuals who are victims of certain crimes in the crimes are actually listed on the website so it tells you what crimes qualify and if you get a law enforcement agent to work to sign the supplement be on the form you can actually get this you visa status and then you can get a green card so we always enquire with individuals who come to our office whether or not they were ever the victims of course the individual's personal life or it could also be in their business so for example a lot of folks who maybe work at bodegas or you know folks who maybe were a laker stores which or gas stations if somebody comes in what wage is another issue that's actually an interesting one because the u s department of labor probably i think has about a year ago said that they would be willing to sign the supplement so if individuals do have wage issues they can bring it to the u s department of labor and those people are considered to be that were impacted by the supreme court decision are should they be worried about deportation and if and if they you know if they should be great what can they do to avert deportation all right so so it's a great question  and obviously they these folks are removable the best thing to do is talk to a qualified immigration professional i know that the folks who come to me if i can't find a particular option for them i always give them my business card and i write my cellular telephone number and i say use that in case of an emergency so that they know so anyway i feel i have a kid if they exactly so they are right because the hardest thing is knowing where to get the right information and you don't want to be doing that if you're detained or if you're picked up you don't want that to be lassoed want so one of the best things they can do for themselves right now is to get some protection and advocate know who to speak you know yeah i know don't know who to speak to it's very important to you know just have a you know have a business card that they're carrying around or have access immediately to professional help in the event that this happens but people who get picked up let's say picked up what is the likelihood of getting picked up i think that's your first question is i don't think that there's tremendous likelihood of them getting picked up  unless they're a priority so president obama did implement this priority system where he's going after criminals and i'm sure you've heard about it it's deport criminals and not families so they're hopefully leaving families alone but the fact of the matter is that if a person is removable it's not so much you know it is a possibility that they may get removed but it's probably not a probability ok the government doesn't have the money to be able to remove to remove individuals cost something between seven thousand to fifteen thousand dollars per person if you take that and multiply it by thirteen million you're not going to have enough zeros on your kalki going to get an error message because they're not they don't have the resources to be able to do and that's what that's what priority enforcement is all about and so you mentioned earlier in the green room about it ministry of priority is that what you're talking about now is the defense exactly exactly well it's a prosecutorial discretion which has been in the law for a long time and it's actually the the genesis of dr to have all been the prosecutorial memo that was actually many many years back it was john morton who was in charge of immigration customs enforcement who listed out what he felt were the places where the government should in force as opposed to wasting their resources so what they want to do is are saying let's go after terrorists let's go after criminals let's go after folks who shouldn't be here but let's leave other people on the people who are in the military let's leave them alone the people who are taking care of their sick relatives let's leave them alone the dreamers let's leave them alone there yes there are removable we understand there are movable but at the same time let's exercise prosecutorial discretion and let's refrain from wasting government resources in places where we shouldn't be wasting those resources so that's what the the i think they called the pep program the priority and force program enforcement program is all about and that was actually announced by great question so we're in a we're in an election year and obviously the the issue of immigration is clearly in the forefront it's clearly on the front burner and it's in everyone's minds i believe that  president or the the candidate president clinton candidate could a clinton as a candidate is saying that she is very much in favor of comprehensive immigration reform we've already had some really good proposals for comprehensive immigration reform bills we have nice templates looking back i think the gang of eight and just so going over a gang of eight which was the eight senators who got together senator  menendez our excellent senator menendez from the state of new jersey did a fantastic job of putting together a wonderful template for comprehensive immigration reform unfortunately they were unable to get that through the through the house and it ended up dying however you know it still remains out there as an excellent opportunity and i think that if if and when the appropriate time comes if we grab back on to that blueprint and push that forward i think that would be a excellent way to solve some of the immigration issues that we have whether that is in the future i can't read the crystal ball or the tea leaves so i won't be able to tell you that but i think that again the  think that the blueprint is there so if the government wants to do something i think that they certainly have the springboard if that's what they choose to do well i think that you have left us on a hopeful note and i hope so and really