little scene and welcome to another edition of focus on and i'm chris grant and we're glad to have you back with us again for another week for another newsmaker and we talking tonight our subject matter is immigration and our guest tonight is ryan who practices immigration law in princeton ryan nice for you to come on the show tonight and both chris and i have a lot of questions that we want to direct your way given the given the topic and what's going on national local and state levels a right first though he's a member of the american immigration lawyers association and serves as new jersey chapters an advocacy co chair which includes leading immigration attorney legislative affix the throughout the state he also chairs i stands alley immigration and employment task force is on the advisory board of the latin american legal defense and education fund of which he is a founding member mr william thought is a former member of the princeton joint consolidation shared services commission a former councilman of prince something which certainly has been much in the news that is not a new issue for new for new jersey in fact twenty two percent of new jersey's nine million residents are actually foreign born and in a different life i used to always say people would make their way first to new each to new york from out of out of the country and then quickly find how welcoming new jersey was and come over here to live work and raise their families so twenty two percent of our population today  foreign born that's about two million people most are between the ages of sixteen and sixty five well within the working age and it's estimated that at least five hundred thousand of the two million are  what we call what the government calls on documented of interest because we'll get to that subject as well are young often young people young adults who are known as dr dreamers and the best estimates are that there are about fifty four thousand of these young people in new jersey what was interesting when i was doing some reading was that almost ninety some percent of the young people are already employed and contributing back to the community so new jersey's always been a state of immigrants but what's gotten us into this mess today we are we as individuals are often very confused and uncertain as to as to what really is is the problem and what the government is  our twelve election officials at the national level have come out in support of legislation to legalize these deferred action for childhood arrivals the daca deferred action for childhood arrivals dreamers and so new jersey if we can get our you know full compliment of elected officials could be one of the few states that has full bipartisan support for the dream act and in fact the one representative who is not on that list yet opportunity for problem solving we have in our state we witness what i'll call the secondary effects of the mess that you mentioned in your question we have a broken immigration system i think there is by partisan agreement from all over the left all the way to the right that the immigration system is not working and there are as i see two broadways at least two broad ways of thinking about why we're in this mess one has to do with the in the center on you know how do you view the problem one has to do with recognizing that the system is a is a is a process problem the system is broken and the other one points the pointed finger at the immigrants themselves so is the problem the system and the structure or is the problem the immigrants and depending on your framework of how you view the problem will determine how you view the possible solutions and it's the conflict between these two views that prevent that had been preventing for all these years as a solution from arising and we see we've been seeing it so pointedly and poignantly  over the last two weeks with the docket issue in the dream act how to solve that problem we have an interest there's interest on one side of limiting opportunity for immigrants may well do some for the doctor kids but we to make sure that there is you know a stem the flow of future immigration legal immigration to the united states you know that's the view of the immigrants of the problem and then we have the other view of you know creating a workable solution a flow and addressing the immediate problem of the docket and it's important to recognize that as well so much attention is being focused on these kids they really only represent six to seven percent of the un documented population in the united states and so kind of broadly that's where i see this immigration that's coming from and this is how we're experiencing it in the debate that we're witnessing right up to this afternoon you know there's you know constant news stories coming out about how do we solve this is helpful to understand we're talking you're talking about the federal government just sort of basic civics here what's the role or lack of role for a municipality where we live and assist at a state level versus the federal government do do our officials have any real role at the state or local level so that's a really astute question immigration is federal law the federal government has control over our immigration system it is not something that states have control over which makes all this discussion about sanctuary cities and what law enforcement should be doing at the state local level so interesting and so this tension between what the federal government should do and what the state should do is playing out in towns all over the country and and as for playing out here in new jersey all of these years now a couple of decades there hasn't been resolution so when the princeton community is talking about being a welcoming community and the policies that connect to that welcoming framework and how our police department wants everyone in the community to know that they're there for them when it comes to public safety issues that an immigrant regardless of their status should be concerned about seeking the assistance of police that will be an immigration consequence relates to this tension between the federal and the local because we know that it's our you know the u s attorney general jeff sessions and the president have been very aggressive about wanting to deputize state local police to do the immigration enforcement and the  pushback relates both to kind of the compassion that people feel not community but also the legal basis and separation between where that power lies and it and and we you know do we really want our police wh e mission really is about making sure everyone is safe doing the work of immigration forces which has a different mission and there's been concern about ice coming in and in princeton to you know as affects our students you know in the schools and the concerns that parents have about that but you mentioned something about welcome and you talk about prince and being a walking city and also there are sanctuary cities so maybe you could just define for everybody the difference between a sanctuary city and use the term sanctuary city called the sanctuary jurisdictions introduced this new phrase my constitutional law professor and used to talk about fundamental rights and he drew a picture on the blackboard with a rabbit coming out of a hat is you know when you know when you've got a fundamental right in the his point was you know when you see it so when you have a sanctuary jurisdiction it's one of these is it one of those you know do you know when you see it situations you know to me it's it's a matter of kind of it's a matter of vocabulary which seems obvious but it's also a matter of posture i really like the vocabulary of the welcoming sitting to me it encompasses much more than the idea of sanctuary center of course has you know significant historical roots to sanctuary movement coming out of the eighty's and reaching out to beleaguered communities from central america that with a country who are in the midst of civil war and immigrants are here in the united states  but welcoming goes beyond the idea of just sanctuary it goes to the heart what this administration seems to be targeting which is compassion you know seems silly right but it seems like our federal government is you know criminalizing or seeks to demonize compassion you know looking at those communities that want to help out the most vulnerable  people that are their neighbors their peers their schoolmates and welcoming goes to the idea that you know not only you know are you safe here or that we you know we'll try to make you a safe as we can because sanctuary cities can't protect people from possibly getting picked up they can provide a little bit of safety but if immigration wants to come in and they have the right documentation they can do that it's to let people know that this is their home and that they're not isolated and they don't need to live in fear and i think that's part of what the strategy is on the part of ministration i don't think anyone believes that the administration's going to have the capacity to deport eleven million people but it's clearly their goal and to borrow the phrase from mitt romney during his presidential campaign i think the idea of self deportation summarizes the overarching administration's looking to do and the way it achieves self deportation for most of the eleven million is to make life so miserable for people here that they choose to leave on their own and it achieves that by creating an environment of fear and an environment of isolation so welcoming communities go right to the heart of that to the idea that the and the sentiment that individuals who are vulnerable to these policies these new policies that have been unfolding over the last year that they shouldn't feel isolated and alone and so if there is a form of you know a lot of that resistance but if there's a form of push  back in a way to participate it's to act in a way that's consistent with one sense of compassion towards individuals who are vulnerable to community and that's i think the idea of welcoming encompasses that in a much more  way and reflects the idea of compassion perhaps more so than sanctuary there are people who would say and i'd like you thinking about this of course from time to time there are lawbreakers  people there are both documented and then documented individuals who commit serious crimes is that impossible to manage without the sort of throwing everyone out kind of approach ok you know so i'm so glad you asked the question this is what was so disheartening one of things was so disheartening and disturbing about the president a year ago when he made his address to congress and was singling out the victims of these heinous the families of the victims of these heinous crimes that were committed by people that were in the country illegally you take any group of individuals in this country you know we could think about ourselves and the groups that we belong to you can take any group of individuals and the vast majority of those people in those groups are good but there are going to be criminals and people that do the worst type of crimes within the groups that we belong to so the president could have picked any group and single them out and what he did with undocumented immigrants  s he he chose to demonize everybody in the group so that we think of all undocumented people as murderers and rapists and and he had people to point to in the gallery in the congressional chamber and that is a you know you know it's a horrible and demoralizing and dehumanizing thing to do on top of it being just simply inaccurate and distorting and that messaging reaches all parts of the country and so so when we talk about you know people that are in danger the commuter is no reason why we all can't be on the same page when it comes to whether somebody is a danger because they're undocumented or because they're jewish or because they're irish or because they're a town in or whatever group they belong to we can all be and  should all be on the same page when it comes to bad guys so you feel so do you feel that our local and state police have the tools they need to prosecute crimes regardless of who commits those today yes i do and you know  when you think about let's you know they think specifically about the policy in princeton and it's true for any municipality in the state of new jersey if the police come across somebody who's you know a potentially violent criminal but the police will report those individuals to immigration if they're on documented there is no safe harbor provided here for somebody who is a danger to other people in the community but the parrot the president chooses not to betray things that way instead he takes the example of these few individuals and paint everyone in that group as if they're the same and it's a huge danger to all of us there are people in the you know in the immigrant community who are victims of crimes there are afraid to report the crimes to our local police because the afraid the police will report them to immigration some of the perpetrators of those crimes not only perpetrate crimes against undocumented immigrants that they perpetrate them against the rest of us and so as long as there are individuals in our community are afraid to come to collaborate with the police and support police investigations we're all in danger instead of the government the federal government's policy of creating public safety is undermining public safety and this is why it's important for communities to make those everyone and me feel welcome especially in terms of contacting the local police rather than feeling isolated and scared we talk a lot about the problems what are some of the potential solutions so let's go right at the  executive order by president obama as an attorney i can tell you that i fully believe that he had the authority to create this group of individuals at better that have this type of benefit in terms of prosecutorial discretion that the government has you know we want our resources in our federal government to type in last type the last point a resource a federal going to go after the bad guys and if they're spending time on the good guys then it's waste resources that hurts all of us and so by reaching out to these young people who didn't choose to come to this country and around and saying look you come forward and register a president trying to talk about people registering  the six seven eight hundred kids and register and then they were able to get employment authorization and so security cards and work lawfully pay taxes and get driving licenses and get driving insurance all that's good for all  of us but there are those that believe that the president didn't have the authority to do that including president trump comes in in the rescinds the doc a program that did so much good for so many people  now we've got this little piece of the mess you know what do we do what is this what is the sort of the solutions for the dreamers so the republican governor john k sic you know i think put it really simply just passed the dream act the dream act is a bill that's designed for these kids these young people to legalize their status they you know so long as there's criteria they graduate from high school they are enrolled in college or are pursuing careers in the military it also is good for a commune it's good for america and their status would become normalized and they could be on a path to citizenship which of course we want we don't want people you know being in about being in the united states whether these young people become citizens when foreign nationals become citizens it's not it's a benefit to them yes but it's not just a benefit to them it's a benefit to all of us that the people who are in the united states have pledge allegiance to this country and so that's a solution for this little piece of the puzzle if you want we could talk more broadly about the problem and what could be done with the eleven million i think the eleven undocumented individuals in this country represent a symptom of the problem they're not the problem themselves other people's view of the problem but i think in terms of larger solutions we have to recognize that that part of the structural problem is that there is no visa for a construction worker there is no for an elder care worker there is no visa for of maintenance worker there is no visa for a cook or a busboy many industries in our country which we suspect that we're relying on undocumented labor there is no he said why not they just don't exist why not why don't they exist and it's not just kind of bleeding heart liberals that are talking about this you have the u s chamber of commerce that that it's asking why not would those visas be what a layperson might call you know work permit or would they be so what happenings different i'm sorry but what happens when you have a fisa the individual outside the united states makes an application to come in under a certain type of peace and there are parameters for that types of these so there are work visas and they have to go for an interview at the consul before they come to united states so they get screened do whatever screening you feel necessary they get screened so that we know who they are when they come in and then they can function within the parameters of the beast which they came and i'll just tell you that you know twenty years meet with people and they were very clear listen i would have been more than happy just coming in on the visa and going home and coming in and going home and we can structure pieces that are that the flow with the growth and contraction of our economy but that's not what we have and so if we recognize the that the problem is a structural problem we can address it and it's not rocket science to address this this problem but not everyone agrees that the problem is structural you know some people think the problem is the people and that's what we have the tension and i think one of the one of the goals we talked and chris mentioned too about do we have enough police resources you know to focus on what we need to do as far as quote unquote immigration forces who can better work there's a lot of talk about i'm going to go back to the welcoming issue because recently there was an issue in highland park reform church highland park ok and right now there's an individual seeking sanctuary in that church and there's immigration control foresman agents who are trying to extract those individuals so your thoughts on well you know so one place to begin is you know who's got authority to do what right so let's just talk about the immigration force s you know we've heard a lot about the knock on the door and how do they get in and you know i could tell you some very unhappy stories about some immigration enforcement  activity you know where the immigration force or in the name of going after these people that don't follow the rule of law break the rule of law you know they violate that they violate the supreme law of the land the constitution in the name of going after the lawbreakers  where they enter places unlawfully and do unlawful things so in order for an immigration enforcement to enter somebody's house or you know it's a church for that matter  they have to have an order and it's not an order that they produce themselves because often immigration shows up with their own with their own water with their own warrants and it's not something that's enforceable they can't gain access to the house with that unless the person opens the door and lets them in so anyone who's listening to this program who might be vulnerable or may know somebody that someone will need to understand that there's a difference between the documents that somebody that immigration enforcement agent an immigration customs enforcement agent can use to  the american civil liberties union has a great website if you're looking for warrants on the a c l u web site they will show you what the two different documents look like but you know it's akin to like you know when my kids wanted to skip school you appreciate that it's like them writing their own note you know with the school district ever except the kid writing their own note well that's what you know that something's immigration enforcement agents do is they write their own notes so they can gain access but that doesn't work you need the parents note and in this case the parent is a judge so that you know terms of who can do what that's one thing and then there's the you know what can you do on the inside the house or the person has one of the judicial works you don't let the you know you know let the person it you know because they have the authority to gain access and there are some structures where i think it's it's a question of what is allowed and what's not allowed and that may come you know what with your exam what's the difference between a home versus a church or synagogue or mosque or other real religious building or a school or or a public library each of these may have you know a different analysis and so you know to explore the further you want somebody who's kind of constitutional law to come kind of out of my depth but there's i mean i know enough to know that i don't know everything about it but that there are the there's the scope of these issues but certainly for the home