WMU-Cooley focuses Constitution Day on immigration law issues and rule changes

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LEGAL NEWS PHOTOS BY CYNTHIA PRICE

by Cynthia Price
Legal News

After Assistant Dean Tracey Brame wished students and community members attending the Western Michigan University-Cooley Law School Sept. 17 seminar on immigration issues “Happy Constitution Day!” she went on to explain why she gets excited about the Constitution.

“The reason I love the Constitution is that, while I would have been the furthest from the people who were in the room when it was written, the document that came out of that helped the United States evolve into the rich and diverse country we have today,”?said Brame, who would have been limited by both her gender and being of color.

The current controversy over immigration may call into question the future of that diversity and richness. And Christian Montesinos, a WMU-Cooley adjunct professor and local immigration attorney (www.christianmontesinos.com), said that nearly everyone, on all sides of the issue, realizes that the immigration system is broken.

Take, for example, the expansion of the “public charge” rule. At the time of the Constitution Day panel, the rule change was to come, but it was officially proposed on Sept. 22. (To see the rule and background documents, visit www.regulations.gov and reference DHS Docket No. USCIS-2010-0012). In it, “DHS proposes to require all  aliens seeking an extension of stay or change of status to demonstrate that they have not received, are not currently receiving, nor are likely to receive, public benefits as defined in the proposed rule.”

One of the criticisms discussed at the Constitution Day forum was its expansion to include all family members, including children, in the equation to determine whether public benefits are received. Montesinos and others present found this problematic.

The New York Times editorial board called the proposed rule “callous and foolish.”  The Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, the Michigan League for Public Policy, and the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services immediately issued statements strongly opposing it.

Montesinos also said that immigrants have no right to a speedy trial, pointing out that it is considered to be a civil, executive-branch process. Attendees wondered if moving the process into the judiciary would help, but Montesinos felt there was no political will for that type of change.

The other speaker was Richard Perez, a second-year WMU-Cooley law student whose stepfather – the only father he had ever really known – was deported despite having other small children.

“The lawyer kept telling us that things would never happen, but they did,” he said. “So, I didn’t get to say goodbye to him because I was told that after his hearing he would be able to come home and gather some things. Instead they took him right to detention.” The government also just drove him across the border and summarily dropped him off, in an area where drug cartel members are active predators. “He looked up at a bridge and saw two dead men just hanging there.

“After this experience, I?determined that immigration law was going to be my thing.”

Perez was a summer associate at Miller Johnson, working on business immigration law.
 

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