Law Have Mercy!

Behind the Headlines: Immigration Law in the Trump Era w/ Immigration Attorney Paul "Woody" Scott

• Chaz Roberts • Season 4 • Episode 62

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Trump's election promised sweeping changes to immigration policy, but what's really happening? Immigration attorney Woody Scott pulls back the curtain on perception versus reality in our immigration system today. 

Surprisingly, detention numbers under Trump remain lower than they were under Biden at the same point in their presidencies—around 30,000 compared to 50,000—though the approach has fundamentally changed. While previous administrations targeted those with criminal histories, Trump's "no priority" system means anyone without legal status could face detention, creating widespread fear in immigrant communities.

"If you want to fix illegal immigration almost overnight, make a program where people can come temporarily, work, pay into social security, and then go back," Scott explains. This practical approach acknowledges the economic reality that American businesses—from construction to agriculture to restaurants—desperately need workers while people from countries like Honduras want these opportunities. The disconnect between labor needs and viable immigration pathways perpetuates our broken system.

Scott challenges listeners to look beyond political rhetoric and consider the human complexities of immigration. He points to the legal definition of "immigrant" requiring over 4,500 words as evidence of this complexity. Whether discussing sanctuary cities, community formation patterns, or family reunification, Scott brings clarity and humanity to one of America's most divisive topics.

Beyond legal expertise, Scott shares his passion for endurance sports, drawing parallels between completing an Ironman triathlon and facing life's challenges: "When you have hard things, you can always draw on that. It's like 'I can do hard things.'" His perspective reminds us that both immigration policy and personal growth require persistence, understanding, and a willingness to embrace complexity.


You can learn more about Paul 'Woody' Scott at Plaisance & Scott Law Firm. 

You can watch most full episodes of Law Have Mercy on YouTube!

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This show is co-produced by Carter Simoneaux of AcadianaCasts Network, Chaz H. Roberts of Chaz Roberts Law and Kayli Guidry Bonin of Beau The Agency, and Laith Alferahin.

Speaker 1:

and, and you know, if you got anything, I know this isn't live. So if you want me to hit something, just let me know.

Speaker 2:

We can. We can edit, cut. I'm trying to go around 40 minutes now.

Speaker 2:

I've cut down from like an hour. You'll make that. Hey, this Chaz back again with another episode of law. Have mercy A friend of mine, paul Woody Scott. He is the founder of the Scott Law Firm and he has a big immigration law firm. He's got 10 lawyers. He does criminal defense, personal injury, immigration, all kinds of good stuff, and he came in this morning from Baton Rouge. He is a repeat I almost said repeat client. He's a repeat guest and he's into running and I think, triathlons too, yep, and he's a business owner. Obviously he's into entrepreneurship and we have a good time and I'm super excited to talk about immigration law right now because it's such a hot topic with Trump coming in and there's been so many changes I don't know if there's actual changes or just different policies. So we're going to get into that and we're going to have some fun. So welcome to the podcast, woody Chaz man thanks for inviting me back.

Speaker 1:

I'm super happy to be here. I'm happy to talk to your people on the podcast. I thought you were going to say I was a repeat offender.

Speaker 1:

It almost slipped. Yeah, I guess I'm one of those too. But yeah, like you said, I got a law firm in Baton Rouge. It's headquartered in Baton Rouge. We also have an office in Lake Charles. We have a remote attorney in New York. We're 10 attorneys. We started our firm in 2010. The majority of what we do is immigration law. We also do criminal defense and personal injury, but that usually has to do with, you know, helping a non-citizen in court. So you know, everything we do kind of centers around immigration law.

Speaker 1:

I'm pumped to be here, you know. I know, when we talked before, one of the reasons you wanted me to come on was because I think the obvious elephant in the room is Trump being elected. One of his main platforms in running was changes he wanted to make in the immigration system, and so he's been president for a little bit over a month now, maybe even two months, but you know, he's implemented some policies. He's uh, tried to implement other policies. He uh. But the news and the rumor mill don't always reflect what's really happening and and so that's why I'm here and pumped to talk about what, what y'all want to hear and and talk about, you know.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, I was wondering if I mean like, this is how perception and reality are different. I was wondering if you even have time to come here, because I figured that you'd be on the phone or work in the computer 24-7 since Trump's policies and I don't know if it's and maybe we can go into that, but I would imagine that some of the work that you were doing maybe got paused or you're dealing with clients who are super paranoid. Tell me about how things have changed since he's been in office.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean great question, and actually it's the reason why I wanted to come here, because what we saw after Trump got elected was an immediate announcement of executive orders, policy changes, and what that caused is for the phone calls to double. I mean, they doubled in one week. Now, as a business owner, that's good, but as an attorney, that's not always good, because what was happening is a lot of people just became scared overnight and they're asking questions that there's really no answer to right now. But one of the things that I know is you can't just because those fears or those questions are real fears, real questions, even if I don't have the answer to it, because a lot of times the answer is well, we're going to see how this plays out, how this plays out. So I have been talking to a lot of people in communities. Yesterday morning I gave a talk at the Mexican consulate, who invited me to come and talk. Last night I went to kind of a bigger church in Baton Rouge. Just people in their congregation wanted to hear and ask questions to me and I found that that's a good way to address the community, without fielding every phone call and having a conversation with one person at a time and going to community events, going to things like this, because if people do have questions, I want to answer them. You know, do you have any answers right now? We do, we do, and some of them might be surprising.

Speaker 1:

So I think one of the most interesting things that I've seen so far is the perception of how many people have been detained, how many non-citizens have been detained since Trump came into office. I don't have today's exact numbers, but the most recent numbers I saw was since Trump has become president. The amount of people that they've detained and deported is significantly less than Biden did at this point. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was. Biden was in the 50,000s at this point in his presidency and Trump was in the 30,000. So, I mean, that's a pretty good difference. And so a lot of times when I'm talking to clients or potential clients or people that just say they're nervous, we have people that are US citizens, that are married to a non-citizen, you know, and they're working on getting status, but one of the things that I'm telling them is you know, the fear is real.

Speaker 1:

I understand that the question is a good question, but the data is not supporting the hype, for lack of a better word and, as a matter of fact, at first, if anybody's on Twitter, you can follow ICE, immigrations and Customs Enforcement and they were tweeting how many people they detained each day. And you know, I was following that and I was kind of like, yeah, that's not that impressive. And once it was reported in USA Today that the amount of people detained was significantly less than Biden. Ice stopped tweeting that, so they stopped tweeting their daily detentions, their daily detentions. So now if you follow ICE, what they do is they have like one person a day that they'll put on there. They arrest and they'll put his long criminal history. But that's one person. I mean, if you arrest people, somebody's gonna have a criminal history in that, you know. So again, it's more the perception is different than what the data suggests.

Speaker 1:

Now I will say the difference is under Biden and Obama, what they did is the reality is Chas, there are too many people in the United States to round everybody up and deport them. It's not possible. We don't have the money to do it. It's just not possible. So under Biden and Obama, what they did was create a priority system is what they called it, and what that means is anybody that they were going to detain had to have a certain criminal history or a previous deportation. So the person that was maybe a roofer driving to work who's been here for 10 years and has children here and has never been arrested I don't want to say he was safe, but he was not a priority. They weren't just looking to get that person. So the people that were being detained and deported all had some criminal history, and so the difference now is, although there's been less people detained, is that there is no priority system.

Speaker 1:

So what we're seeing is of the people that are being detained because we get calls every day with this, of people being detained, of their family members that you know, every day a big part of what we do is deportation defense. What we're seeing is that that roofer that I'm mentioning might be the one that got detained. So we're seeing immigration detention centers fill up with people that are not criminals, with people that don't have criminal history. So I guess my thought on that is that everybody wants a safe United States. I have a family, you have a family. We all want our families to be safe. You have a family, we all want our families to be safe. But when I see that the rhetoric is to make America safe, but I also see that a detention center is being filled up with people that have no criminal. Didn't even ask me that, I just kind of went on a tangent on that. But those are the policy changes that I'm seeing is that there's no priority, so everybody's a priority. There's less discretion on getting bad guys out.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, it's more of just a roundup, just a roundup, but the roundup is actually less from the data that you've seen. The roundup is actually less than previous presidencies.

Speaker 1:

That's correct. Yeah, so when I talk to people that are calling and saying they're scared, or when I go to events to talk to them, I'm trying to give them hard data and just say you know, the data is not reflecting what the rhetoric is saying is happening Now. Could that change? Yeah, but as of right now, that's what's going on. You had kids not showing up to school. Yeah, so we had kids not showing up to school and that's interesting. We had kids not showing up to school. We represent a lot of contractors. Contractors are people, most of them US citizens, that work hard. I mean, I'm sure you've represented or know a contractor. That's hard work. You know. I had contractors calling me saying they couldn't get workers to show up to work.

Speaker 2:

One of the policy changes— so you've got homes that were being built where people weren't showing up to work.

Speaker 1:

Correct. So that puts the contractor behind, that puts a person out of their home, that delays everything. That just can't be the effect that we want.

Speaker 2:

But man, like you said, the US is so vast and if you've traveled around the US you know. Man, texas is far away, west Texas is super, and that's just the neighboring states, right? Only 30,000 people, that's not a lot of people. They're not going to look at a house in Broussard or Youngsville or Denham Springs to go and round up every single non-US citizen.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's what the rhetoric says, but the reality is not that and it's not even possible if they wanted to. But we are seeing it in Baton Rouge, probably less so than some of the other cities like Baltimore. I do know in one instance that ICE did show up to a school in New Orleans and you know kids are kids and school needs to be a safe place for any kid. You know that's another policy that was rescinded. Typically, all presidents Republican, democrat, previously law enforcement ICE particularly was not to show up unless there's an extenuating circumstances to schools. I think for obvious reasons. I think kids should not be subjected to that in their school Courts, for obvious reasons. If people are afraid they're going to be arrested for going to take care of their business in courts, what are people going to do? They're not going to go to court.

Speaker 1:

Those policies have been rescinded. So the rhetoric is, the idea is, they can go anywhere. I have not seen it where there are mass going into these places. I do know of one instance in New Orleans where they did go into a school and one instance in Baltimore where they went into a court. So maybe we'll see we'll see what?

Speaker 1:

And they'll put kids in custody. Yeah, yeah, they're processing them. Yeah, and you know, I think some of that, unfortunately, is to draw the parents out. If a kid is in trouble, any parent, what are they going to do? They're going to go help that kid. You know their child. So I think the policy is that to to you know, if you arrest a parent, deport a parent, the child may remain behind, maybe with the other parent. If you get the kid, the parent's going to come, you know, and so it's.

Speaker 2:

It's sad, I don't like that, but I about, from the administrative side of cases that you are currently working on trying to legalize some of your clients have those processes and correct me if I'm ever wrong on the terminology right. Because I don't do this type of law, but have those administrative procedures been stalled, suspended? Cases that are pending? So, yeah, so remember, you know cases that are pending.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, so remember, you know Trump was president before I was an attorney. When Trump was president he's only been in, you know, a little over a month. Here's what we saw before and here's what I think will happen, because I haven't seen it necessarily trickle down into those A little bit. There are examples of somebody that applies for a green card say uh, somebody that applies for a green card. If you explain, can you explain?

Speaker 2:

what a green card is.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so interestingly the word green card does not exist anywhere in the law. Um, it is called. The technical term is lawful permanent resident. But through history and just media and movies and all that, we've all learned what a green card is. It is a card and it is green. And when somebody has a green card they're a lawful permanent resident. They have every right of a US citizen except voting.

Speaker 1:

And typically after someone has a green card for five years they can apply for US citizenship. Five years they can apply for US citizenship. So to get a green card is a big deal. It's a big step. If somebody previously, if somebody applies for a green card, maybe through marriage to a US citizen, maybe their company has petitioned for them, if enough evidence was supported in the package they would not require an interview. They wouldn't have to go to an interview if enough evidence was there, if the officer can approve it just by looking at the evidence supported. So one of the policy changes now is that everybody applying for a green card has to do an interview even if it's obvious this person's eligible obvious, this person's eligible. So what I see happening with that is all processes are going to slow down because it's going to require immigration adjudication officers to do much more work.

Speaker 2:

And didn't you tell me last time you were here that the way to fix illegal immigration is to make legal immigration easier?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, everybody says make America great again. I say make immigration viable again, because the reason why anybody comes here illegally is because it is just not possible for them to come here legally. The fallacy of somebody saying like I just don't want to do it the right way, that's just not true. I was born in Honduras. But I'm a lucky person because when I was born in Honduras my parents were US citizens and so I was born a US citizen. But I know that if you're born in Honduras, in certain parts of Honduras, if you're born poor in Honduras, the chances of you being able to come to the United States legally is almost nil. It's almost impossible. So if you want to fix the illegal immigration problem, make it to where somebody.

Speaker 1:

You know how many contractors tell me they can't find enough people to work. You know how many concrete people tell me they can't get enough people to work. You like crawfish? I do. Every crawfish farmer in Lake Charles hires H2A workers, that's, seasonal workers that come in. You know why they can't get people here to do those kind of jobs, bad jobs. There is the demand for jobs that businesses need. There are people that want to come here to serve those jobs. It is not viable for them to come here legally. If you want to stop illegally, almost over illegal immigration, almost overnight, make a program that they could come temporarily work, pay into social security, pay all that, go back overnight. Overnight illegal immigration would come to a trickle. You know, just about every industry you can think of needs workers.

Speaker 2:

And I think about right here, construction. Obviously cane farming, that is not exactly a pleasant job Crawfish farming, rice farming.

Speaker 1:

Rice farm, cane farm, crawfish we have a lot of those, like the farmers are our clients to get H-2A workers, H-2B workers. Any restaurant relies on immigrant labor, like you said, contractors, I mean.

Speaker 2:

The list goes on and you represent a lot of the business owners who are trying to obtain these visas and employees. That's correct, and if they found suitable labor here, they wouldn't come and pay you money to go hire people.

Speaker 1:

I'd be out of business, you know. But that's okay, you know. Cause, uh, that that's okay, cause I think that would be better just for the society in in, in general, um let me, let me ask you a question.

Speaker 2:

I, I and I'm. I'm not asking you to play devil's advocate, but let's assume the rhetoric of the open borders and the previous administration is accurate, right. They didn't enforce the borders. The security wasn't there, the manpower wasn't there. What would be the incentive to allow open?

Speaker 1:

borders. I don't think anybody wants open borders.

Speaker 2:

I don't think Biden wants open borders, it's not to flood and get illegal voters.

Speaker 1:

Nobody wants open borders. It goes back to people's core values. Everybody, I don't care who you are republican, democrat, libertarian people want safety, people have families and so I don't think the issue of I don't. I don't think anybody wants an open border. I think some people want there to be more viable immigration and I think some people want there to be a stronger security on the border, and I think we both want that. I'm an immigration attorney. I want there to be a safe border. I want there to be a secure border. I don't want bad people coming in here, but I also see a lot of needs for people to come in here. You know the birth rate in the United States is declining substantially.

Speaker 2:

There's an easy fix to that and that's importing people through the process of immigration. Yeah, I think it's almost like an economist, an economics argument that what I've heard, the sorrows and get into that. Right, the deep state. The reason that people would want open borders is to hedge against inflation. Right, because you get cheaper labor is one Flood certain jurisdictions with liberal-type voters to keep those people into power. And the birth rate issue right, because in order for an economy to sustain, you have to have a positive birth rate. Correct, you have to be replacing more people than are dying, and I know in Europe that was an issue as well. Right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, europe, china, china.

Speaker 2:

China, and so do you buy into any of that stuff?

Speaker 1:

The only one that I buy into is the birth rate. You know, when people come into the United States, they cannot vote and the issue of voter fraud is almost a non-issue, despite what. What is said, I mean statistically. I mean William Barr, the previous attorney general, looked into it when Trump lost and just said there's nothing, there's nothing to go after. You know, because if you know wherever there was voter fraud, it was so minuscule that it has no effect on an election.

Speaker 2:

Isn't it too? Also, it's kind of a. It would be a bad move if it's just for voting purposes, because aren't most Hispanics conservative by nature?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think if you go through their values and all that, I would actually say that most Hispanics would associate more with the Republican Party and they voted more Trump this past election right. Yeah, they did, they did and they voted more Trump. So, yeah, you are right. I think if you took a Hispanic group, their core values would probably associate more with the Republican Party, but because historically they felt excluded by the Republican Party, they've leaned left. Now it seems like they're going back right.

Speaker 2:

Have you noticed a trend of a certain country, whether it be Central America, South America, immigrating more to America? Has that changed in your career? Are you seeing more people from El Salvador or certain?

Speaker 1:

areas than others. So I'd say the steady is Honduras and El Salvador. Mexico, I would say third Mexico actually has a pretty decent economy, especially compared to Honduras and El Salvador.

Speaker 2:

Kevin and I talk about this all the time he's Mexican so he's like man. He says man, we got a bad rap. He's like. Everybody thinks there's Mexicans across the board, Mexico's great right and most of the people that you see the Mexicans quote unquote that you see here are working restaurants, own the restaurants by now. They've been here for two or three generations now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's a restaurant that's near my office. It's a great success story and he's Mexican and he told me he, you know, in Mexico he owned this little pizza shop and he was delivering pizza on his little motorcycle. I mean now he owns six restaurants and like big restaurants throughout South Louisiana, and so it's awesome to see those kind of success stories. But yeah, I mean, compared to. I mean, you know, every country's got its issues, you know. But compared to Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico is doing pretty good and I think that's probably why they're number three. I'll tell you who we never get. I mean, I could probably count on one hand, um, Panama and Costa Rica. Really, we just do not.

Speaker 2:

No, we want to go to Costa Rica. We don't want Costa Rica. I want to come here.

Speaker 1:

I'll tell you what. Yeah, I went to Costa Rica last year and I'll tell you what. I went there.

Speaker 2:

I was like I see why now Um, but then we see things like that's on my list.

Speaker 1:

Maybe this summer I want to go to Costa Rica. Get it done, man. It was wonderful, yeah, but you do see things that happen. I'm sure y'all have seen things in the news like Venezuela is in turmoil. At one point, venezuela didn't even know who their president was. There was two people claiming to be the president. Hyper-inflation Hyper-inflation. Cuba is always, and things go up and down with Cuba.

Speaker 1:

We had a Haitian influx. I mean, it was like the president of Haiti got taken out by gangs. So when you see those kind of moments of upheaval in countries, you almost always see some sort of influx from there. Bangladesh we've had things where, all of a sudden, we're just getting floods from Bangladesh. I have to go look up what's going on in Bangladesh right now. So it's kind of cool what I do, because I get to learn about what's going on throughout the world. Ukraine and Russia you know, we all know, there's some issues going on with Ukraine and Russia. There was an influx of people. I hadn't heard that. I don't know. Yeah, there's influx of people coming from Ukraine, russia, and the reason you probably haven't heard that is because— I was kidding, oh, oh, you're talking about— the Zelensky meeting in the Oval Office You're talking about.

Speaker 1:

you haven't heard about the war. I thought you meant the influx. Yeah, there's something going on. You might want to look it up, you know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah yeah, my question too is you know a lot of people talk. Well, I think during the Trump presidency, or at least campaign, the Chinese were coming in from the southern border. Have you seen that?

Speaker 1:

I have, but not to anything that I would say that's notable. I mean, at any given day you're going to have people of all different nationalities. Afghanistan was another one, when you one, when Taliban took over again. I don't see that and I wouldn't say that's a regular occurrence that I see, but that's true.

Speaker 2:

What is the term like when you're fleeing the war zone? Is that a migrant Refugee? Refugee, okay, there's refugee types of visas right that you can apply for.

Speaker 1:

Right. And then there's also something called TPS temporary protected status which is more for like I don't know if you remember when Haiti this is probably like 12 years ago had a very big earthquake, I mean, they were rocked. So people that were in the United States you know Haitians like people going to school, universities, tourist visas, they had nowhere to go back to. They were issued temporary protected status.

Speaker 2:

Speaking of Haitians, can you talk about eating dogs and cats?

Speaker 1:

I can't, because my clients have said that's just not true, you know. So I don't know anything about it, and apparently none of my Haitian clients do either.

Speaker 2:

So what I mean, other than whether it's actually happened or not. Somebody, I think, I think the thing was somebody killed a duck or something and, and, and um, de-feathered it and cooked it, or something One of the ducks in the pond. I think that was another one of the things that some of the people in Ohio were talking about. How did this happen? Were there communities set up? Let's, let's, let's say that, whether it happened or not, there was a strong population of Haitians or some some type of culture, right? Um, how are areas set up around the country with huge populations of folks like this?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, it's interesting, and you know, I mentioned last time I was on the show that the second largest city in Honduras is Kenner, louisiana. Yes, and that is true, and everybody in Honduras knows that, everybody in Kenner knows that, and so it's obviously a phenomena, right? And I think about even myself, like how did I I say I grew up in New Orleans, but actually I grew up in Kenner and I was born in Honduras, so it's even true for me, but I'm not even sure exactly how that happened, except that when my mom left Honduras, she had some family here, and so I think that if you're going somewhere, you're looking for some sort of familiarity, and even if it's that third cousin that I once met at my quinceanera many years ago, it's like, well, at least I know somebody, and I think it must just grow from there.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so it's not a government force thing or a sanctuary city or whatever. I do want to talk about sanctuary cities, but I mean, think about the cajun population in louisiana, right, so you originally had nova scotians that came down here, but then a lot of the people that are here that are quote-unquote cajun actually came from france after. Yeah, so they need to come to america. There was already a french population here, yeah, and and the same thing I think happened with the Lebanese here there's a big Lebanese population in Lafayette.

Speaker 1:

Catholic.

Speaker 2:

Lebanese? Yeah, and I think it came from the Catholicism and it came from the French French Lebanon. There was already French speakers here, and so that's how it came. So once you establish a community, it's more open to others within that community, right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think you're 100% right. I think people are just looking for something familiar. You know anybody that's been to another country. Although it's exciting, you know, sometimes you do gravitate a little bit to what you're used to, you know, because that's the comfort. But Ohio's way, the hell up there. You know it all starts with one business. We said all these industries need migrant workers. One person went, people followed. I don't think proximity necessarily has that much to do with it. I mean, as you mentioned the— Still a bus ride away, I guess, or a train ride away, even before buses and trains. The Cajuns man, they took a long trip. They took a long trip, took a long trip and it was a dangerous trip. And look at where they ended up.

Speaker 2:

Is that a thing? Sanctuary cities.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know, I think. Well, it's one of those things. There's no official sanctuary city. Sanctuary City, you know, it's a term that's been given to certain cities and it goes back to this program called 287G, which allows some local law enforcement to do some enforcement of immigration law. There has been certain sheriffs throughout the country that just don't want to comply with that, and there's good reason not to Many times, because the sheriff ends up footing the bill for holding maybe, somebody that's accused of being undocumented and holding it in their own local jail, which the sheriff is in charge of the local jail, and so they don't want to spend all the money housing people.

Speaker 2:

And then you don't have space to put the guys that you're arresting on the streets of crimes.

Speaker 1:

That's exactly it. They don't get paid that much to do it. A lot of sheriffs are working on a pretty slim budget, so I think that's where sanctuary cities come from. Is that some places don't want to comply with that. There's other police. I mean, I was talking with the police officer last night and said a lot of police officers don't want to be the immigrant enforcement because if there's a large immigration population, the police need community confidence. Once they lose that confidence, nobody works with the police. They can't investigate things. No information, no information. So they don't. It's not necessarily always in their interest, especially if your city or jurisdiction has a large immigration population, to be the immigrant enforcer. You, you know police have a different perspective and they have a different motive than you know. Immigration officers, police require I mean police rely heavily, heavily on community involvement.

Speaker 2:

You were talking I want to touch on this earlier, when you were talking about the lack of discretion on the roundup. So you have probably people who have been here for 10, 15 years who are looked at no differently than someone who's been here for six months and maybe even have committed crimes. And so are you getting calls on people who they felt safe, they've been here, they look at themselves as a citizen but just never got their paperwork in order. Are those people calling you now to say, okay, I need to get my documents?

Speaker 1:

Yes, and remember, a lot of people just won't be able to. There's just nothing available for them. We are getting a lot of people to the person that you just mentioned that you know they've just been putting it off and they've been putting off because it costs money. You know we charge immigration charges. There's just funds involved with this. So what we're seeing is a lot of people are hiring us like green card holders that need to apply for citizenship. You know it's just one of those things like, well, I got my green card, I'm going to apply, but do I have a couple thousand dollars to pay the lawyer right now, to pay immigration? And now they're like, yeah, let me prioritize that. So we're seeing a lot of that. Not necessarily that's human nature, right, human nature?

Speaker 2:

yeah, we don't go replace that AC until we need it.

Speaker 1:

Right, that's exactly it, and I'll tell you. Around December, we kind of I don't want to say shut down, but our call volume drops because nobody wants to go pay their lawyer in December. You know they got kids, they got to buy, you know, gifts for their kids and things like that. So we're seeing a lot of that, though they're prioritizing that.

Speaker 2:

I heard something about a gold card. Are you familiar with this? Yeah, okay, so Trump wants to put in some type of gold card where you can pay $5 million and move your business to America.

Speaker 1:

I don't even know if it requires that you move your business to America, because so there's already something called an EB-1, which is a employment-based it's an investor visa where somebody can pay 500,000 or a million, not necessarily like write the check, invest, maybe get a loan, invest in Lafayette and have a business plan to employ a certain amount of US citizens over the next few years. Okay, that already exists. The gold card is a proposal that somebody can just buy it. You know, pay the government $5 million. So it's an interesting concept in that it will obviously be income for the United States.

Speaker 2:

You need to get some of those clients. Yeah, look, if y'all are watching, give me a note If you're going to pay the $5 million gold car, you could pay a nice attorney fee. Yeah, that's right. Woody's going to come in his helicopter next time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'll give everybody a ride, but there's no as he's kind of discussing it right now there's no requirement that the person create jobs. So it's an interesting concept. I mean. I do see benefits to it. I don't know how many people are going to be able to do it, but if they are watching, then give me a call.

Speaker 2:

Last time we talked, we had a clip that actually went pretty viral when we were talking about 90 Day, Fiance, and so are you still. Do you get any calls for people who are looking? They met someone online and they want to make them an American citizen.

Speaker 1:

It's pretty common actually it used to be when I started doing this that you know people are a little embarrassed like, so how'd y'all meet? You know, you got to prove they have a good faith relationship. Like, oh well, you know, we met online. You know, now it's so common that people are not embarrassed about it. It's just the reality of this world. There's lonely people and people are finding a way to connect and when you're online there's no borders and so, yeah, it's common.

Speaker 1:

People will meet somebody you know Philippines or Central South America and they go down and they fall in love and they got to figure out how to get them here and so they come to me and I help get them here. You know, the 90-day fiance it's a cool show but it's not particularly accurate. But that does happen and that's happening more and more. What are the steps they need to take? So if you're doing a fiance visa, first thing is you have to show that you have a good faith relationship. So if someone were to just meet somebody today and just be like you know what, I'm just going to bring them here, you can't do that.

Speaker 1:

Immigration is always looking for trafficking or things like that. It has to be a good faith relationship, you have to prove it's a good faith relationship. You have to prove that you've met in person within the last two years. You have to prove that you both have the legal ability to marry. So if there was previous marriages they had to have been divorced or maybe a widow or situation, and then they have to prove that they have the intent to marry within 90 days of entry. That's where the show kind of has fun, but it's not completely accurate. The show kind of makes it look like it's a 90-day trial period. That's not the case. You show kind of makes it look like it's a 90-day trial period. That's not the case. You have to sign something under oath saying when my fiance gets here, we intend to get married and have the ability to get married within 90 days. So those are the steps kind of in general.

Speaker 2:

They usually portray the Americans as the losers and then the foreigners as the hot ones. Right yeah, because America is such a great place and so you can be a loser. And then meet this bombshell and bring her over because she wants American citizenship and everybody knows she's going to dump them immediately after she gets her status right.

Speaker 1:

That's the passport bros. I don't know if you've heard of that. No, bros, I don't know if you've heard of that. There's like a phenomenon right now called passport bros, where people go, you know, some loser American goes to like Columbia or somewhere where there's like known to be hot girls and like, well, I'm a US citizen, I'm gonna get all these girls, you know. So it's, it's the passport bro phenomenon. You know the passport gets you this bombshell, you know. So. I don't know if that's that's, that's totally true, but you know it's fun to talk about, you know.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I'm going to look up hashtag passport bros.

Speaker 1:

Look it up, it's, it's a thing. It's a thing now.

Speaker 2:

And so at what point in the 90 day fiance do, would you recommend hiring a lawyer to facilitate the process?

Speaker 1:

You know that point comes when the person has decided you know what, we want to get married. And then I'll talk with the person Is it worth doing this fiance visa or should you get married in that person's country? And then you're doing a spousal visa and it's kind of similar, a few differences. But when the person comes to me and says I met this person, we want to get married and that's a definitive, that's when you need to talk to me, because I do have people sometimes come and say you know, I've met this person and we're thinking about maybe getting married, and it's just this very tangential relationship. It's like you know what. That's what you need to work on first Either get married or decide you'll get married. That's when I can come into play.

Speaker 2:

What I learned last time when we talked. I thought that people had free range, can travel to the US just like we can travel pretty much anywhere in the world, and you shot that down. You said, no, actually it's very hard to come to the US. So I'd imagine that in these fiancé situations you had to meet in person within two years. Most of the time that involves an American flying to whatever country that person is from. Versus them, come here, right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, most of the time it is the American has gone there. Not always. I can think of one client right now where they've flown back and forth, but it does usually require that it is usually that the case that the US goes to. I'm sorry, the US citizen goes to another country and that's where the passport bros kind of comes from is like if you got this US passport, it's powerful, you can travel almost anywhere very easily. That's not not every passport's like that, so the passport bro can go kind of wherever you know and he's kind of. And that's one of the privileges of being a US citizen being able to bring a loved one here to the US Passport bros.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, before we wrap up, you and I share a passion of endurance sports. You just ran Louisiana Marathon. Yep, kevin, and I actually did the half Nice, because I did. I don't know if I told you. I did New York this past November and I did this crazy race in Georgia, a full marathon off-road. Where do you see your next race? What's your next passion? Tell me about it.

Speaker 1:

Well, I'll tell you, one of the most proud things I did this past year was I did a full Ironman, which is a 2.1, 2.2 point, about a little over two miles swim, 112 mile bike and then a full marathon 26.2 miles. It took me 13 and change hours to do it. So me and a group of friends decided to do that. It was in the Woodlands, texas oh crazy. Yeah, it was a great experience and such a good experience. I ended up getting an Ironman tattoo.

Speaker 1:

Oh great, you still have your van. Yeah, I got the Sprinter van that's awesome.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so you know endurance sports translates into life. You know, when you have hard things everybody has hard things that they have to do, whether it's an emotional thing, a mental thing or everything, you can always draw on that, you know. It's like I can do hard things, you know, and so I don't know, I don't know if you have kind of the same thoughts, but you know marathons or triathlons they're more mental than than physical, because there is you do hit that breaking point and then when you just kind of believe I can do it, you can do it, it's.

Speaker 2:

It's such a wonderful thing, man. I run probably two or three marathons a year. I get people involved. You wouldn't believe how many people reach out to me on on social media that I've inspired them to run. That's awesome, which is crazy. It kind of gives me goosebumps right now, but where it comes from? I've been running for a couple years now. I've had many people ask me to do the iron man. The swimming scares the shit out of me and the, the biking is just this whole other animal right and and I could go bike on my peloton. I'm happy. I'm scared to get on public highways to to ride a bike. I've represented people who've been seriously injured in bike rides, so it's just one of my things. Maybe it's just a convenient excuse, but, that being said, I just delivered a speech to a bunch of kids and what I said is I challenge you all to do hard things and that's why I run yeah and that's why I take cold showers or go on a cold plunge.

Speaker 2:

Because exactly what you said, you said it perfect. If you can condition yourself to do hard things self-imposed, when the 50 hard things that you and I deal with every single day as business owners and lawyers confront you, you can meet it with a smile on your face, because you can't do to me what I haven't done to myself. That's right, that's cool, man. Well, congratulations on that.

Speaker 1:

I got one more thing, go ahead. Sure, it's just. You know you invited me to talk about immigration. I won't take a lot of your time, but I gave a talk to a bunch of attorneys this past year and they wanted me to talk to non-immigration lawyers about immigration, and so when I was preparing for that, one of the things I thought I was like you know what, let me look up what the definition of an immigrant is.

Speaker 1:

And I started in the Immigration and Nationality Act and for as long as I've been doing this, I've never looked up what the definition of an immigrant is.

Speaker 1:

And they do have a definition of an immigrant, but I'm not going to tell you what it is is.

Speaker 1:

And they do have a definition of an immigrant, but I'm not going to tell you what it is, because the definition of an immigrant in the Immigration Nationality Act is over 4,500 words and I thought that was fascinating and it's just a reflection of how intricate and complicated an immigration system is, and I think you know as a society we want to create this box like. This is just immigration and this is how it should fit. But when you're talking about people, different cultures of people, you know people that might be fleeing a Taliban or something like that. Everybody's circumstance. You know people that are falling in love, businesses, business needs, you know it. Just the complexity starts growing and growing and growing. And so I think the definition of immigration or an immigrant, the definition of an immigrant being over 4,500 words is just a reflection of the complexity of immigration law, and I just found that to be very fascinating, that is man and you do such a great job of humanizing immigrant and I've done criminal defense.

Speaker 2:

You do criminal defense and somebody would say how could you ever defend someone accused of a crime? And you got to say, well, wait a second, this is a very complex thing. You don't know their socioeconomic background, you don't know you got to understand what the constitution means with respect to people's rights, which protecting constitutional rights is even more important than allowing a criminal to go free, because those constitutional rights apply to all of us. So it's a very, very, very complex matter and that's why, if there's haters, you're so worried about me getting the haters, because we're talking about immigration. It's a discussion that needs to be had.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I appreciate that Because we have to understand the complexities, and people don't have to agree with it, but they have to at least consider it. That's it. As lawyers and as strong members of the community like we both are, we have to talk about the nuance and the deeper meaning of people and family Right, and so thank you for this discussion. Where can people find you?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, first of all, thank you for letting me have this talk, and the best way to contact me is to text me 225-400-9976. You can get us on our website, pwscotlawcom, and then there's chat on there, but best way is a text 225-400-9976.

Speaker 2:

Brave man giving out the texting. I love it. Yeah, thank you, man, appreciate you. Thank you, chaz, all right.

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Chaz Roberts

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