Attorney Reveals the Human Stories Behind Immigration

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Obviously, as the congresswoman laid out, there’s a lot of opposition from the other side. And they’re now saying — and perhaps there’s the facts on the ground — that this new idea from President Biden is potentially causing a pull factor. What are you actually seeing on the ground in the cases you have? And what are you hearing from colleagues who are on the border?

ANDREA MARTINEZ, IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY: So, I’m an immigration lawyer in Kansas City, as you mentioned, and I represent asylum seekers every day. In fact, I have been for the last decade or more. And what I see is that people are being pushed out of their country. It is more of a push factor than the pull factor that you mentioned, by far. And this is — the Biden bill does not incentivize people who are coming right now, in fact, because they had to have come before January 1. But it does protect people who are in desperate need of protection in the United States. And the asylum seekers who are fleeing from the countries that they’re fleeing from are doing so for a reason. And in many cases, the clients that I serve tell me: I never had any plans to come to the United States. I didn’t want to leave my home and my family and the people that I love. I had to. I was forced out. And so one of the big parts of this bill is this funding for establishing and reestablishing the rule of law and the justice systems of the countries that we’re seeing a lot of our refugees coming from. Also, I am in — I’m very supportive of the bill’s path to citizenship for the 11 million-plus people who are already in the United States, because, really, what are we doing with these people? They’re here. They’re here right now. They have been here. Many of them have family, U.S. citizen family members and children. And it’s not like we are safer by them not having documents. The U.S. citizens in this country are not safer because our undocumented neighbors don’t have driver’s licenses. In fact, we’re less safe if they can’t get driver’s licenses. And, overall, I think that this bill is very needed. Just like we update our cell phones every day, we need an update to a very outdated immigration system. The last time we have had a major immigration reform was 1986, under a Republican administration, by the way. And I…

AMANPOUR: Yes.

MARTINEZ: One thing Republican members of Congress I think are afraid of are losing potential votes through this bill and through a legalization program like this. But I will say, from my experience with my clients, many are very conservative, socially conservative. They’re conservative people that would vote Republican if given a chance to vote. So, I think Republicans actually have a very big potential voting bloc if they treat this group right and if they join in this important, important bill.