2020 AILA Conference Keynote: Senator Tim Kaine

[Tsang logo splash]

[0:03] Hi! Welcome to Tsang & Associates. It’s an exciting week. 

It’s AILA’s 2020 virtual conference. I’m gonna do a review for each session. Well, not every session, but the sessions that I’m attending, and we’re gonna be sharing it with you.

Now, if you’re not familiar with AILA,it’s American Immigration Lawyer Association. It’s the largest immigration lawyer association in the United States; probably in the world. Each year, thousands of attorneys around the world will be gathering to discuss the pressing immigration issues of the day, discussing strategies and tips, and AILA will be inviting the top immigration lawyers on these subject matters to present their findings.

Now before we get started, a quick disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this video are solely mine even though I am an AILA member. My opinions do not represent the opinions of AILA organization, nor even the opinions of the speakers themselves. You can download the original video and presentation from AILA University so you can fact-check everything I’m saying.

My goal is to present a short condensed summary of the presentations that I witnessed and also express some kind of my opinion. If you like this kind of video, please subscribe, follow and you can also look to AILA University. They provide awesome content. Now, let’s get started.

[1:12] Day one, Session one: AILA has invited Senator Tim Kaine to kick off the conference with a keynote. Now, I love these keynote addresses because it really sets the stage for the rest of the conference in the next four days. It really puts into perspective the global situation and what we’re facing at hand. Typically it’s held in the largest ballroom at the conference and with thousands and thousands of attorneys all there watching, clapping, and sharing.

Now Senator Tim Kaine was presenting this virtually. He started out his keynote by talking about his relation with AILA and immigration as a whole. He came from an immigrant family himself. He’s been a Senator since 2013 so about 7 years now, and a lot of his members on his team are all AILA members as well and so he has a lot of respect for AILA.

[1:55] One of the most recent things that he did was the DACA reform bill that landed on President Trump’s desk ready for him to sign into law, but he didn’t and that was the one that’s going to completely reform all the deferred action individuals, creating a pathway to citizenship, granting the government $25 billion to enforce border security, but ultimately it wasn’t signed. But this just shows that he was really involved with immigration and he’s constantly pushing forward. 

[2:20] The key takeaway of Senator Tim Kaine’s presentation really is about globalist versus nationalist and it’s not really between Democrat or Republican and I know we’re used to seeing things on the media and paper about Republicans trying to get rid of all the immigrants and Democrats trying to allow everybody in and that’s really not the situation. Him being a senator for the past seven years, he’s worked with different administrations and he’s constantly pushing different bills regarding immigration and trying to talk about how to reform immigration and there are people on both sides that really want to improve immigration.

[2:53] For example, he shows that economists from both parties recognize that immigration creates a boom in the economy and Republicans desperately want a boom in the economy especially given this time. And he really puts in perspective that it’s really about Globalists and Nationalists and this is a very new phenomenon and it’s two different camps and schools of thought. Nationalists think that in order to solve the problems we face today, it’s important to put up the walls, dig down the moats, and really solve the problem by ourselves, on our own. Globalists, on the other hand, think that we need to lower the wall and solve problems together as a global community and both sides have good points:

[3:30] Issues like the pandemic and global warming are not something that you can just put up a wall and solve on your own. We are all in this world together. Other issues like fiscal policy, welfare, those are issues that you can tackle individually and it might make sense to put up a wall and solve internally, but it’s not one and the same. These positions are not party-specific. You can have a Nationalist on the Democrat side and you can have a Globalist on the Republican side. It just so happens that this [Trump] administration, maybe one of the first, is a strong Nationalist and they have been trying to put up borders and trying to kick out all the immigrants in every way possible and they are trying to solve their problems their way.

[4:12] So that was the overarching main point of Tim Kaine’s speech. He goes in-depth talking about all the different problems we face this year and throughout this administration.

He actually mentions a few things that I didn’t even know. I didn’t see it on any of the USCIS updates or the AILA updates, but basically, he told us that USCIS recently canceled the contract for third-party vendors to be printing the green cards and they’re bringing it in-house now. That’s a terrible idea on its very own. Anytime the government tries to cancel contract from third-party vendors and try to do things in-house, typically it ends up with excessive delays and processing because that’s not what they’re good at, right? It just makes sense. Let the printer company do the printing. You yourself focus on what you’re good at, right? The government agency, USCIS, your chief responsibility is to adjudicate these applications. Make sure somebody qualifies. Make sure somebody doesn’t qualify. You’re a benefit organization and you’re a vetting organization. You are not a printing organization and you’re not a mailing organization, right? Every time you mail stuff, sometimes it goes to the wrong person. It gets delayed. Terrible idea, but it’s especially bad right now because of the pandemic as well as the furlough and he is quite suspicious that it was done mistakenly, right?

 [5:20] Based on everything he’s seen in this [Trump] administration, it’s almost done intentionally. Right when they’re at a time of doing the furlough, laying off almost half of the people at USCIS, and there’s a pandemic going on so that people cannot go to the printing houses, well, then green cards are not going out. That’s really bad news for a lot of people because a green card is so important.

It’s basically your very existence. The documents that validate that you are able to be in this country. Without it, you can’t, many people cannot travel without it. People cannot work. Without it, people can’t even get their driver’s license. It’s a very, very important documentation. It’s like your birth certificate almost, right? It’s your document that allows you to exist in this country and to engage in all activities in this country and a lot of times, um, the “Karens” of the day, right? They’re like, “Show me your documentation.” Well, that’s your green card and so if you don’t have it because of the delay, well, then they have legitimate right to discriminate against you.

[6:16] With all these civil rights things going on, you cannot discriminate against sex, gender, race, national origin, but you can legally discriminate against whether or not you have immigration papers, right? That’s the law. You have to have a green card or work permit in order to work. Well now, if the government is taking it in-house and something that was originally taking about two months or a month becomes six months to a year, you bet that’s gonna cause some delays.

[6:41] But not everything is negative. Overall Senator Tim Kaine’s keynote speech is largely inspirational, is largely hopeful and optimistic. It really brings together the immigration community talking about how important AILA is in solving these global problems and talking about how to solve specific problems like the border security; like, there are problems… there are problems in the vetting process and they try to tackle it and him being in Congress is constantly working with AILA and the immigration community as a whole. 

He mentions again and again that the American public believes there is a need for immigration reform and even though it might not happen with this particular administration, the next administration will probably have a really solid path going forward because it really puts immigration in the spotlight, whether it’s the next four years or the next eight years. But people are working together and that’s the most important thing.

[7:31] Alright. So that wraps up Day one, Session one: Senator Tim Kaine’s keynote address. If you’ve never been to AILA’s national conference before after each session typically all the attorneys will get together and ask the speaker questions. They will ask each other questions. They’ll discuss the issue at hand it’s a super fun time networking event before the next session starts. Now since we’re not at the conference, but I’m pretty much treating as if I’m at the conference for the next four days, if you have any ideas or suggestions, please leave a comment below or email us or call us. Just let us know your thoughts and we’ll be happy to engage with you again.

[8:02] A huge shout out to AILA University for putting together this conference on such a short notice, especially given the pandemic, as well as all the speakers that carved out their time and prepared this presentation to help educate the rest of the AILA community on these important topics. I know I personally gain a lot from it and I go every single year.

Now for the viewers, if you like this video or are interested in more videos like this, please subscribe, leave a comment, let us know what other things that you want to see, we’ll be happy to create more videos that are like this. 

Have a great rest of the conference. Take care. Bye-bye.