Matthew Kolken | How Can We Fix The Immigration Problem In The United States? | OAP #44
Chase Geiser is joined by Matthew Kolken.
Matthew L. Kolken is a trial lawyer with experience in all aspects of United States Immigration Law – including deportation defense before Immigration Courts throughout the United States, appellate practice before the Board of Immigration Appeals, the U.S. District Courts, and U.S. Courts of Appeals.
He is an elected member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association's Board of Governors where he has been a member since 1997. He is admitted to practice in the courts of the State of New York, the United States District Court for the Western District of New York, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second and Ninth Circuits.
Mr. Kolken has received the highest AV peer rating by Martindale-Hubbell, has been named a "Super Lawyer" in Upstate New York by Super Lawyers magazine, was listed by Business First of Buffalo as being among the “Legal Elite of Western New York," and has received a "Superb" rating and "Client's Choice" award on Avvo.com. The New York Law Journal has recognized him as a "Lawyer Who Leads by Example" for his work providing pro bono legal services to unaccompanied refugee children, and he is the recipient of the 2018 Marquis Who's Who in American Law Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. Mr. Kolken was also awarded the American Immigration Lawyers Association Upstate New York Chapter's Equal Justice Under the Law Peter J. Murrett III Pro Bono Award in recognition for community service, and the Erie County Bar Association's Pro Bono Award in recognition and appreciation for legal services performed in immigration matters before the Court.
Mr. Kolken has appeared nationally on FOX News, MSNBC, and CNN. His legal analysis has been solicited by the Washington Post's Fact Check of the immigration statements of Secretary Hillary Clinton, then Presidential candidate Donald Trump, and the immigration status of the parents of First Lady Melania Trump. His opinions on immigration law have been published in Forbes Magazine, Bloomberg, The Los Angeles Times, Business Insider, and FOX News among others. He has been an invited speaker at AILA's annual conference on grounds of removability, is the author of the Deportation and Removal Blog on ILW.com, where he is a member of the advisory board of the Immigration Daily, an online immigration news periodical with more than 35,000 readers. He is also a prominent immigration reform activist having been ranked as the most influential person on Twitter in the area of Immigration Law.
EPISODE LINKS:
Chase's Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/RealChaseGeiser
Matthew's Twitter: https://twitter.com/mkolken
They are easy, but because they are hard, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
A date which will live in infamy.
All right, here we have a dream.
Good night and good luck.
Hey, hey, hey, it's Matthew Culkin on One American Podcast.
How are you, sir?
I'm doing well.
Thanks for having me.
I'm just trying to talk to you like we weren't just having a conversation right before we went live.
Fair enough.
So what's your scoop, man?
Well, I'm a rattle-rouser and an immigration lawyer and a widower and a father of twins.
That's my deal.
Wow, twins.
Boys, girls, both.
Boy and a girl.
They're almost teenagers now.
So you name them Luke and Leia or what?
Close.
I keep their names private for the names after royalty.
What if I had guessed it right?
Would that have just really pissed you off?
like it's supposed to be a secret that's some funny stuff It's like in Space Balls when he's like, what's the password?
And he's like, one, two, three.
I haven't seen that movie in a long time, but I guarantee you my Schwartz is as big as yours.
That's right.
I love that movie, but it's a good one.
So how did you get into immigration law?
Pretty easy and fast story.
My father was an immigration lawyer.
So when I graduated from law school in 96, I started clerking for him.
Sat for the bar, passed it, thankfully.
And it was just a great opportunity to have my father be my mentor and ultimately my partner.
And he just recently retired after, gosh, he's just about to turn 83 and just retired in February.
So 55 years of practice.
Wow, congratulations to him.
That's exciting.
Well, so what's he going to do with all his time now that he's retired?
Well, right now he's actually watching my twins.
They're going to camp and he and my mom have got them.
So it's a nice little break to be able to relax for a couple weeks.
So that's awesome.
So in terms of immigration law, is there like a specialty or an emphasis that you have?
What kind of cases are you working on?
I've got a full spectrum practice, but I've really made a name in deportation defense.
I'm sort of a hired gun.
I go all across the country to stop people's deportations.
I like to say that I represent the Constitution of the United States.
If the government wants to deport my client, they're going to have to do it the right way and they're going to have to get through me.
So what are, I'm just totally ignorant of this.
I mean, obviously, there's a lot of controversy around immigration, just generally speaking.
And, you know, I guess the left sort of makes it look like the right doesn't want anybody to immigrate here.
And then the right makes it look like the left just wants to let anybody in, right?
Which is sort of a gross exaggeration on both sides.
So from a practical standpoint, what is actually happening?
And how do you think it should be?
Or how does the Constitution suggest that it should be?
Well, obviously Congress makes the laws.
So Congress can make the law whatever they want it to be.
With respect to the political divide, I don't really think that either party is really genuine on the issue of immigration.
Democrats benefit from there being no immigration reform to a certain extent because they can use it as a cudgel during the election years to say that if you don't vote for us, you're never going to get out of the shadows or your family member is going to get deported.
They use it as a scare tactic.
And there is the flip side of that where Republicans say that all that the Democrats want are new voters.
But realistically speaking, you don't just become a citizen.
There's a long process to become an American citizen.
You first have to become a green card holder.
And then once you have your green card, you have to have that for five years.
And after you have it for five years, then you have to apply for naturalization.
The whole thing can take a decade, realistically speaking.
I mean, or the better part of a decade.
And then from the Republicans, they're a little bit more, I would say, ideologically pure on the issue of immigration.
And they're not lying to you.
They want to deport people that are here illegally.
And they want to limit who can come to the country.
And I think that their policies play out their stated desires.
So what's wrong with the system as it is?
Do you think that it takes too long for people to legally become citizens of the United States?
Because 10 years, I mean, that's like one seventh of a lifetime.
Well, I don't think that's a problem with regards to how long it takes to naturalize.
And the reason why is I think that citizenship is something that you should earn over time.
Prove that you're an individual that maintains good moral character, that you've been paying your taxes, that you don't have any types of convictions in your record that negatively reflect on you as a human being.
Citizenship is special.
You know, you're not, unless you're born in this country or if you automatically derive because of your parents, if you were born outside of the country, it's something that should be aspired to.
And a lot of my clients that are green card holders never apply for naturalization to become a citizen.
It's not something that everyone wants to do.
Did you just have to renew the green card every five years?
It's 10 years, actually.
Well, it depends.
If you've got a conditional green card, that's a two-year green card.
And then you have to file a petition.
They have the conditions removed.
And then it would go to a five-year, a five-year green card.
But then they can issue them for 10 years.
But in any event, regardless, that's just the validity of the card.
It's not the validity of your status.
It's sort of like your passport expiring.
If your passport expires, you don't stop being a citizen of the United States.
You just don't have a travel document.
But as to answer the other part of your question as to what's wrong with immigration, our current system, which was designed when Bill Clinton was president, it's all stick and no carrot.
And it doesn't serve the needs of American citizens, nor the employers of this country that need labor.
And I know that there's a very large contingency of people that say, well, you know, people that are in this country should be doing those jobs.
They're not going to do those jobs.
And there are industries that will be completely crippled without immigrant labor.
And I'm not talking about lawyers.
I mean, we got plenty of lawyers.
And although you can come to the United States as a lawyer, I know a few foreign nationals that are lawyers in the United States.
But if you don't want to pay $50 for a tomato, you better thank your lucky stars that you have immigrant labor.
And there needs to be a system that is very, very simple where Congress designates specific industries that the U.S. Department of Labor has already assessed as being hampered by a recognized labor shortage and say,
okay, if you're an employer in that industry, all you have to do is file a form to designate yourself as an employer, like a foreign worker, employer, whatever you want to call it.
And then individuals can come to the United States with a specific employment-based visa.
You just apply for that and then you come to the country and it only allows you to work in one of those industries as long as you can prove that you're qualified.
And make it simple.
Match up labor with employers and make it so, and then you have to follow those employers, make sure that they're actually hiring individuals that are authorized to work in the United States.
And if they're screwing around, borrow them from the system.
Now they're going to lose their labor force.
That's a really simple way to do it.
And honestly, it's long overdue.
So I think that one of the sort of implications, though, I'm not sure that it's ever been explicitly said from the left side of the argument is that, look, you know, these people are practically refugees that are kind of pouring over the border.
And it's so expensive and difficult to get into this country legitimately that if we don't accept them, it's like a humanitarian crisis.
And I don't know if that's true or not.
But so I wanted to ask you, like, if I'm born in Mexico poor and I'm 25 miles from the border or whatever, and I want to legally come to the United States and stay for as long as possible without breaking any laws.
What does that look like?
It's incredibly difficult, incredibly difficult.
And the program that I just outlined, which would be very simple to design and implement and monitor, would facilitate all of that legal immigration.
And more so, it would alleviate the burden of customs and border protection because the vast majority of the individuals that'd be coming to the United States would be coming lawfully.
And the people that would be sneaking are ones that are the bad hombres, to quote President Trump, the ones that have particularly serious crimes that mean to do us harm.
Now, the other thing is that if you want to go through that process, it's going to require vetting.
You're going to have to apply for a visa.
You're going to have to get your fingerprints taken.
There's going to be clearance that will have to be done.
We'll know who these individuals are to a certain extent.
I mean, obviously, there's always the ability to gain the system, but the vast majority of the people wouldn't need to.
And the way I have always phrased it is: the best wall is a legal immigration system that works for everybody.
And you don't even have to make it so that system, let's say hypothetically, if the Republicans are going to dig in their heels and say, We don't want new Democratic voters.
So, make it so that these individuals can come to the United States with this type of visa, but they're not allowed to adjust status from inside of the U.S. to a green card.
So, they can't get a green card from inside of the country to circumvent the normal, lengthy process that is required, but potentially doesn't necessarily preclude them from getting a green card down the line through, I don't know, some earned pathway.
Who knows?
See, the challenge I have with that, though, is that let's just say somebody comes over here and they're legally allowed to work for five years in a specific field or industry, right?
And then while they're here, they maybe have a kid, right?
And then their kid is a U.S. citizen, but then they lose their job or the five years goes up and they have to go back to Mexico.
Their kid's a U.S. citizen.
It's like, man, that's going to create like tricky familial dynamics, right?
Right.
Huge problems.
And the way the law is set up, that the child can't sponsor their parent until the child is 21 years of age.
And I mean, realistically speaking, I mean, depending on what industry, especially if there's a series of industries that have been designated that allow foreign labor to jump from job to job, and they're not indentured servants to have been tied to a specific employer, they have the opportunity to go to whatever employers have signed up for this process.
They may be able to get another job, especially in the farming industry.
I mean, they're always looking for people, always.
Right.
Yeah, I don't think there are many unemployed illegal immigrants, but maybe I'm way off base on that, but it doesn't seem to me that there are.
They work their asses off.
Let me tell you something.
I mean, this country from the beginning of this country was built on the backs of immigrant labor.
I mean, all of the monuments of this country were built by immigrants.
I mean, legal immigrants.
Yeah.
And it was easier for them to come here to do that back then.
So if you, man, and maybe this is my privilege speaking, for lack of a better term, but if I want to go to Mexico, I just, I just, I just get a passport and I fucking go to Mexico, right?
And obviously, you know, visiting a country is different from inhabiting one for a period of time.
But I still don't, I still, as an American who is actively interested and constantly observing politics, I still don't know what you have to do to come here and get a green card.
Like, how expensive is it actually?
Like, what's the deal?
All right.
Okay.
I'll do the nutshell, the nutshell version of what you need to do to get a green card through an employer.
Thanks for humoring me, by the way.
I appreciate you.
Not a problem.
Through an offer of employment or through family sponsorship.
Let's do employment.
Let's just assume there's no family here already.
The worst case scenario.
Okay.
All right.
So the employment-based categories are broken down into tiers.
And depending on what your qualifications are, will determine what tier you're in, and that will determine how long of a wait you have.
But before you can determine if you have a visa, because basically in order to come to the U.S. with a green card, you have to have an immigrant visa, a green card visa to be able to come to the U.S. To get that green card visa, there's a prerequisite.
The U.S.-based employer who wants to sponsor you, in most instances, has to first go through the U.S. Department of Labor to determine, to be able to determine that they've undergone a recruitment campaign to try to find U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents to do the job.
Once they get that labor certification, then they can file a petition, an immigrant petition for alien worker with U.S. citizenship and immigration services.
Once that petition is approved, notification will go to the council abroad, if there's a visa available, and then they can apply for that visa.
And then once they have that visa, they can come to the United States and they're admitted as a green card specifically to work for that employer.
But in certain categories, the wait can be a decade.
I mean, if you're from India or China, you're not getting a, in a lot of categories, here, I'll just let me pull up the visa bulletin.
And it changes every month.
So every month you get new numbers.
Let's see.
Hopefully my computer's working.
Okay, so employment-based, first preference, that's the priority workers.
Second preference are members of professions holding advanced degrees and persons of exceptional ability.
Third is skilled workers, professionals, and other workers.
Fourth are special immigrants.
And then fifth is employment creation.
So for China, if for China, we're talking from China and you're a family, yeah, China.
It's mostly current, ironically, but that's because of the pandemic.
But if you're from China and you are second or third preference, it's a three-year wait for second preference.
It's a two-year wait for third preference, one-year wait for other workers.
And so third preference is like, say you want to be a landscaper, right?
Yeah, that's really hit the stereotype on the head.
So you got to apply and wait three years while you're desperately trying to figure out how to take care of your family in Mexico.
Ironically, right now, Mexico is current for all of those for employment base, which is very, it's unprecedented.
India, but India, which is a large percentage of the employment-based immigration, because they're coming over to fill as professionals, as skilled workers, members of professions holding advanced degrees, things along those lines.
Second preference, which is advanced degrees and people of exceptional ability, people that we want here.
It's a 10-year plus wait.
So, I mean, if you're from India.
Well, on the other hand, on the other hand of that, if we just take everybody's best people, it's good for us.
But man, that really prevents them from fixing their own country.
Well, it's not my problem.
You're right.
You're right.
I understand.
I'm an American first guy, too.
But it doesn't, you know, if we don't, but as long as the rest of the world sucks, it seems to me that we may have an immigration problem in the United States.
Well, I think the rest of the world is always going to suck.
And this country is kind of circling the drain these days.
I mean, especially with what just happened today with the infrastructure bill, if it points through the house, if it gets through the house and they go through reconciliation, there's no way that we are ever going to pay this back.
No chance ever.
It's mathematically impossible.
There's more debt than there is money.
So, I mean, when does hyperinflation, and now we're on a tangent, obviously, but hyperinflation is going to kick in.
And once hyperinflation kicks in, it's over.
Yeah, they'll blame it on crypto somehow.
And then they'll make crypto illegal because everybody's going to just move to it naturally.
I think that there's stuff in there to tax crypto at a disproportionate rate now.
Yeah, I don't know the details, but I know that there were some antagonistic attitudes in it, but it's not being reflected in my portfolio.
So it must be pretty vanilla.
Normally when bad news happens like that, there's just a crash and it's up.
I'm a Gen Xer.
Crypto is still a little bit out of my wheelhouse.
I don't really understand.
Well, I'm a millennial and I don't understand it either.
I don't give a money at it.
Because I don't understand fiat either.
Fiat doesn't make any damn sense to me either.
You're telling me that this piece of paper is worth, you know, I don't even know what to compare it to because it's not based on any standard.
No.
No.
Yeah.
And I think the gold standard flipped when I was a kid.
I was under Nixon.
71.
Was it 71?
Yeah.
That sounds right.
I mean, I was just an infant, basically.
I think everybody was calling our bluff on how much we were spending in Vietnam, like France and these other countries that we had all the gold reserves and they were demanding gold in exchange for U.S. dollars.
And we didn't have the gold because we printed.
And Nixon had to pull us off the gold standard because we couldn't honor the exchange.
Did you happen to catch Biden today, his press conference?
No, I did not catch his press conference today.
Didn't he like wander off his sidewalk?
I heard that.
I didn't see that.
I didn't see it.
But I mean, whatever.
There was one thing that he actually said, because they were asking about withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and whether or not because of the fact that the terrorists are taking over the country again and are overwhelming the Afghani militaries, whether or not he would reverse course.
And he's like, no, we spent enough money there.
And I'm like, I agree with that.
I mean, I don't want to spend any more money on foreign wars.
They've been going on for most of my adult life.
Yeah, it seems to me, and I don't know what the Intel community knows and if there was some very important and highly classified reason for these wars, which seem to me to have been ridiculous.
But it seems to me that it would have been totally acceptable for us to just go over there with special forces, find Osama bin Laden, and just assassinate him and then be done with it.
You would have thought.
I mean, I don't know if he escaped to Afghanistan.
I think he did escape to Afghanistan immediately.
He was originally in Afghanistan.
Yeah, that's why we went in.
It's like Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda was all you heard before it was the Taliban.
Well, but Bush went into Iraq first.
That's my recollection.
I think he went to Afghanistan first.
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure they went to Afghanistan.
I don't think I don't remember anymore.
And then we invaded Iraq right after that because the false claims of weapons of mass destruction.
It was either bad intel or a lie.
I don't know which, but I'm pretty sure that's how that happened.
But it's neither here nor there.
My point is, just why don't you just, why don't you just assassinate the guy responsible for the terrorist attack instead of being in a war for 20 years?
For the first time ever, we have people who are at, who are serving overseas in combat whose parents are also serving overseas in combat at the same time.
I just got done reading.
I binged all four of, I don't know if you've heard of Jack Carr.
He's a superhero.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, he is.
He's a real life superhero.
He's a Navy SEAL sniper who, yeah, and he just wrote, not just.
He's been right after he retired.
He wrote four novels.
And one of the last novels talks all about this issue about 9-11 and who really started 9-11 and whether or not.
And, you know, apparently there is potentially might have been a larger connection to Iran, Iran, than what we've been led to believe.
But in any event, read his books.
They're fucking great.
I'll have to do that.
I feel like that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I do like that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
Just speed reading can put it down.
I do books on tape.
And the narrator that does, I don't know if you do Audible or not, but there's this.
Yeah, I do.
There's a oh gosh, I can't think of the name of the narrator.
The narrator that does Carr's books is one of the best in the business.
So I sort of jump from book to book based on a couple narrators that I follow.
So that's how I found Jack Carr.
Okay.
And he's got a good book.
Check that out.
What's it called?
Do you know off the top of your head?
Put you on the spot.
You call yourself a real fan.
You call yourself a real fan.
I know.
I'll have to go on the Google and see what Al Gore has.
That's okay.
I'll find it and put it in the show notes.
That's what Danger Close podcast.
Ooh, sounds good.
It's on officialjackcar.com.
Shout out.
Shout out to Jack Carr.
Awesome.
You should send him an invoice for that.
See if you should.
I should.
But I think I actually owe him because the amount of pleasure I got out of reading his four books, I got out, I'm way ahead of this equation.
Yeah.
You know, honestly, just kind of on the topic of Afghanistan and Iraq, my whole, my biggest issue with what happened after 9-11 is really the Patriot Act.
I don't know what you think about that, but it seems to me that domestic surveillance is a major issue and really catalyzing a lot of our other problems right now.
Well, I'm a libertarian.
I've voted for two Republicans in my entire life and no Democrats.
And I've done libertarian.
George Herbert Walker Bush, my first vote ever in 1988.
And then based on what I saw, and I was a two-time Gary Johnson voter, was actually asked to be a delegate for him in the state of New York and really, really thought seriously about voting third party up until the impeachment trial.
And I saw the first impeachment trial.
And what I saw, I just thought was basically just political retribution.
There was literally nothing to justify what they were doing.
And hey, hey, hey, there we are.
I don't know what happened there, but we got it fixed.
We got it going.
All right.
So in any case, I got a plan B. So yeah, you said the first one was HW.
Yeah, first one was HW, and then I voted for Trump.
And I voted for Trump because of the first impeachment trial.
I just thought it was such a sham and it really pissed me off.
You voted for him in 20, you didn't vote for him in 2016, but you did.
I voted for Gary Johnson two elections in a row.
What is Aleppo?
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, it was embarrassing.
But I mean, you know, that's okay.
Everybody has gas, man.
I just like to tease him for it.
I'll be honest with you.
When they asked the question and he said, what is Aleppo?
I was thinking to myself, yeah, what the fuck's Aleppo?
I didn't have any answer either.
Right.
Well, if you're an American first sort of minded person, it's like, why would you go fuck anyway?
Well, I mean, and why is it that they asked him such a specific name of an area rather than the country?
I mean, it's like, come on.
Right.
They were trying to get him in a gotcha.
But I mean, Gary Johnson wasn't, it was a flawed candidate.
I mean, bottom line.
Yeah.
He just.
He's fun.
Oh, yeah.
I love Gary Johnson.
And I wish I would have lived under his governorship in New Mexico.
From what I was, I think he got a balanced budget when he was in there.
Yeah, almost unheard of these days.
Possible.
Possible.
Okay.
So, so, too, and then libertarian all the way.
So what kind of, what, what, it's funny because when you, when I, when I hear immigration lawyer, I don't, it doesn't immediately scream libertarian or anything other than left.
So are you the only one?
Pretty much.
There's a few.
There's a few.
Do they hate you?
Do they all hate you?
Oh, they absolutely despise me.
Why?
Do they hate you because you're a better lawyer than they are or just because you're not?
They do.
They do hate me because I'm a better lawyer.
And I know that's a pompous thing for me to say, but I'm a fucking better lawyer on there.
Yeah.
And I'm going to pat myself on the back.
I had a 10-year win streak broken in the third year of the Trump administration.
So it took Trump about two and a half years to finally give me a loss.
And I was undefeated for the entirety of Obama's term.
I don't like to lose.
So what does the illegal deportation that you fight look like?
What are some of the, what's the shit that they try to pull?
Oh, well, they don't have to do anything.
They don't have to pull anything.
The government literally can just walk into court with no preparation, with doing minimal work whatsoever.
And it's all being rubber stamped.
But I mean, that's my job.
My job is to move the needle.
And you have to come in and you have to be able to present your case in a way that's going to make the judge want to help your client.
And so much of it is fact-based.
There's a lot of law there.
And chances are, if you're arguing the law, you're going to lose.
It's just as simple as that because the law doesn't really necessarily favor the immigrant in most instances.
So as a lawyer, how do you win a case without arguing the law?
Well, I mean, you have to argue statutory eligibility for the relief that you're requesting.
But a lot of the cases that I have are criminal or criminal aliens, individuals that have been convicted, that have green cards that have been living here legally and might have been convicted of a crime that subjects them to the institution of removal proceedings.
And then you have to break down, you have to break down what the precedent says with respect to that specific conviction.
And a lot of times there's no law that guides you and you have to do your own independent analysis and then present that to the court in a persuasive manner.
So what kind of minimum crime do you have to commit in order to be eligible for deportation?
Like a DUI?
Like CEO?
Well, there's some DUIs, aggravated DUIs can potentially be considered to be a crime involving moral turpitude.
So basically a crime involving moral turpitude within one conviction for a crime involving moral turpitude within five years of your lawful entry to the United States subjects you to removal and there's really no way to waive that.
After five years, you need two crimes involving moral turpitude to be removable.
So what's the minimum crime?
Some assaults, some simple assaults.
A crime involving moral turpitude is one that is basically one of the sins, something that is morally reprehensible, something that society frowns upon.
It requires a mensrea, something where you have to intend to do the evil.
It's not a statutory crime like going like speeding.
It doesn't make a difference if you were speeding because you needed to get your child to the hospital.
You were speeding, you get pulled over.
So there's no mensrea there.
There's no intent required.
So typically an intent is required and the minimum conduct necessary has to be something that would ordinarily be frowned upon.
Theft is almost always a crime involving moral turpitude.
And there's some exceptions for that.
It's called the petty theft exception.
There's some certain simple possession convictions for marijuana, 30 grams or less.
That's most likely not going to, if you have one, you're fine.
But one gram of cocaine, you're gone.
No waiver.
It's too bad because the South American shit's really good.
Yeah, well, I'll take your word for it.
I'm just kidding.
I'm pretty sure whatever I've ever put up my nose was made in somebody's kitchen.
So does anybody ever tell you that you look like Hugo Morgenson?
I feel like I'm hanging out with Aragorn right now.
Well, no, I've never heard that.
I'll take it, though, because I'm a huge fan.
I'm a huge fan.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, my wife would totally have a crush on you.
Yeah.
I guess it's better to be Aragorn than the guy in Eastern Promises.
What's Eastern Promises?
Oh, that's, you've never seen Eastern Promises?
No, I've never even heard of it, man.
And I'm into that, all that dorky stuff.
Eastern Promises.
That's with Vigo Mortensen, and he ends up having a naked fight scene in a Russian bathhouse.
Full frontal.
Your wife.
Wow.
That's awesome.
I'll have to let her know about that.
Next time she's hounded me.
I got something for you to watch.
Just give me 10 more minutes.
I'm still working.
Meantime, watch this.
Well, to go back to your previous question about Patriot Act, the second that came out, I went full Tim Foyle hat, like full blown.
I'm like, Alex Jones.
Yeah, I'm like, this is the end of America.
Well, you weren't wrong.
I fucking wasn't wrong.
See, the prognosis is always correct.
It's the timeline that people get wrong.
Like, Schiff has been correct about collapse for like 10 years, 15, 20 years.
But they always say he's always acting like it's going to happen tomorrow.
And it's like, you know, maybe it's 50 years from now.
You're right.
The man, it's like.
Yeah, I was, I was, I thought there was going to be martial law.
Like when the planes hit the tower, I'll never forget that night going out and thinking to myself, they're going to declare martial law.
There's going to be tanks on the streets.
Especially in the city.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I grew up watching one of my favorite movies as a kid was Red Dawn.
So I was like, I love Red Dawn.
The 80s one is awesome.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it's a classic.
Patrick Swayze.
Right.
I'm waiting for the chain-like fences and avenge me on the whole thing.
I'm dying for the whole thing.
I forgot about that scene.
That's classic.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So that's what I thought was going to be happening within short order.
They were going to basically suspend the habeas corpus.
There was going to be martial law, the surveillance, the whole thing.
And I had to dig through it.
Turns out it was just the Patriot Act.
Yeah.
I mean, very vanilla.
So help me martial law.
So, and then we would always, like, I would always joke for years that, you know, don't make phone calls on yourself.
Just you have to use a landline.
And everyone looked at me like I was crazy.
Apparently, I was, you know, you're not crazy if you're correct.
You know what blows my mind is how, you know, Snowden had that major, his famous relief, release, you know, leak.
And 10 years go by, and it comes out that the NSA is listening to Tucker Carlson's emails.
And I'm like, you guys are surprised.
Like, this literally leaked 10 years ago that they're listening to all of our emails.
Like, what the hell?
Like, why are you outraged now?
Like, they're always doing this.
And I just think people don't care until it happens directly to them or someone that they follow.
And the FISA court, and that's the reason why I voted for Donald Trump, because when I found out that they had a Democratic agent that created a dossier that was dropped into the laps of the FBI, who used it to materially lie to a FISA court judge to unmask an agent of the Trump campaign and then take that information and somehow use it to trump up impeachment charges against Trump.
I mean, I'm like, this is fucking, this is from a bad movie.
Like, it's so, it's so transparently clear that what they're doing is they're trying to remove a duly elected president.
I mean, don't, and I'm not even going to get into the whole this last election with the ballot harvesting and all that bullshit.
I think I'd like to see what's going on in Arizona.
I want to find out what happens with all that stuff.
But I think for me, the thing that upset me the most was that the Supreme Court ruled that there was no standing prior to the end of the election.
And then after the election, it was moot.
So when do you have a cause of action?
If you can't bring it before you're aggrieved, and then after you're aggrieved, you don't have anything to be pissed off about.
So, I mean, and that was John Roberts.
That was John Roberts just fucking the Constitution in the ass.
Hell of a guy.
Hell of a guy.
Way to go.
I know, man.
He does give.
He gives Michelle candy and he paints.
So all is forgiven.
I'll tell you what.
I tell you what.
Hitler was a bad guy, but his paintings are way more impressive.
I will be honest with you.
I have not seen a Hitler painting.
Google it.
It'll blow your mind.
Seriously.
Google it.
Google in another tab, Google Winston Churchill painting.
Oh, I've seen his.
Yeah, the same exact style.
Oh, yeah, okay.
Yeah.
I'm not an art connoisseur or critic.
You know, I know what I like and I know what I don't, but it seems to me that he's pretty good.
Had a knack for it.
Not like Picasso good, but you know.
Well, I mean, pretty talented water.
He had a knack for painting and for killing my ancestors.
So he had all bases covered.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I know.
Bad guy.
I'm not endorsing his personality because of his depth perception.
And realistically, Trump was literally Hitler, too.
So, I mean.
Yeah, that's what they say.
That's what they say.
You know what's funny to me, man?
Like, I totally believe in the manifestation of tyranny and that the direction that we're going is toward authoritarianism.
But why is it that the left thinks that every form of authoritarianism is going to immediately be Nazi?
Like, I think that one day it's very likely or possible that we're going to have an authoritarian government in the United States.
But I think it'll be a very novel form of authoritarianism.
I don't think it's going to be like anything seen before.
No, it's going to be like, well, show me your papers to get into the restaurant that you want to go to.
Right.
Or the baseball game you want to go to, or if you want to fly, or if you want to open up a bank account.
And then, I mean, what they're doing right now is pretty much akin to what's going on in China with regards to your social media acceptability.
I mean, they can completely wipe out your ability to make money because you don't hold the correct left-leaning opinion.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, Ryan Dawson had to basically move to Japan because he can't do anything here.
Are you familiar with him?
Very controversial.
He's not an anti-Semitic from a racial standpoint, but very anti-Israel and very vocal about it.
Kind of, he makes like so he's a Democrat?
No, he's not.
He's like a, he's like a, I would say almost like a Confederate.
He's just like a very kind of, you know, South should have won type guy.
Oh, and he's he's really bright, but he's a war of southern, the war of northern aggression.
Yeah, yeah.
He's a very bright guy.
He's just odd.
And he makes these documentaries that are like four and a half hours long on his webcam, and they're very impressive and compelling, but they're, you know, they're, they're out there, right?
And anyway, he basically got banned from Venmo, banned from PayPal, banned from, I don't think you can have a bank account in the United States, and not on any social media platform.
And he moved to Japan in 2006.
He moved to Japan.
He moved to Japan after Bush got elected the second time because he didn't.
He said he, he said, I asked him why.
He said, because I don't want to pay for the bombing of children.
You know, he's thinking like Iraq, you know, collateral damage type stuff.
Right.
And I like the guy a lot.
So don't get me wrong.
I know that I know that he's out there, but I don't know.
I don't know the point I'm talking about.
I'd probably like to have a conversation with him as well.
I'll talk to anybody.
You know, I could get you on at the same time, actually.
You guys have been having a good conversation.
But the point that I was trying to make is that the stuff that you were citing as, you know, like CCP type shit has started to happen already or has been happening to the most fringe of us.
Like when Alex Jones got banned, everyone's like, oh, it's just because he's a maniac.
And then now it's like every other person that I ever followed on Twitter is getting banned.
Like, I'm no Nick Fuente's fan, but why'd you ban him?
The president of the United States got banned from Twitter.
Yeah.
I mean, like, what the fuck?
I mean, I don't care what he says.
He was still the president of the United States.
He didn't break their terms.
They just said, we don't want you here because you're an insurrectionist.
Yeah, they banned him for inciting violence, but he never once incited violence on his on Twitter.
Well, what about all the Democrats that were calling for violence for the better part of a summer?
Or actually raising money to bail out violent criminals.
I think this is the reason why, and the other reason why I ended up voting for a Republican, and not that Trump's a Republican, but voted for Trump, voted for a main party candidate, was because the hypocrisy became too much for me to handle.
I just, I can't deal with it.
Okay, we'll go back to my wheelhouse.
With I represented a large number of unaccompanied minors back under the Obama administration and the Trump administration who were refugees coming to the country.
And my own bar association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, that I served as an elected director of the board of governors on secretly and privately endorsed Joe Biden for president.
First time in the history of the association to make an endorsement of a candidate.
And they did it.
It's a privately endorsed.
That's kind of an oxymoron almost, right?
Well, they endorsed it.
They basically said, you know, all of the members need to vote for Joe Biden.
And they did because of the human rights violations that were being perpetrated by the Trump administration.
And meanwhile, we're what, nine months into the Biden administration?
Is it nine months?
Seven months, eight months?
January 20th, right?
January 20th?
Yeah, yeah.
We're in the eighth month of the year.
Yeah.
So in any event, seven, eight months.
There's 17,000 kids in cages right now.
17,000.
And it's unheard of.
It's completely unprecedented.
There was a huge scandal.
It wasn't a huge scandal.
It was a huge issue that barely got a blip on radar that they were trying to downplay the amount of cases of COVID and immigration detention.
And all of the things that they were that the far-left immigration lawyers that are really just hyper-partisan Democrats that couldn't argue their way out of a paper bag, let alone win in court.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're pathetic.
They're lazy.
They're generally not all that smart.
Obviously, don't have a very high opinion of most of them.
If they were marginal LSAT scores.
That's kind of why they went into immigration law.
Pretty much because if they commit malpractice, their clients deported and can't go after them.
That's the large.
I never thought of it like that.
It's a large percentage of the immigration bar, especially the ones that go into court.
Most of them are incompetent, a large percentage of them.
But in any event, so it's just a hypocrisy.
It's like Orange Man Bad was the rallying cry for Joe Biden.
There was no, I don't really know any of the policies that Joe Biden ran on other than the infrastructure bill.
That was all I can really recall.
That and he wasn't Trump.
And he put a lid on, he put a lid on the rest of his campaign.
Well, I think that people were yearning for the comfort and predictability of a boring president.
You know, because after Obama was out of office, and I'm no fan of Obama, but as I was a college student at the time and I didn't like him then, but everything felt like it was going to be okay.
Like he just felt like a president I didn't like.
But I wasn't worried about like the future of the nation, right?
And I think that with Trump, though I supported him, you know, he was a very incendiary figure, is a very incendiary figure.
Trump's embarrassing.
Yeah, yeah, he's obnoxious sometimes, right?
And so I think that people were like, man, I'd rather have the guy who is very closely associated with Barack Obama and cannot, you know, utter a complete sentence as president than hear another good point, you know, from this obnoxious, loudmouth guy, you know?
And I think that's, you know, if Trump legitimately lost the election, which I don't know.
I go back and forth on what I think happened.
But if he, if he lost, it's because people voted against him, not because people voted for Biden.
Without a doubt.
And I don't believe that he legitimately lost the election.
And I think it's because the Democrats changed the rules midstream.
Yeah.
Even if the even if the votes were all legal, it was still so shitty that they changed the rules in the middle of the game.
You can't change the rules of chess in the middle of a match.
That's exactly.
I mean, and that's the whole point.
If you follow Ron, Ron Coleman on, do you follow Ron?
Oh, yeah, he's been on the show, man.
I love him.
He's the best.
The best.
Yeah.
He just started a podcast, too.
Culmination.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's he's great.
Uh, and he, this is his wheelhouse.
He's a constitutional lawyer.
I'm just a fucking hack immigration lawyer.
Well, didn't you have to take constitutional law in order to like, I did, I did.
And I, and I use it.
It's not that long of a document.
Like, anybody can read it.
It's true.
Well, you know, I don't know how many people in Congress have actually read it, especially.
And I know that Governor Cuomo hasn't.
Don't get me started on the SAFE Act, which he was railing on, which he was telling me.
What is the SAFE Act?
SAFE Act is the law in New York State that makes it illegal to have cosmetic features on your semi-automatic rifle with a detachable magazine because it makes it to use Dana Ash's.
He decided that he was going to do that right before he resigned.
No, no, no.
That happened years ago.
That happened years ago.
They passed the law.
It was a clandestine law that they passed under the emergency provisions with no public comment in the middle of the night, had it signed.
Emergency provisions.
Yeah.
The homicide rates are through the roof.
This is a public emergency.
That kind of shit.
Yep.
That's the problem I have with emergency powers.
Because nobody knows.
Like anybody can just declare an emergency.
It might have been written after Sandy Hook, I think.
So they banned assault rifles, which basically means that you can have a semi-automatic rifle with a detachable rate.
It's already illegal to shoot schools, though.
Right.
Well, we need more laws that says that it's illegal to take a rifle and kill children.
But in any event, all it basically did was it said if you have a rifle that's semi-automatic with a detachable magazine, it can't have a series of other cosmetic features because that will make it an assault rifle.
So it can't have a pistol grip, but it can have a grip at a 45-degree angle.
It can't have a muscle race in California.
Right.
So the weapon isn't any less effective.
I mean, maybe slightly less effective.
The vast majority of homicides or death or gun deaths rather are with 22.
Like just very small round.
Like it's it's it's the guns that aren't frightening that you know wind up are most common.
They don't.
This is the whole point.
They don't want the average citizen to be able to organize into an informal militia to be able to combat against tyranny.
And I know that that sounds ridiculous, but that's the design of the Second Amendment.
And we've seen it play out.
I think it was the Bundy Ranch under Obama where the ATF came in and all of these guys from all over the country came to and were stationed on top of a bridge and you saw the ATF like backing away.
They were in full-blown retreat because there was like, I don't know, 100 and something guys with rifles saying, fuck you.
You're not taking, you're not coming on this guy's land and taking his shit.
How if I had never heard of that?
Is there a video of that?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
What year was that?
It was during Obama.
Bundy Ranch standoff.
Let's see.
Bundy Ranch.
I'm going to Google that, man.
Yeah, the Bunny's.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Clive and Bunny's cattle still graze on federal land five years after.
So this is back in 2019.
Yeah.
And so they were they trying to do eminent domain on his property for some stupid reason or something?
No, I think, okay, I'm not sure about the whole thing.
Maybe it was BLM, the Bureau of Land Management that went on.
I can't remember who was ATF or BLM.
It does make a difference.
It was the feds.
So Bunny.
I don't call it BLM anymore.
Oh, you're right about that.
Got rebranded, man.
Like Delta Airlines and Corona Beer.
Okay, so I'm sure I'm screwing up the whole thing, and I'm sure I don't remember anything that really happened.
But my recollection is that he had his cattle on federal land, and I think they were coming on the land to try to get his to kill, might have killed his cat.
Here, here's Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is always correct.
Well, it's correct enough.
Yeah, exactly.
So I think there might have been, there was an order directing Bunny to pay a million dollar withheld grazing fees because Bunny's use of federally owned land adjacent to his ranch.
And so his cattle was grazing on federal land and they were charging him grazing fees.
A million bucks, apparently.
He was fucking paying it and they said, if you don't pay it, we're going to take your cattle.
And he said, come and take it and got all his neighbors to show up.
Oh, yeah.
With rifles from all over the country.
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah.
And they just backed the fuck out.
So what do you think?
What do you think would happen if every Republican just said, we're not paying income taxes this year?
What would practically, how would that actually play out from a practical standpoint?
Well, you would have to get a Republican legislature and a Republican governor in that state to basically say that if the feds come in to try to enforce federal IRS law, we're going to arrest you and we're going to put you in jail.
And then there's a standoff between the feds and the state because otherwise, I mean, so that's what I don't think that there's any way that it would happen without the backing of your state government.
Right.
I mean, if you could organize that, the feds would come in immediately and there would be a gigantic, the ringleaders would be, I mean, we've seen what happens.
Ruby Ridge, the feds will come in and just start killing people because that's what they do.
So, you know, one of the things that I think about a lot is just general, the general decline of societies, right?
So like a lot of people make comparisons to what happened in Rome, to what's happening in America, and they try to, you know, see if there's any similarities or learn from what happened to Rome in terms of like, you know, hyper-expansion and debasing of currency and stuff like that.
But, you know, this is really the first time, and I've said this before on the podcast, but I want to bring it up to you because I want to hear your feedback.
This is really the first time that there's ever been a civilization, at least in recorded history, that has like a hyper-sophisticated intelligence branch of government that is like, there's no checks and balances, right?
So like, yeah, like Caesar had his own private guard or whatever, and his own police or whatever.
But this is like the first time that, yeah, this is this is like the first time that we have branches of government that are like the intelligence community, for example, like the FBI or the CIA, where when something wrong happens, when there's a crime committed by these entities, it seems like all they do is conduct an internal investigation.
And they don't have to tell anybody else anything, even politicians, even presidents, unless they specifically ask or have need to know.
And so I guess the reason I want to bring this up is how are we going to keep this branch of government in check?
I mean, we're not like a three-branch government anymore.
There's executive branch, judicial branch, a legislative branch, and an intelligence branch.
Yes, and they're incredibly well-funded.
And when Trump was president-elect, didn't they talk about withholding briefings from him?
Yeah, I can't remember the details of why that was.
I think he was president-elect, and they weren't telling him anything because he wasn't technically in office yet, but it was unprecedented, and they were just kind of being assholes.
I mean, there is no question that the FBI worked with the Democrats to try to get Hillary Clinton elected.
There's no problem.
Why did Comey screw it up for, though, like two days before?
I agree with you.
But I can't explain that.
I can't explain why he would have done that.
This is the reason why, because he figured it wouldn't make a difference.
Nobody believed, well, at least I'm not saying nobody.
I know I didn't believe it's going to win.
I didn't believe that nobody could win.
All we heard was Nate Silver talking about the odds for a year.
Well, and the pollsters hadn't lied that much before.
Exactly.
There was no way that Trump was going to win.
So basically what Comey was trying to do was, in my opinion, preserve the sanctity of the institution by saying, this is what she did wrong, but it's not a criminal offense.
Completely make the case for a criminal offense, but then say that she's not going to be charged.
And then she wins and it's all forgotten and Trump goes away.
I mean, and that's what was supposed to happen.
And then why is she not in prison, man?
I don't understand.
It seems like innocent people go to prison and the guilty people just don't.
I would be in jail so fast.
You mean you, I have friends in the Department of State.
If any single one of them had a private server in their bathroom that they were running professional emails through, classified shit, do you think those people wouldn't be spending the rest of their lives in jail?
I mean, that was her pattern and practice.
And then she didn't even deny that that was happening.
Like that, that's not even a conspiracy.
The conspiracies are centered around what was the content of the emails because they were all deleted.
Nobody knows, right?
But there's a bunch of people.
The fact that she actually had this, the fact that she actually had the server, and we do know that some of the emails were classified, but the fact that she actually had it, that's undisputed.
I mean, that's public information.
The crime was committed.
I don't understand why prosecutions.
Is it up to the AG?
Is that just the deal that the AG has to decide what cases for us?
I remember there was a freaking meeting on the tarmac with Bill Clinton and was a Loretta Lynch.
They were just talking about grandkids and golf.
Yoga pants, I'm sure.
Yeah, I remember that.
I remember that.
But I tell you what, man, as much as Bill is a shithead, I just, I like that guy.
Oh, smoothest motherfucker of all time.
Because those were those when he, my first, my first third-party vote was Ross Perot.
Man.
I'm all ears.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
So I voted for Ross Perot.
And when Clinton won, and if my recollection is correct, it was Herbert Walker, Perot, and Clinton.
So Clinton wins.
And so that was the end of college for me.
And I can remember hating Bill Clinton.
I just hated Bill Clinton.
But I watch, I watched, this year was the first State of the Union that I didn't watch in my adult life.
And I love the State of the Union.
I just think it's great theater.
I'd like to see the whole thing.
And I can remember every single time that I listened to Bill Clinton's State of the Union, I thought to myself, motherfucker smooth.
He says it all.
There's nothing I can really disagree with there.
He hits all the high marks.
I mean, he's just, you know, and as much as I didn't like Bill Clinton, I didn't care about the whole Monica Lewinsky.
No, better blowjobs than no jobs, bro.
So if you watch the whole clip where, you know, he famously says, I did not have sexual relations with that woman or something to that effect.
If you watch the whole clip, I think it's really interesting how right at the end of it, it's often cut off.
But right at the end of that press conference, he goes, now I need to go back to work trying to get internet put in all our schools.
And it's just so dated.
It makes it 1995 all over again.
And the irony is that internet's for porn.
That's awesome, man.
I don't know, man.
The whole Monica thing is really weird because if that were to happen today, you realize how many abusive power allegations would be made against the president for like, you know, she was working for you.
She was an intern.
She didn't want to.
Like, if that happened today, I think she certainly would have come out and said, I didn't want to.
I just felt like I had to because it was the president.
How is a president supposed to get laid, by the way?
So say you're a single president, unmarried, whatever, and you want to sleep with somebody, you know, just because they're hot and similar interests, whatever.
How do you do that without them being able to make the accusation that they were overwhelmed by your power and they felt like they couldn't deny you your advances?
Go out with someone that's richer than you.
Oh, I like that.
I like that.
Rosie O'Donnell.
Rihanna's a billionaire.
Yeah.
You just got to hit on somebody with money.
Boom.
Dude, I knew I shouldn't have been sleeping with poor chicks.
I don't know what to tell you.
I don't know what to tell you, man.
What do they say?
First time for love, second time for money?
Is that what they say?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've heard that.
I've heard that.
Was that Marcus Aurelius?
Yeah, I'm sure.
Well, man, I tell you what, it's been great having you on the show.
Thanks for coming on.
Where can people find you?
At M Colkin on Twitter, M K O L K E N is a Nancy.
I'm always throwing fireballs, so feel free to yell back at me if you feel like it.
Awesome, man.
Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on.
Let's stay in touch and let's do this again sometime.
