Transcript: Episode #298: Coming To America
Below is the complete transcript for this podcast episode. This transcript was generated using an AI transcription service and has not been reviewed by a human editor. As a result, certain words in the text may not accurately reflect the speaker's actual words. This is especially noticeable when speakers have strong accents, as AI transcription may introduce more errors in interpreting and transcribing their speech. Therefore, it is advisable not to reference this transcript in any article or document without cross-referencing the timestamp to ensure the accuracy of the guest's precise words.
Host 0:14
Hi there, and thanks for listening. If you're enjoying our podcast and have a recommendation about someone you think that we should have on to share their voice and journey with the world? By all means, let us know. It could be an aid worker, monastic author, journalist, doctor, resistance leader, really, anyone with some tie or another to the ongoing situation in Myanmar to offer up a name, go to our website, Insight myanmar.org, and let us know. But for now, just sit back and Take a listen to today's podcast.
Brad 1:40
And welcome back today, I am joined by Maya, and we are going to be discussing probably quite a few closely related topics, but we'll be focusing on the immigration system within the United States, not just for the Myanmar population, but other populations as well, but largely the many difficulties and complications that are faced by people who are attempting to get to the United States to flee conflict or flee disaster. So before we get into any of that, Maia, I'd like to thank you very much for giving us your time, and I'd like to give you the opportunity to introduce yourself for our audience.
Maia Storm 2:32
Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm really happy to be on the show. I am an immigration attorney and private practice. I've been an attorney for close to 25 years now. I started out working with prisoners, actually from other countries, who are faced with the prospect of being detained for a very long time here or being sent back to their country. And I expanded that when I opened my own firm, my own business, to work with refugees here in Michigan, where there are a lot of Burmese refugees here and mostly from Chin State, but not totally from Chin State. And so I started working with refugees, helping them do green cards, citizenship, petitioning their family back from Myanmar. And so I just got very interested in the in the culture and in and such an interesting country and such an interesting culture. And of course, since the coup, I've gotten even more involved in trying to help people get out of Burma, and once they're here to try to help them stay. Some of them are students, and so we apply for political asylum for them. Some of them are come on a visitor's visa, and again, we apply for asylum for them. This is a process which I know we're going to talk about, which can take years, and so it's, it's complicated, and can be painful for people because they don't, they don't want to feel that they're abandoning Burma. They just need to be safe. At the moment, most of these people have been active in some kind of anti coup activity, right? And they may even have warrants out for their arrest. And so I try to help as as many people as I can. And, yeah, I guess that's an introduction.
Brad 5:01
I. That's but it gives us a really good understanding of sort of how you tick and what you do, and what, what I was reflecting on the other day actually, is that, you know, we don't think of immigration law as a particularly sexy or expansive part of the legal system, but it occurred to me that you and I have have, in preparation for this interview, spent I worked about five and a half hours discussing various ins and outs of of immigration law in the US and elsewhere. And that is the longest amount of time that that I've spent preparing with a guest, so that the wealth of knowledge that you bring, and the the depth and complexity of this issue and the related social and political and legal issues is, I think, genuinely underestimated by by the average person. We don't we don't give enough thought to immigration, immigration law, when we think about the political process, when we think about, you know, elections, when we think about how the country functions. But it is, it is enormous.
Maia Storm 6:11
Yeah, no, it's very Byzantine and complex. And even immigration lawyers argue between themselves what particular laws mean or the best way to pursue a case. Funny story is, in law school, I took one elective, which was immigration law, and it was incredibly boring, because the the professor was a employment lawyer who just helped, not just but she brought nurses over from Canada, and that was all she did in her a law business. And she would read to us out loud from various manuals. And I said, Boy, I You never catch me being an immigration lawyer. And they spend all day just filling out forms, and they talk in numbers, form, 485, 589, did you file a 601? Yet? And I said, No way will I ever get into that law. And of course, Famous last words, here I am.
Brad 7:18
Yeah, it's very often, I think it really is a matter of presentation, and I think that that's that's quite pervasive. Actually, it's not just the way that immigration law was presented to you as a law student. It's also wrapped up in this, this greater issue that for the immigration process, it's very often not the actual needs and merits of an individual applicant, but the way that you're able to present their narrative and and their story. Because I you know, while we're on the topic of stories, I knew a man I used to go to language practice with him. He was from Togo, he spoke French, and he said that there were five of them from Togo who came to Australia as refugees. And what he said was all five of them had the same circumstances. They were all fleeing from the same violence. They're all coming. Two of them were school teachers, and those of them who were school teachers were able to more eloquently write down their circumstances and explain their cases. They received refugee protections, and the other three didn't.
Maia Storm 8:27
Yeah, that's that's sad. Here in the States, they have done the figures, and I, I'm assuming they're close to correct that you're five times more likely to lose your case if you don't have a lawyer to help prepare your to help prepare your story. And that's and so much depends on personalities, right? The personality of the person and how they present themselves, their credibility. So much depends on looking the judge or the interviewer in the eye and explaining to them your story. I think in your case, the person may or may not have had a personal interview and had to depend on writing their story.
Brad 9:17
It was mostly written that they had to file like they had to write down their reasons for the application, pen and paper while in Togo and and submit that.
Maia Storm 9:27
Yeah, and that's right, any here, even you have to submit a written personal statement with your asylum application, and I send it back to the client and back to the client and back to the client and say, No, I need more details. No, what's this person's name? What was the date? Where did this happen? How many times did the policeman hit you? You say you were beaten. In jail. Who beat you? What did they use their the sticks, the batons or fists? How many men were they just detail after detail after detail, because that's what makes your story credible. I also fight the good fight against chat GPT, because I have these almost, I don't want to say illiterate, because they're not, but they don't speak English. Is not their first language, okay? And yet, when you ask them to write a story, they write this totally sophisticated story. And I have to say, this is nice, but you didn't write it. You didn't write it. And if you have to, you want to write it in Burmese, you want to write it in chin, write it in your native language, and we'll find somebody to translate it. The very first thing the officer asks when you go for your interview is, who wrote your story? Yeah, and so I want that person to be able to say, I wrote my story. The lawyer looked at it. The lawyer criticized it. The lawyer edited it, but it's I wrote it. It's my story. Some communities, some communities, they have a story and they pass it around. No, this is not for me. They pass it around. I had a client from a country that I won't name, say, Here's my story. It's a good one. It worked for my cousin, you know, and so use and of course, I didn't take his case. Because people are people are desperate, right? People are desperate to stay in this country so and to escape the cut their country of origin, possibly for economic reasons, not for because they're being politically persecuted, but economic reasons, is not an asylum claim, right? They're economic migrants, and so that's not how you come, is through asylum.
Brad 11:59
So I think, chatgpt. One's an important point, just because I so I teach Burmese students, and I teach, I just finished the semester of teaching academic writing, so my background is linguistics. And, you know, I've had students submit work that was written with chatgpt. And and we have, you know, chatgpt checker. But I think students are really appreciated, because I've had them, like, in the middle of class, they've sent me something that I said, Okay, go work on this, and then come back, and then they send me something. And I look at and I go, like, Okay, you didn't write this because if you if you read enough of a certain type of text. And I'm familiar with Burmese students and how they write, right? And I'm familiar with academic English, because that's my new year, and I'm familiar with chatgpt because it's pervasive. I look at I'm like, I know that you didn't write this because an actual native English speaker does not write sentences like this, but chatgpt thinks they do, or a judge would see that, I assume
Maia Storm 13:06
yes, either the asylum, oh, you can, you know, because you work with it, you can smell chat GPT a mile away. Just yeah, yeah. And people don't, people don't realize it. When they're using it. They don't realize it.
Brad 13:22
So language speakers, it looks proficient English to them. They don't see the nuances.
Maia Storm 13:27
It's super proficient. That's the problem, right? People are writing. I mean, what I love in a statement is mistakes, grammatical mistakes, spelling mistakes, awkward phrasing, because you know what that person wrote that story from their heart, and that's what I'm looking for, and that's what, yes, so maybe, so as not to to get confused. There's two ways to two ways that somebody's going to look at that statement. One is if you come legally into this country on a visitor visa or a student visa, and you say, but I don't want to go back. I'm afraid I want to file for asylum. Then you file administratively, it's called and you go, and you don't go in front of a judge immediately, you go in front of an asylum officer who is a immigration employee, and you go and have an interview, and they look, they're the ones who are going to say, did you write your did you write Your statement and look at all your documentation, have an interview, if you fail your interview, and then you get out of status for some reason, like you drop out of school, then you're going to go in front of an immigration judge. Or if you're in this country, undocumented, which very few. You Burmese are, but say you were totally you've overstayed your visa for 10 years, right? And you never got you never got caught. But then you do get caught, and you're put in front of an immigration judge, then your asylum application goes directly to the judge, and the judge, the court, is the one that's going to read your statement. But in either case, it's, it's made part of the application. It's, it's need to attach this um statement, it it's not quite as important in court, because you get to testify right right away, and the judge probably too lazy to read the whole file anyway, but but wants you to tell once, you to tell him or her what what happened to you.
Brad 15:49
Now, I want to come back because you specific terminology there, and I know that this is a very hot button issue in the United States, the the terminological distinction between legal, illegal and documented undocumented, and I know that some people use these completely synonymously, and my understanding had been that legality and documentation are two different axes, that you can be legal and documented, and you can be illegal and undocumented, but you can also be legal but undocumented. If you've crossed the border without paperwork for the purposes of seeking asylum, as would be provided for an international law, and you can be documented but illegal. If you did submit documentation at the border, there's a record of you entering the country, but you overstayed the visa. So as an immigration lawyer, what is the actual correct application of these terms?
Maia Storm 16:44
Well, I I try never to use the term illegal, because people are not illegal. People are people are undocumented because they have entered without inspection. It's called iwis. Is how we refer to people. We refer to them as iwis. They enter without inspection.
Brad 17:08
But if you enter through the airport and overstay, you have been inspected, correct?
Maia Storm 17:13
Correct. You have made a legal entry into the United States. And so you can, you can file an asylum claim. You can actually marry a US citizen, even if you've been an overstay for years, as long as you don't, you know, commit crimes in the meantime. But if you marry a US citizen, they can file a petition for you so you can adjust your status through the marriage and you do not have to leave the country to get your visa. To get your visa, if you did not enter legally, you can marry the US citizen, but you're going to have to go back to your home country and come back in through the embassy.
Brad 17:59
I was, if you, if you walk across the border, not not through any official border checkpoint, then that is treated differently in law than if you had flown in through the airport, handed in your passport and simply overstayed on your visa.
Maia Storm 18:16
Absolutely, one is a legal entry. One is one is not. One is an entry without inspection. So we can call the we can call the entry illegal, and there is a federal crime called illegal reentry. So if you got deported because you robbed a bank, you did your time in prison, and then you got sent back to any country, yeah, and then you sneak back over the border, but you get caught. That's a federal crime. That's, that's, that's federal that's illegal, re entry, and you're going to go to federal prison elite for at least a year, I think, is the line. So, yes, huge difference between a legal entry and and a not legal entry.
Brad 19:05
But is it the case? Because this was my understanding, and I think it's an important issue. Is it the case that entering the United States without going through an official point of entry for the explicit purpose of seeking asylum, is itself a legally protected action?
Maia Storm 19:28
Well, that's that's a fraught question right now, my friend, okay, yes, international law says anybody has a right to go to another country and seek political asylum, okay, because for fear of persecution torture in their home country, United States government, in all its compassion, is trying to narrow that and narrow that and narrow that down so that they the way. Just is, if there's too many people coming across the southern border while we're just going to close the border and and if you have stayed at any length of time in another country before you manage to come up across the border, they're going to say, Well, you were firmly resettled. You should have you Why didn't you apply for asylum in that country? And you didn't, so you can't apply here.
Brad 20:29
So if a Guatemalan transits through Mexico, that undermines the legitimacy of their asylum claim in the United States.
Maia Storm 20:37
Yeah, yeah. That's that's the way the world. That's the way us asylum law is going, which is, you know, ridiculous, of course. So people are going to have to find other ways, other ways to get in. So I mean, there, the government is really trying to close down. Not that other countries aren't trying to do the same thing, but they're trying to close down the whole system, because this border situation is so fraught right and and Trump and the right wingers make such a huge deal about, oh, all these people at the border. So it just becomes this. It just become, it just becomes this big point of of contention. And I let me be clear, though, everybody has a right under international law to seek asylum in another country. However, the chances of those people getting, actually getting asylum, are not very big, because most of the people are economic migrants. They want a better life for their for their family, they and or they've been harassed by gangs or criminal extortion or any number of things that do not rise to the level of asylum, do not rise to the level of being persecuted for their for their beliefs.
Brad 22:11
But it's we might be getting a little bit abstract and philosophical, and I know that you're very sort of compassion minded, so we'd probably be on the same page here. But economic migrant has always been a very strange thing to me, because if you're fleeing from a military regime that is consciously starving your village, or if you're fleeing from a natural disaster that has created a famine, or if you're fleeing from an economic depression that has made it impossible for you to earn the money necessary to buy the food to eat. The outcome of all three of these situations is that you're starving. It. It seems to me that any one of these would be an equally legitimate reason to try to seek a survivable life elsewhere.
Maia Storm 23:02
Amen, but it doesn't. It doesn't work that way. It seems so intuitive. Well, that's one word to put it. I mean, it's, it is cruel, and it's, it's abandoning, it's abandoning very many people. And we, you didn't even talk about people about climate change, climate refugees, right? Yeah, um, what covers, what you're talking about is something called Temporary Protected Status. It's, and we call it TPS, this. And this does not have to be specific to a certain person, like, Oh, if they, if you send me back, they're going to arrest me. No, something has made the country so unlivable, be it a hurricane or a coup or just tremendous like Sudan has TPS right now, right? It's just tremendous political upheaval that no matter who you are, as long as you're from that country, the government will grant you temporary protected status. So, but you have to be in this country to get it. You can apply for TPS from Sudan, for example, Burmese have temporary protected status. If you've been here since March, they keep redesignating Burma as a country eligible for TPS. So, so that covers people who are because of min Aung hlaing, right? They need a better life, and so they're they're fleeing, and they're afraid of being conscripted. And. And arrested for having posters or a picture of the lady in their in their phone, right? And the prison conditions in Myanmar are absolutely important we talked about on the show, right? So this is TPS.
Brad 25:16
TPS can be taken away.
Maia Storm 25:19
It. It can temporary is the first word. Yeah, so temp. It is not, it does not lead to a green card. And it can be eventually, um, closed off, shut down. Yes, you're right. And Trump tried to shut down TPS for several countries, Haiti, I think, in Sudan, but he lost and in court. So no TP there are T people here from Nicaragua, from a Hurricane Mitch, which was back before many of my clients were even born. Those people are still here on TPS, right?
Brad 25:55
So it can last for quite some time.
Maia Storm 25:59
It can last, yes, for decades, and there is a movement in advocacy groups to please let these people move forward and let them apply for a green card and then citizenship, because they've rebuilt their whole lives here, right?
Brad 26:18
If someone's on a temporary protection status in the United States, and they have a child while they're in the United States under TPS, what happens?
Maia Storm 26:28
They have a US citizen in the family.
Brad 26:30
Yeah, so that, so that the youth soli principle still applies there, the person born on US soil becomes a US citizen.
Maia Storm 26:37
Trump never was able to take that away, although we threatened it, if you are born in the United States, you are a US citizen, okay, but that child does not become, and I say this with air quotes, useful until They're until they're 21 and they can, they can file, they can petition for their parent.
Brad 27:05
Also, you, you don't automatically. It does not help babies.
Maia Storm 27:09
You call them anchor babies. I don't know why, because that's what I'm gonna say.
Brad 27:13
Like, Fox News keeps going on about anchor babies. I thought it was like, you can jump over the border, have a baby, and then, boom, you know your application is, is almost guaranteed.
Maia Storm 27:22
No, absolutely not okay. And in fact, the parents, if the parents get deported, if the parents get deported, the judge will say, Well, you know, your child could, your child could stay here, but you've got to go because the child is a US citizen, so that, of course, they don't want to leave the child here, so they have to get them a passport. But yeah, babies, babies do not automatically help, and babies, as US citizens, are eligible for things like food stamps, which we don't want to spread around too much, because they'll try to take it away. But, yeah, they're a US citizen with all the rights and guarantees that any US citizen has right. They just can't help their parents.
Brad 28:17
But so, okay, so on this, TPS, then so, so the country, so Myanmar, as a country, is designated as STPs, excellent, good, awesome. But you have to be within the United States to take advantage of this. Yes. So that now raises the very important logistical question, if you are in Burma and you want to get to the United States so that you can take advantage of this TPS what like is there a is there an avenue for this? Are they making it easier because they've said, this country is in strife and we want to help you, or are they making it harder because they're reflexively saying, yo, any Burmese person who wants to come to this country is clearly trying to abuse the TPS system. What's the what's the pathway, and what's the reaction from immigration?
Maia Storm 29:06
Well, and this is my experience only, right So, and I am one small potato attorney, so I wouldn't want it to be the gospel truth, but my experience is that although the people at the US Embassy in Yangon are very friendly and forthcoming, I don't see that they're very good about giving people visas so people don't want to come to get TPS. People want to come because they want to file for asylum, because asylum leads to a green card, right? You do sort of have to talk them into TPS once they get here. So as soon as they're eligible for TPS, like they they make that cut a cut off date, which keeps changing. But so right now. It's March, so somebody who comes next week is not going to be eligible for TPS. They would have to wait for the for the if Myanmar doesn't get better, but gets worse the date, the date to change.
Brad 30:14
Oh, there's no like, perpetual like, until you turn it off.
Maia Storm 30:18
No, no. They keep, they keep redesignating it. Yeah, it's like I said, everything is Byzantine. Nothing is nothing is simple, so you have to make that cutoff date. So students getting a student visa used to be a tried and true way for young people to get here. But now the the embassy in Yangon is is not handing those out very, very nicely, very consistently. I think there is. And again, this is what I hear, that there's urban guerrilla warfare in Yangon itself now, and so the embassy isn't always open, doesn't always right, doesn't always schedule interviews. Promptly. I've been trying to get a visitor visa for a family member of a client to come, and it was originally for a wedding, but the weddings long past, but there's some you can't. You're supposed to be able to go and make your own appointment to go for your interview, and there aren't any dates available. Or if there's a day available, it fills up before you can even, you know, hit, hit all the correct buttons and the students, every single student that I've had talked to me in the last couple months, they've all gone to Vietnam for their for to get their visa. They've all gone to Ho Chi, Minh City, to the embassy to get there to get their US visas.
Brad 32:00
But even even then, though, because this is the thing, I had a case, well, I say I had a case. My my friend's sister, tried to come to Australia as a student. She was accepted by an Australian University. She full, filled out all of her medical paperwork. She passed she's healthy, she's young, she's legitimately qualified to go to university. Her parents were going to support her financially. She passed every single requirement that the state put on her, and she was able to submit all her paperwork through the embassy in a timely fashion. Plus, she had her sister in Australia advocating for her and offering to put her up in her apartment, and she was rejected on the grounds of not being, I think the terminology is a genuine temporary entrant. The idea being that, well, we just think, because you're Burmese, you might try to actually stay in Australia after you've spent years in this country, learning the language and the culture and becoming tertiary qualified and contributing through your job. Heaven forbid that Australia should suffer something like that. So they just rejected her out of hand. It wasn't because she couldn't access the embassy. It was simply because they said, we assume that Burmese people are going to try and game and manipulate the system in some way, shape or form, because those Burmese students who are living in Australia have also been granted in Australia. It's called a temporary protection visa, but it's the same basic principle as the US. So because they've received the TPV, I think the Australian Government reaction has been, well, we think all new Burmese arrivals would probably be trying to abuse this system, so we just want to keep them in a war zone. Because that seems good in some way.
Maia Storm 33:37
I don't know. And they and they talk the government us. Government talks out of both sides of their mouth. I mean, if you look at the at the videos that they put on the Embassy website, oh, we're in support of the Burmese people and blah, blah, blah and all and all this patriotic garbage. But yeah, then they turn people down. So I have had this thing where somebody was got a full scholarship to Indiana University, and and then was and then didn't get the visa, which is like, which is apparently why people are skedaddling to Vietnam to to get their visa.
Brad 34:15
It's horrific, this high minded rhetoric that comes out of the United States.
Maia Storm 34:19
I know. I know. And you know what the funny thing is, is that I have not met a Burmese now, I'm sure there are some, because they'll get inculcated into the American way of life, and you know, all the in make a lot of money or whatever, but I have never met a Burmese person that I've worked with yet, who says they don't want to go back to Burma when it's when this is all over, right? They all want to go back. Of course, of course. Yeah, and the and, and they, I, sometimes I have to almost literally twist their arms to say, yes, we will do a TPS. Yes. We will do on asylum. It's okay if you get these and then Myanmar is peaceful again. You say, thank you very much America. I appreciate what you gave me, but you know what, I'm going back home and that that that works, right? You can do that.
Brad 35:18
But I suspect a little bit of the hesitation would be coming from this sort of situation. So I was interviewing someone recently who went to Karenni state, previously called KR state. And what he reported was that obviously a very large part of that population fled over the very porous border into Thailand, because that's what people do in times of conflict, okay, fine. And the various resistance groups had managed to recapture about half of the state. To be fair, they've liberated about half the state. Now the definition of liberation is varied, because, as was explained to me, liberating the state doesn't mean that you've actually expelled the military presence, partially because you keep a small military presence around to prevent the military from carpet bombing the area, right? They're not going to carpet bomb their own people. If you get rid of that military base, all you have a civilians and resistance groups, and the military is just going to run a bombing campaign. So you keep the military base active, and they, at night time, will still use their mortars and artillery to shell the villages. So that's that's just part of your nighttime routine, is that shells are going to come in, and even if you're not being shelled. He says, Well, the buildings don't have roofs because of bombing, and a lot of the buildings have landmines put in them because the military, when they retreat, they like to leave booby traps around so they can try and kill as many people as people as possible on the way out. This was the the situation. And yet, when the resistance groups had announced the liberation of certain areas, Thai authorities came in and said, Well, hang on, if these areas are liberated, then that means that you can return. And they forcibly moved 1000s of refugees back into Myanmar because, well, you are temporarily protected while your area was under invasion, but now you say it's liberated. So Go, Go enjoy your ruthless you know, land mined, riddled hut and of course, they're living without any form of shelter or tents, at best, in temporary refugee encampments, subsisting on on, you know, white rice and water and nothing else, but the Thai authorities don't want to have anything to do with them. So I suspect that because of experiences like that, there might be a hesitation to accept a temporary protection visa, understanding that a lot of Myanmar victims of this war have had temporary protections that has just ripped out from under them and sent back into the country. And I'm wondering whether there's this, this hesitation like, oh my god, if I go to America under a TPS, not under asylum, does that mean that they're going to turn around one day knock on my door and say, Okay, get your stuff, get on a plane. You're going back because we've decided that your city is no longer in conflict.
Maia Storm 37:58
Well, that that's that's interesting. I'm glad you told me that story, because when it was time to renew so so Burmese, who came, they registered for TPS, and it was going to expire last May. And you know, United States State Department was a little bit involved with other parts of the world, so they didn't renew it. They didn't renew it. And all, most, most of the clients, told me it's not going to be renewed. I'm panicked, right then I'm going to get deported. And I said, No, no, Burma was getting worse, not better. They're not. They will renew it. I swear to God, I would they they are gonna renew it. And I said, If I ever have anything less than 100% belief in what I'm telling you, I will tell you that. But no, they will renew it. And of course, they did renew it. But now I understand why people didn't really believe me when I said and the other thing is, is that's why I ask people, as many ways that you can get protected, protect yourself. So don't so get TPS and get and you don't come to this country on TPS. You have to get here and then ask for TPS, right? So you have to get here on some kind of visa and then ask, ask for asylum. But that story about people being forced back. I, I have quite a few clients in May sought who have fled to me sought, and I it's such a worrisome, horrifying situation, and the people in May sought are living hand to mouth and having a horrible, horrible time and are frightened. And you know, those people who have been forced back, if they're of the right age, they can be conscripted, right? So which is, which is, which is another horror? Horrible issue, and it's one that I make all my asylum clients, if they're the right age, I make that one of their claims is that is the conscription.
Brad 40:10
So but see, that's quite ironic, because I because I saw the documentation in Australia when my friend sister was rejected. Obviously the government sends a whole bunch of boilerplate and the conscription law was actually enumerated among the reasons that the government felt that she was not a genuine temporary entrant. So it seems that if anything, in the Australian case, the fact that you are facing the possibility of conscription is going to reduce the likelihood that the government will accept your entry to Australia, because they're going well, clearly, you're trying to escape from this inhuman treatment, so we don't want to be complicit in that.
Maia Storm 40:52
Talk about counterintuitive. I mean, let's, let's try to beat these people once they're down, right? Yeah, but once, so I don't know, Australian asylum law, once you got if you could get past the visa obstacle and and get here, then you can use those things as an asylum claim, and it's perfectly acceptable that you're asking for asylum. The tricky part gets is when you, when you have to lie to the admission to the officer who's who's interviewing you at the embassy, because that your interview is saved perpetually in cyberspace, right? So they can always, they can always go back and say, Well, you use, here's what you said at your here's what you said at your interview. And you know that you have to show that. So if you're coming to visit your your child, or to go for a to go for a to go to a wedding. And of course, I tell my client, yeah, let's do that. Get them here, then we'll apply for asylum, no problem. But you gotta get them here, right? But when they go to the interview at the embassy, they have to show that they did not quit their job, that they did not sell their car, that they did not empty their bank accounts, that they did not sell their house, right? They have to have proof that they're that they're really, really, really only going for the, for the for this wedding, right? And so it's those are painful choices for people.
Brad 42:40
I mean, naturally, I'm just wondering about, like, how you can so the asylum has to be done from the the US. I understand that it's very difficult to apply for asylum within Myanmar proper. No.
Maia Storm 42:58
Oh, really. You mean, apply for us asylum? Yes, no, you have to be in the United States.
Brad 43:07
So you don't, you know, there's no program at the embassy to apply for political asylum.
Maia Storm 43:12
No, no, no, sir. Good that. Yes, that that's what complicates everything, because I have these long, painful conversations with clients. Just get them here. Let's work on getting them here. Once you get them here, turn it over to me. I'll, I'll, we'll do the asylum claim, no problem, but you got to get them here. And so that's a whole, whole other set of obstacles.
Brad 43:38
How do you get them? There's the question then, because it seems to be the case across the board that countries, when they can try to reduce the number of people going there. For some everybody wants to act like they're a, you know, shining city on a hill. And this is where, you know, the poor and tired want to come and and start new lives, but nobody actually wants to make good on that. So it seems like one of the easiest things you can do is just make it impossible for the people who need to get the asylum to enter the country in the first place. So how can the Burmese get there without falling into, you know, any number of these, a number of these traps.
Maia Storm 44:27
Well, it's, that's the conundrum. Welcome to my world, right? That's what, that's what I have to deal with.
Brad 44:36
Yeah. So, okay, so let's just look at some options here. So let's say I'm Burmese. I just say, look, I want to fly to the United States now. You said you have to show that you didn't sell your house in your car and empty your bank account, which, okay, complicated, tricky, but let's say that. I just say, hey, I really want to see the Statue of Liberty and, and, you know, I've saved up a bit of money, and I'm and I'm going. You know, as a tourist to the United States, is that likely to get me in the door?
Maia Storm 45:08
It's going, it's that's a toughy, because they will ask the visa application, which is done online, before you ever get to an interview. And again, the interviews for visitor visas are not happening very often right now in Burma, but just a regular old visitor coming to see the Statue of Liberty now I would be looked at with askance, right? Because, yeah, you are so on this application, you have to say, say, Where are you going to stay? When you go, do you have any relatives in the United States? You know, where are you? Where are you going to stay? So many people want, yeah, so you'd be better off going to New York for a wedding, and being able to produce the wedding invitation or a graduation invitation, because right now, just to come and say, Oh, I'm a single guy, I want to come to New York See, see the bright lights, you know, drink a few beers, go see the Statue of Liberty. Nah, not gonna happen.
Brad 46:27
Okay, so it's easier if you already have established connections to the United States.
Maia Storm 46:34
And can show you have a real reason to come.
Brad 46:38
With the real reason to like to I want to go to a place that's a reason for me.
Maia Storm 46:44
Like you want to know, I understand that you want to go on vacation, but, you know, but right now, given the circumstances, Burma, I you know, if they're not letting students with the full scholarship, if they're not giving them visas, they're not going to let us a single guy, because, obviously you're going to come to, obviously you're going to, you're going to come to, and very few people who are just coming on for, want to go for vacation, are not going to go through all that proof of, you know, yeah, this is a great amount of proof of your situation back home. You know, not, not you have to show you have a job, you have money in the bank, blah, blah, blah, or or another one I always use as family members that you you know you're not going to leave your you're not going to leave your abandon your your family, but of course, people do, because they realize, once they come here and get if they win asylum, then they can file a petition, more paperwork to bring their wife and their kids or their their spouse and their children to bring them from Burma.
Brad 48:04
Sounds like a bail negotiation and an arraignment. Like, I've ties to the community. Your Honor, I've put up $5,000 like, yeah, yeah.
Maia Storm 48:15
I hadn't thought of that analogy, but yeah, it's kind of like that. I mean, because of the situation that Burma is in, and because the American government says one thing, but actually deals with people trying to leave Burma. I mean, even you know the nug, when I'm asking them to provide some letters of recommendation for people. I've gotten the answer back from an intermediary, well, and you g doesn't want to support people to come to United States because we want them all to stay here, or that we want them to stay and make you know, in Thailand, and I'm saying, well, in Thailand, it's extremely dire situations. How can you, how can you say that? And again, I've heard, and this is what I hear, not what I know is that N U, G gives some money, but not a lot, and gives a safe house, but then not forever. And you have to, you have to move on. And so people are just living very precarious, precarious lives. There is one more way to come that we haven't talked about, because it's even less successful, from my point of view, than the ways we've talked about is through humanitarian parole. And this is when you say you need, because of you're in imminent danger, you would like to be immediately paroled into the United States. And that's temporary. It's for a year, but of course, during that year you can apply for. Whatever you need to apply with. And this is how nug ministers have sent their gotten their family here, through the Bangkok, through the Embassy in Bangkok. But when I try to do it for my regular folks in May sought, they've all been turned down so far. I still have some in the pipeline, but they say no, they should. They should go the established route and not try to jump the queue, and they should all go apply to be with the UNHCR and be resettled as refugees.
Brad 50:35
Because it feels like what you're describing with this parole is like it's, it's similar to refugee protections, but just not as not as strong.
Maia Storm 50:46
Yes, yes, it's not as strong. I mean, if you know, I started working with Burmese people who came as refugees through through Malaysia. They'd all lived in Kuala Lumpur for a few years before they got here. And refugees get case management. They get, they get medical insurance. They get, they get help, right asylees before, and then after a year, they can apply for a green card. And then they're pretty much on their own. They get work permits immediately. Asylees get nothing because we didn't invite them to come in, like we invite refugees, right? Asylees have to fight their way in, and then they cannot file for a work permit for five months, and so they have to have somebody to support them. Where people work under the table, we say, right? People work for cash, and they have no they have no documentation to show who who they are. They're just trying to apply for asylum. So the difference in the your label of documentation makes a huge difference to how you how you can exist here.
Brad 52:04
Can you, can you come on, because I know that there are migrant work programs and seasonal labor programs and things like that. Is that something that that could be used?
Maia Storm 52:17
Yeah, if they would expand those, sure. Okay, but the problem is so. So, you know, before 911 George Bush was pressured a lot by the business community to expand these programs, because we needed workers, right? And so, and Bush was all for it. But then 911 came and just changed the whole atmosphere around around immigrants and those programs are shut down, or very much diminished. Yes, I mean, I'm a big believer in those programs if they're well, if they're well carried out, and the people are not mistreated once they're here. I mean, in California now, they have to pass a law that it's okay to take a drink of water if you're out in the field and you might die. I mean, it's, sounds like a Monty Python, skit, right? So, you know, you always have to be watchful, because they're the people at the bottom of the the bottom of any barrel that you want to define, right? They really are very vulnerable. I know when I have Congolese clients come into my office, and they and I say, are you working? Yeah, yes, we're working. I say, Where do you work? And they always, and I say, I know you're going to tell me. JBS, right, that it's the meat packing plant. Okay, right. So it's always the bottom of the barrel. Used to be the Hispanic, mostly Mexicans, who work there. And now it's all it's all people, it's all refugee people, because they can't speak English, so that they think so, they go to the they go to the abattoir, right? They go work. And I always tell them, practice your English, learn to speak English, so you can get out of there before you get before you get hurt, or this, or the, or the, what I really feel bad for is the Syrian refugees who go there, I said, I say, That's haram working in an in a place where they, where they kill animals like that. Are you kidding me? That whole building is haram, but those are the jobs that that refugees get.
Brad 54:46
It really kind of feels like America never really gave up that dependence on slave labor. It just sort of takes on different forms as the decades.
Maia Storm 54:54
Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, yep, you. Yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know what's interesting? And, and I don't hear, I don't hear the politicians. I don't hear either Harris or Trump, unless I've missed it. It talked a lot about the middle class. Who fucking talks about the poor? You know, I don't think anybody since Bobby Kennedy, and I mean, the real Bobby Kennedy, I talked about poor people when he was campaigning. Nobody, nobody talks about them.
Brad 55:31
Well, the poor don't vote because they're busy trying to survive.
Maia Storm 55:36
Yeah, well, maybe they would vote if they thought there was somebody that cared about him. Bobby Kennedy would have won if he hadn't been murdered.
Brad 55:46
Yeah, yeah, that family has not, not been successful.
Maia Storm 55:51
Unfortunately, no, I know No, but, but it is amazing when you think how Bobby Kennedy used to go in front of wealthy audiences and talk about poor people, right? Yeah, and it's like, you know, there was a some beautiful things of people, I think people, I think listened, I mean, I think we shut off when he and I, I could be missing a whole, I could be missing a lot, right? I could be missing that there are people that are talking about poor people, but I don't see it. I don't see them talking about homeless people either. Every city I go to is filled with homeless people, but we don't. Kamala Harris have a plan for homeless people. I mean, Trump would have a plan.
Brad 56:45
He just, yeah, right. But, I mean, come on, look, I was, I was just by coincidence. I was watching a thing last night on, um, Black copaganda, right? The the this question of, like, black police, are they fundamentally black, or are they fundamentally police? And you know, the spoiler the conclusion of the video is that black police are fundamentally police first. And there have been many, many, many famous instances of predominantly or entirely black police units who are as violent, if not more violent with predominantly black communities in the United States than you know, white police unit to do similar things. And Kamala Harris came up, and there was this complicated tort discussion, like, well, is Kamala Harris progressive? Is Kamala Harris not progressive? It's like, Well, okay, so in some cases, Kamala Harris is very progressive. And has and has taken on as a district attorney, as a governor, has taken on policies that were incredibly, incredibly beneficial and helpful and served to minimize youth being put into the jail system. Beautiful, awesome, but her solution to truancy was to imprison parents of truant children in San Francisco as a DA and I'm like, That's not, that's not good. That doesn't make sense.
Maia Storm 58:12
Well, how is that? Yeah, how was, how was that any more ethical or moral than Trump separating families at the border, right?
Brad 58:19
On the kids in cages.
Maia Storm 58:22
When, when they need it, so they can send their kids to school.
Brad 58:26
And it wasn't. It wasn't even that. It was, it was this the moment of like, could you imagine the feeling of the state having lost your child? Like it's an errant Amazon package? Like I'm here to pick up my kid. I don't know. He's in some warehouse somewhere. I don't know. Imagine that
Maia Storm 58:51
Well. I mean, that happens. It doesn't have to be Kamala Harris's jurisdiction that child protective services they take, they separate, they take kids from their families, and when they when, when they want to. Basically the state does that, and they do it mostly to black kids, brown kids, Indigenous kids, family separation, yeah, I have to laugh with I didn't, I didn't see what you were referring to. But having worked with a been a member of the NAACP locally and stuff, everybody knows that black cops are the worst, right? Black you know black youth are more scared. Are just scared of black cops and white cops, because they can be so ruthless, right? So that's just kind of a given in a black community, they know that. I mean, I would hope that that's changed, that some of the police departments have gone out and recruited, you know, black people who are from that community. And who are less lethal.
Brad 1:00:03
The argument in this particular instance was that the recruitment does come from those communities, almost exclusively. It comes from those communities. The argument was actually really interesting one, whether or not it's true, I can't speak to but what was the thesis was basically that the legacy of slavery and then Jim Crow and decades and decades and decades of of entrenched and institutionalized racism in the United States was such that black men were robbed of the opportunity to achieve conventional Western culture concepts of manhood, right? Which, you know the fact that even throughout the 60s and the 70s, they were called boy really sort of underlined that Mr. T, the actor, said that he actually named himself Mr. T because he wanted the first thing out of white people's mouths to be Mr. Because he watched his father as a grown man, being called boy and and he didn't want to be a victim of that. And so the argument being made is that police and military are the two avenues through which black men were able to achieve the martiality and masculinity that had been denied to so many. And the same argument was actually being made by atun Shea, who's a commentator on Civil War history for black people who marched in Confederate military parades during the Reconstruction Era, saying that, well, yeah, they weren't Confederate soldiers. They were slaves of Confederate soldiers, but they were being given the opportunity to march in the parade and be given the martial glory that had been the exclusive preserve of white people up until then, and they took that opportunity with both hands, because it had been deprived them their whole lives and the rest of their community. And the argument being made was that black cops are so vicious because it's not about being that in that community. It's actually about distinguishing yourself from that community and saying, no, no, no, no, I am authority. I am power. I have made it and again, whether or not you know that that analysis is accurate, I can't speak to it. I can't speak to the black experience in the United States. But that was the argument that was being made, and I think it's, it's at the very least worth considering.
Maia Storm 1:02:27
Yeah, no, I would hesitate to speak for black men, but, but being a white woman, but some of that, I think does, does ring true, but that doesn't mean it's a insoluble problem.
Brad 1:02:44
No, I don't think any problem is insoluble. We just don't have the political will to solve them and that, yeah, I think that brings us sort of back to the migration problem, like it's not an insolvent problem, like the people in Myanmar want to come and they want to be safe, and they want to be protected, and then they want to return to their home country once, once the situation stabilizes, but it doesn't seem to be a lot of avenue for them to do this. And I know that we spoke about Thailand, and there's a I assume you're aware of this, but I spoke to someone who worked at the US Embassy in Thailand, and he was telling me the story and, you know, human rights advocates and things. They were telling me the stories of of the ways that the Burmese people are treated in Thailand, especially by Thai police and Thai immigration authorities, you're up to, and including rapes and murders, which happened pretty much with impunity, is that situation of Myanmar people living, living in that border. It's not it's not just the uncertainty that you might be returned to Myanmar and the uncertainty of not having legal status in Thailand, but the fact that you are subjected to random acts of severe violence by authority. Is that being taken into consideration with regards to their request for help from the United States, or is it more likely that the United States would look at them and say, Well, you're not a priority because you fled the conflict zone and you are currently residing in a peaceful third country.
Maia Storm 1:04:28
I don't think immigration thinks they're in a peaceful third world. I'm sorry, a third country, I think, and I think it's more that they want an extremely high level of proof, because they don't want there to be an overwhelming amount of I mean, how many 1000s of Burmese are in Mesa? I mean, are in Thailand? They don't want everybody claiming asking. For humanitarian parole, right? So they demand a very high level of proof, and people who, who are, you know, beaten up by the police or raped by the police or in jail, most of them do not have documentary evidence of that. Well, they're not given a discharge page when they leave the jail, it they don't have a medical unless they go to, unless they go to a medical hospital for their for their care, and they get a discharge note that they're not going to have any medical evidence. And so again, it's just easier for immigration to say, just go, just go, try to come through the UN if you don't have anybody here that can, that can petition for you.
Brad 1:05:54
What is it? Leave you a note when they beat you.
Maia Storm 1:06:02
I mean, we laugh, but it's horrific, right? Yeah, people go through absolute and even when I ask people to tell me over signal or or that I need this, you know they have to trust me and to disclose these things, and how do they know who I am? I mean, at least if people are here and we can talk face to face, and there are other people who know me say, yeah, she's a good lawyer, you can trust her. I mean, just to try to establish this kind of rapport over the was such a distant it's very hard to do. And so I between there not being any evidence and people being scared, it's very hard to put together a really detailed case for them, which is apparently what immigration if they, if they, if they think they're if they think there's a reason, they can deny you, they will deny you. But that's what worries me about the situation in Thailand. It's just, it's just, it's just pretty scary. I can I say? Have one digression. I listened to your show when you were interviewing a woman who was telling you about the May Thai clinic, yes. And you were saying, Oh, my God, you know they see how many people and Dr Cynthia Mong and I had a client, a Karen woman, coming in for here in here in Michigan to do a green card application. And first, she wasn't very talkative, and she didn't seem to like me that much. And so it was just kind of Yan. Yan ya was born. And she told me, and I said, I said, Oh, were you? Were you born in the male side clinic? And she said, Yes. And I said, oh. Dr, Cynthia is one of the big heroes in my life. And she said, Dr, Mong delivered me. Wow. Oh, my God. I was so happy. I couldn't believe it. I was like, let me come give you a hug. You know, it was kind of like, it was just a very nice moment where we we, we super connected there, because she knew that I appreciated where she had it come from, and I so appreciated that Dr Mong had delivered her so I was happy to hear her discussed on your on your show.
Brad 1:08:44
I think this is a another very serious issue that the the human element of this right, like there's the legal element to it, there's the paperwork, the pathways and all that sort of jazz, but there's this human component, where you these people are vulnerable as anything, and you as a lawyer, which you know not, not the most beloved profession in the world, let's be honest, you have to build rapport and trust with a person who is very aware that this could end with them being returned to a war zone and who may not speak English confidently. And the image as well that we have of lawyers in the United States is that you're either a high flying lawyer who gets paid, you know, $1,000 an hour, or you're, you know, overworked and and, you know, you get to see a client for 15 minutes for the first time before their case even goes to trial. And, you know, you cobble together some boilerplate, and you're not particularly invested in in who that person is. You're just trying to, you know, tick off the boxes. So how do you, how do you manage to to get to that point with a client? Because I assume you don't have a huge. Out of time to sit down face to face with a client, to to build rapport, because you've got cases, you've got papers that need to be filed, you've got court dates. How do you navigate that?
Maia Storm 1:10:08
No, I take as I take as much time as I need, because if you don't have that rapport with the client, then you're not going to go anywhere. And actually, you know, I complained about all the paperwork and filling out the forms, but sitting with someone and doing the forms, you you get to know the person, and you can ask all kind of extraneous questions on with the excuse that you're you need it for the form, which I always say, this isn't for the form. I'm just curious. And so there's so you get, you get their story, you get their story that way, and then you build some rapport. Now that's that's very important to me. I mean, that's why I stay doing. What I do is this engagement with the clients. And the other thing is, I don't do any advertising. I I get all 100% of my clients through referrals. So, so somebody has told somebody else in the community, oh, hey, here's a, here's my here's my lawyer. She's a nice person, or whatever they say, right? So somebody, somebody has already been referred to me by somebody who's learned to trust me. And so that's how you know. You stay long enough inside a community then, then you establish a level of trust. But if I don't have that rapport with the client, and sometimes you don't get rapport with the client, you just don't, it's not going to work. And so I'm very happy. Then when they, you know the case is over, or they decide they want another and I always tell them, if you after this point in the case, if you if we can decide if you want to continue with me, or if you want to find another lawyer, that's fine too, right? But if, if you're going to stay with me. You know, we're gonna build that. We're gonna build that trust. And you know, then you got a friend for life, right? Yes, and then, yeah.
Brad 1:12:14
You help them out that way. But like, so easy. I think the American legal system famously, guarantees you, you know, the right to an attorney if you cannot afford one. But these people are not citizens. Are they guaranteed an attorney? No, even though they're five times less likely to succeed without an attorney.
Maia Storm 1:12:36
Right and advocates, of course, have been trying to change that, but, but to no avail. I mean, they don't have enough money to hire enough judges, let alone give everybody an attorney. Some of the pro bono some of those service agencies try very hard to provide pro bono attorneys, but it's, you know, shoveling shit against the tide, because they're just overwhelming amounts of people coming into the system who don't, who just don't have the money to hire an attorney. So you have the right to have an attorney, but not at government expense.
Brad 1:13:19
So then attorneys, typically, my understanding is you charge by what are called billable hours, so the amount of work that you spend with the client, the amount of time that you're spending in court, and the amount of time that you're spending, you know, filing paperwork and documentation on behalf of the person. Is there an estimate for how many billable hours an individual applicant would expect
Maia Storm 1:13:43
I have no idea. I don't do billable hours. Oh, you don't do billable hours either. If I can't do you for free, I will do, I will charge you an amount for the project. Oh, it takes and how many phone calls and how many texts do?
Brad 1:13:58
Do you know whether that's a common system among immigration attorneys?
Maia Storm 1:14:03
And no, it's not very common immigration immigration attorneys have a bad and I apologize ahead of time to those immigration attorneys I know who are honest and hardworking and over their heads because there's so much work to do, but the reputation that they have, and and certainly I know lawyers who live up to this reputation, is, you know, they just, they have a vulnerable, vulnerable clientele, and they just say, Okay, I'll do this for you, but it's another 2000 okay, yes, I'll Go To Court, but that's going to be another 3000 and so they just, you know, people end up mortgaging their houses and yeah, so that's why they have a bad rap, because I don't know if they do billable hours. I've heard more. They say, Oh, you want you. Want me to appeal your case to the Board of Immigration Appeals. Well, I charge $15,000 for that.
Brad 1:15:06
Is that an imaginary number or Is that realistic?
Maia Storm 1:15:08
No, no attorneys can. We'll charge that I had somebody something. I usually charge like 800 or $900 for the lawyer wanted $10,000 for until the family said, well, we don't have $10,000 whoops, sorry, can't take your case. Now, some lawyers, you know, if they don't want a client, if they don't want to have this client, they'll charge them a horrible amount of money, because they know they they won't pay it, and then they won't have to, they won't have to worry about it. I tried that one time with somebody who wanted an appeal, and I didn't want to take the case because it was just unappealable. And I took a deep breath, and I said, Well, I charged $3,000 to do the appeal, and Dang, they came up with the money, and then I had to do the appeal, and I don't do that anymore. If I don't want your case, I'll just tell you, I, you know, I don't have the time to give it the attention it needs, so I'm not hurting the feelings.
Brad 1:16:18
But so these are so what you're effectively describing to me is a situation in which a person may even have a legitimate legal case to make, but simply doesn't have the money to navigate the legal system and would have to go to court. Do you have to pay court costs? As an individual?
Maia Storm 1:16:43
No, there's only there's filing fees for the applications. But to go to court in and of itself, you don't have to pay. You don't have you don't have to pay.
Brad 1:16:53
But so they then, effectively, the situation is that you would be faced with either go to court by yourself and try to defend a reasonable case, but with no legal training and without English as a as a strong language, and suffer a very high likelihood of failure or try to pay money that you can't afford to pay for someone To identify. That's not fair?
Maia Storm 1:17:20
No, it's not fair. And and you know judges, immigration judges, they don't really want to see a client without a lawyer, because they know it's going to be a mess. Because just representing yourself in small claim, we have something called Small Claims Court here, where you can't have a lawyer just arguing small, simple claims. They really, they really don't want to deal with somebody who doesn't know immigration law, because it's just a big, confusing mess, right? And the person is not getting, it's not as is not being given due process. You know, they're not getting a fair trial. So that so the judges will give clients, yes, you have the right to represent yourself, but the judges don't like that. They'll say, Okay, I'll give you one. I'll give you another. Time you go away and you find a lawyer, and then you come back, and they'll do that a couple times, but then eventually they'll say they'll ask for who is it that you've asked? Right? Are you really making an effort? And at long last, they'll say, You know what, you're gonna go your case is gonna we're gonna determine it on this date, whether you have a lawyer or not. We are going to move forward. And so you you can't ask forever for more time to get a lawyer. But yeah, then people panic because they don't have money for a lawyer. So there are, yeah, no, it's not fair. And it's, you know, what keeps me honestly from retiring is because there's so many people out there who you could, who you could really help without being the greatest lawyer in the world, because their case is pretty simple, or, you know, it might take a lot of work, but it's still totally doable, I mean, but they don't have, they don't have the money to pay a lawyer to do it. And so when you can help somebody like that and really change their life, that's that's a neat thing to do.
Brad 1:19:29
Okay, so, and I don't mean to sort of dismiss the years of education that you put in, but you know, as a blunt question, what would it actually take, like, how much actual training and skill would it take to take a you know, functional, intelligent person and turn them into someone who can put forth a reasonable, cogent legal argument for why a person should not leave do.
Maia Storm 1:20:04
You mean not a lawyer, but a lay person who wants to, who wants to, wants to do this. I mean, I could teach somebody how to do it.
I never had that question.
Brad 1:20:19
Yeah, but let's say I want to represent myself pro se and and you say, that's a clearly idiotic idea. Don't do that. And I say, No, I want to do it anyway. How long that montage gonna be? Our training montage?
Maia Storm 1:20:34
Well, you're a smart guy, so I could probably mentor you through it and in a few months, but, yeah.
Brad 1:20:41
We're not talking hours here. No, it's months. Okay.
Maia Storm 1:20:49
Well, depend, yeah, maybe it's hours if it's to. I mean, I've certainly told people how to do their case themselves, but if it's a case where you have to get up on the stand and testify. How the hell do you examine yourself? Yeah, it's just
Brad 1:21:07
By the way. Can that be done?
Maia Storm 1:21:11
Uh, yeah. The the judge kind of steps in to help. The prosecutor is going to make mince meat out of you, right? Fucking mince meat out of you, if you're, if you're not a lawyer, and you're up there on the stand and you're trying to be your own lawyer, I mean, it's just, it's just a it's just a painful situation, and the judges don't want to do it, and the prosecutors, if they've got half a kindling gene in Their body don't want to do it either, right?
Brad 1:21:44
Um, so, but, but is it a question of not understanding the law, or is it a question of not being able to play the courtroom game?
Maia Storm 1:21:52
Well, both. I mean, you have to, although the judge will guide you through it, but it but I keep coming back to the word Byzantine and Kaf and then Kafka esque also, it works here too. But if you don't know the case law that's been leading up to the state that you're in, and you don't know the current asylum laws, you don't know the difference between an economic migrant and persecution. You don't know how to present your evidence correctly. You don't have nobody's told you you need documentation from your home country, which can be very difficult to get, because most people don't leave the country they have with all the documentation they need for an asylum claim, right? So you have to try to get it from your home country. You don't know how to present it to the court. You don't know how to do any of that. I mean, you're not going to win your case. Okay?
Brad 1:22:50
So a lot of that is, is not about going into the courtroom and being an amazing sort of Perry Mason lawyer. It's about knowing how to do all the preparatory work before you step into the courtroom, knowing what you're going to present as evidence, having the documentation on hand, you know, clearing up exactly what points you do and do not want to bring up. Like it's, it's, it seems it's more about everything that happens before you walk in the courtroom.
Maia Storm 1:23:18
Yeah, it's, I Yeah, so it's preparation. I mean, it, it's preparation. I mean, I spend a lot of time prepping my clients for for their for the trial, the hearing, the final hearing. So I will make up a whole list of questions that I want to ask, and then I share it with the client, and then they add other ones that they think I've missed. And then we go over them, and until I until they they know that these are things that I'm going to ask them but and then I try to tell them, well, here, here's what. Okay, now it's the prosecutors turn to cross examine you, and here's what I think the prosecutor is going to ask you, right? And so then I ask all those hard ass nasty questions that the prosecutor is going to ask, and then the judge can ask questions to it, and and, and so there's a because I want to I want the client to know what it is that's going to be, what's going to be important, what, what's going to be a value, what the judge is going to be looking for in the store, in their story, right? So it's how to present it. You know, because credibility is such a huge, um, such a huge factor in winning in your case. Um, I had, I had a case once where it was a young Congolese woman, and the judge liked her, and it had a long, long, tortured history, which I won't go into. But the crux of this was she was testifying that she'd gotten. Uh, she was in, she was in the hospital, and she was in the hospital because after she'd been beaten up, and and the judge says, Well, do you have any, do you have any photos of this in the hospital? And she said, Well, yes, I do. And I My jaw dropped, and the in the judge said, Well, did you ever give them to your attorney? And she said, No. And he said, Well, do you have them? She's, oh, yeah, they're in my purse, which and so he said, we'll go again, which is totally, you know, you're supposed to submit all your evidence 15 days ahead of time and all this. But he let her go to the person. She took out these pictures, and we, we carried on. And then at the end, he said, Okay, I'm going to give you asylum. I wasn't going to but you know, those pictures kind of, kind of sold, sold me on your case, I'm going to give you so you never know what's what's going to happen, and you never, you never know what a client is going to take into the courtroom that they haven't told you about, but that's why you have to prepare, prepare, prepare. And of course, that taught me to always ask, Do you have any photographs? Do you have these photos with you, right? And so, yeah, it's just a whole and plus, you have to know, it very helpful to know the personality of the judge and the person and to know the prosecutor. Sometimes you you don't have a choice in that it's a brand new judge or a brand new prosecutor. But if you've developed a kind of a relationship with the with the judge, because you've, you know, some of the judges I've been in front of for years now, right? Then, you kind of know, you can kind of read them, right? You kind of know what they're looking for. You know, you can look at their responses. You know, a client isn't going to see any of that, right? Yeah, or you have a prosecutor that's a real asshole, right? A real hard ass. Or, you know, they're, yeah, they're kind of a softy, if you can work on that side. I mean, all that that a lawyer brings to the courtroom without even realizing they're bringing it right, but all the experience, there's no way the client themselves has any clue of any of that, all that non verbal stuff that's going on.
Brad 1:27:27
Yeah, I mean the real subtleties of even when you have a jury trial, which obviously is not the concern with with you, but these the way that a lawyer is able to see the jury and is able to see whether the jury is responding positively or negatively to something which, yeah, obviously, like a layman wouldn't, because, right, you're not trained for that.
Maia Storm 1:27:47
Right, right, right? And, yeah, I, and really, I don't think lawyers even think of that as being trained for it's just because they do it over and over and over that it becomes sixth sense, right? They can tell. They can tell if a jurors leaning one way or the other, just like I can tell if the judge is going to look on this case favorably. And you know how to slant the story. If you know what Judge you have, you know we had a judge who was married to an ex cop? Well, you knew damn well. You better not have have your client say, have any run ins with the cops or their if their crime had anything to do with the cop, you had to be able to present it in a way that didn't disrespect cops, right? Like, of course, the judge isn't supposed to take that into consideration, but knowing a judge's personal story can help.
Brad 1:28:49
And how much like, how far ahead of time Do you know who the judge is going to be?
Maia Storm 1:28:57
Years?
Brad 1:29:00
Really, so you don't just show up to court one day and and the clerk says, Oh, your judge today is going to be.
Maia Storm 1:29:07
No, no, no, no, no. You're assigned a judge and with some with, with 99% of the time that will that will be the judge that will take the case all the way through. So, yes, when you're preparing your case, you will, you will know what judge is going to hear it. Now, that can change for various reasons, right? But not very, not very often you can't the prosecutors change, the trial attorneys change, but not the but not the judge.
Brad 1:29:40
Okay, now I don't have a convenient segue here, unfortunately, but I really do want to take it all the way back and and just discuss with you again the way you got into this. Because it was such a hearing you discuss your career trajectory was such a headsp. In for me. So can you take us all the way back to to when you started working in a prison and and how that came to be.
Maia Storm 1:30:14
I started working in a prison. Okay, well, when I got out of law school, I my first job as a lawyer was with a federally mandated state agency who whose job was to advocate for disability rights. And this was back in the this was in the 90s, and so, because I had really gotten interested in going to law school because of my work in a in, um, with kids in special education, that's that was kind of my route into into law school. So then my first job was, was with working, advocating for people with disabilities, and many of them were children. But for some reason, and I can't remember now, why, I started getting prisoners writing, asking for help. Usually what happens is, you know, one guy finds you or one woman, and then they say, oh, here I found this program. They'll help you. So I started getting letters from prisoners who needed help. Oh, like a blind prisoner was not able to get access to free Braille material, with which the Library of Congress, you can get free Braille material if you're blind, it doesn't matter whether you're in prison or not, or a prisoner's wheelchair was falling apart, but the prison would say, Oh, you're just faking. You don't really need a wheelchair anyway, so we're not going to go out and buy you a new one or deaf. So usually there's a series of things that you have to you have to go through certain programs so you can be eligible for parole. Well, if you're deaf and they didn't have sign language interpretation, how were you ever going to take those classes? Right?
Brad 1:32:21
Isn't that federally guaranteed, by the way, like language interpretation is is guaranteed by law.
Maia Storm 1:32:28
No, not in prison, my friend really, right? Nothing, nothing is guaranteed in prison, but your time, but your bit that you got to get through. Well, I mean, of course we would go in and say, this is, this is the law that disabled people have rights even if they're in prison. So yes, you have to do this for them, but you would have to, you would have to fight for them, and the prison isn't going to shell out money for things if, if they don't feel they have to, because nobody's asking them to do it. Right?
Brad 1:33:04
Do you? Do you recall, by the way, whether this was a government run prison or whether this was a private prison?
Maia Storm 1:33:10
No, no, it was a state prison, state of Michigan.
Brad 1:33:13
And even even so, they were very concerned about not spending money on on protecting the constitutional rights.
Maia Storm 1:33:22
Even so, especially really, as we speak the Michigan as I just read in the news, I don't have personal knowledge of it, but the correctional officers are all saying, Oh my God, you have to hire more staff. We're so underworked. We're double shifted. This is a dangerous situation. I mean, yeah, there, yeah, of course, they didn't want to spend money, spend money on them.
Brad 1:33:51
That part, that part, doesn't shock me. I do follow quite a few former prisoners, and one of the very consistent things that comes up among prison these are people who do not have love for prison guards. And one of the consistent things is they're saying you have to increase salaries for prison guards because the reason they are so corrupt is because they're not being paid enough to survive. And that's why you can always get a prison guard to come bring you drugs. You can always get a prison guard to look the other way while look the other way while you stab someone. You know you need, need to do that. And Larry Loden will point out, if you don't have enough guards on duty, they can just say, You know what, we're just going to lock down the prison. Nobody leaves their cells for the next three days, which is inhumane. But their argument is, well, we don't have the staff, and therefore it's not safe to let you out, and therefore you can just run in your cell so that, that I'm not surprised by that seems to be very pervasive, and this is across the entire country, whether it's Florida, whether it's Arkansas, whether it's Texas, whether it's Virginia, like, I'm hearing the same thing across the board.
Maia Storm 1:34:55
Well, yeah, of course, we we incarcerate. On a percentage level, I think, highest in the world, and which is why I have great sympathy with the abolitionist movement, which says, you know, break down the walls, because, which is a whole different topic, but.
Brad 1:35:16
But not, not entirely different, because the 13th Amendment, if I remember correctly, carved out an exception for the prison system to continue the practice of slavery, right?
Maia Storm 1:35:28
And that's still an ongoing issue, because the you know prison, prison workers you know, are paid like, you know, I don't know, a quarter an hour or something, right? I mean, it is a slavery system, and there are advocates working to try to change that as well. But of course, that's a, that's a huge, that's that that's a huge, that's a huge problem. I mean, that's kind of like we were talking about the refugees. I mean, there's always, there's still slave labor. They're in the prisons and they're in the slaughterhouses, right?
Brad 1:36:07
Or on the fields?
Maia Storm 1:36:10
Yes, they're in the fields, picking, picking our, picking our food. So I started for some so then I got more and more like client load became mostly prisoners, and then I was working through a very small, I think there were, there's a director who was a Lawyer, and another lawyer. They were they were prosecuting a conditions of confinement case on behalf of prisoners of the Department of State, Department of Corrections, and they had a class action lawsuit against the state on behalf of all these prisoners. And the judge in the case ruled that the law firm should have a presence in in the prison, in in a prison in the system. And so when I So, when there was an opening in that law firm like the other lawyer left, they the staff knew me as somebody that they had been talking to about helping people with disabilities. And so I went and interviewed for the job and and I got it, and that was a it was on the yard of a prison. In Jackson, Michigan, and it was a, it was a double wide, and there were 1233, or four civilian people, and the rest were were prisoners. So all our legal assistants and people who helped answer the letters and and put together the documentation for the for the case. They were all prisoners from that prison, most of them, not all of them, but many of them were lifers, and that was very interesting.
Brad 1:38:23
Were you afraid, by the way, working in those conditions?
Maia Storm 1:38:26
No.
Brad 1:38:29
Really. I just find that so, so interesting. So you're, you're working with the prisoners, correct, like you're there's nothing separating you from the prisoners.
Maia Storm 1:38:45
No, you know. And one, one of the guys, um, had committed some, some horrible murders when he was a teenager, and he had spent his life in there, and he was one of the smartest guys in the smartest guys there, and had taught himself how to work on the computer. He was finally paroled a couple years ago, and moved to this to a city right next to me, actually a city where my office is, and I've been helping him out, and we've been friends ever since, right? And he's, he's out in the world, so, yeah, no, I've, no, I was actually, you're more afraid of the guards. You're not afraid, not afraid of Well, I mean, the inmates are glad you're there. They're so pleased, right? Oh, my God, we've got lawyers. We can talk to them every day, all day.
Brad 1:39:50
Okay?
Maia Storm 1:39:51
Yeah, no, when you cross the yard to go, I think this the vending machines you had to cross the yard to go to an. Other into another building to get to the vending machines, and of course, guys you know might approach you, but always, always with great respect, right?
Brad 1:40:13
Okay, so it's not that sexual harassment that you would sort of picture from movies and so on.
Maia Storm 1:40:21
No, no, no, no, no. I mean, no. The only time I ever felt sexually harassed was when I was in the parking lot out in front of a huge, huge prison. It happened to be, we called it behind the walls. It was, it was like a big prison. And I was in, there were some guys yelling down from the from the windows, yeah, and I, but that was the only, but that was the only, you know, when I asked the guys that I met, because, you know, guys would come in to visit prisoners, would come in on the pretext that they needed to talk to a lawyer about something, and I would try to ask people, What, what could the world have done differently for you so that you wouldn't have ended up in here, and I never got an answer, other than if I'd had somebody who gave a shit about me, which broke my heart, right? I mean, some of them had done bad things, some of them had sold drugs, some of them had done violent crimes, right? We didn't, but it's people that make the difference in your life, right? People didn't have the chance that other people had. People didn't have somebody to reach down and say, Come on. I'll help you, right? I'll help you when you need help, but anyway, so some of these, a couple of the prisoners, were from other countries, one from Cuba and one from Guatemala, and they introduced me to the idea of immigration detainers. And I had to confess that I didn't know what that was and what it was was immigration putting a hold on you so that if you got out on parole, or you got out because you'd done your time, you would be picked up and taken into ICE custody. And then it would be determined if you were going to be ordered deported or not, and usually if you'd been in prison for more than one year, you would be considered an immigration parlance anyway, an aggravated felon, and there wasn't much hope for you. You were going to be deported, right? And so, unless you were from a country, this was my actual baptism in immigration law, unless you were from a country that wouldn't take you back, and if they wouldn't take you back for a long time in this country, you could just be detained forever in immigration detention, and some Some jurisdictions in the United States said that was illegal, unconstitutional, and some circuits said, No, that's okay. You can keep people in there forever. And finally, this. So finally, the Supreme Court decided in 2001 that it was unconstitutional for for indefinite detention, and you had to be reviewed every six months to see whether you could be, you could be let out, and you because you could not, it was unconstitutional to be held in there forever. And so the first things I ever did were for immigration were actually not in immigration court. They were in federal court, and I would file a writ of habeas corpus saying, you know, this Cuban guy, Castro's never going to take him back or Somalis. At the time, nobody was deporting the Somalia. It was too dangerous to deport people to Somalia. Now there's, you know, a different list of countries, but so you go in front of the federal judge and say, this is indefinite detention. Is unconstitutional, and then they would be let out. Yeah. So that was very satisfying, because you never lose those because the laws, the law, is on your side. And so from then I went into after I left that law firm, because I was taking care of my mother, who was dying, I just started my own business, and then I started taking said, I want to do immigration. That's what I want to do. And that was, yeah, that was how I started.
Brad 1:45:34
I just, it's just kind of wild for me. I mean, I can sort of imagine why you would want to do that, like going from advocacy for, you know, disabled people whose rights are being trampled, to advocacy for people who are, you know, I don't want to, you know, diminish the suffering of the disabled population, but probably in a legal sense, even more vulnerable, because they're not even citizens, and they're not granted a lot of those constitutional protections. It makes a lot of sense, but it's just such a an interesting trajectory to go on. And I know that you, personally, you have had a focus on those countries that seem to be in the most strife. I know you have a lot of Congolese clients. I know you also have quite a lot of Haitian connection. Was that, where do, where did your Haitian connection start? Was that with the natural disasters in Haiti, or was that because of the regime in Haiti?
Maia Storm 1:46:40
I um, well, actually, it's because I decided I wanted to adopt, and that's another long story, but I ended up adopting two teenage boys from an orphanage in Haiti. And so I became, obviously extremely interested in Haiti, and then that grew into helping, getting involved with the Haitian community here, and then trying to, because because now Haitians are also TPS, and they can, and they have asylum claims, i i will inject that nothing hurts my heart more than the the hatred that this country has shown toward Haitians, and this latest iteration of that, with the
Brad 1:47:47
Presidential debate,
Maia Storm 1:47:51
Yeah, and that whole, this whole, yeah, this whole picture of Haitian you know, you Know It used to be well, Haitians brought aids, and now it's well, Haitians eat pets. And I'm like, I'm like, leave these people alone. They're the hardest working people in the world, and they're it's just unbelievable to me. It just, I can't express it other than to say it just hurts my heart, because it's, it's, um, it's unbelievable to me, how we, you know, we have never, ever, ever forgiven the Haitian people for being the first slave colony to throw off the oppressor. We have never forgiven them for that, and America's hated them since since then, because they were deathly afraid that they were going to convince the slaves in America to do the same thing, right? Oh, yeah, yeah.
Brad 1:48:53
I knew the French haven't forgiven them, which is why Haitian national debt is is based on reparations for the lost value of the place.
Maia Storm 1:49:01
Yeah, Haitians have to pay reparations to France. Is that kicking the ass or what I mean that is just that is so absurd. That is so absurd.
Brad 1:49:13
We comical, that France has managed to get away with that for two centuries.
Maia Storm 1:49:20
I know. I know. I know. Yeah, so.
Brad 1:49:25
The president, like they had a president in Haiti who decided to not pay the debt, and then middle, middle, middle, he found himself on a French military transport dropped off in the Central African Republic to live out the rest of his life in exile.
Maia Storm 1:49:42
That was our steed.
Brad 1:49:45
Oh, God, like again. The fact that the French could pull that off and the international community didn't bat an eyelid.
Maia Storm 1:49:52
Well, you know what makes sense to white people? It makes sense to oppressors. It makes sense to colonialists, right? Well, of course, they should pay us, right? Operations, because look at all that sugar cane money we're not getting now, right? It makes sense to them.
Brad 1:50:06
Yeah. I mean, it made sense back then, but, I mean, it's the 21st century. We should probably reexamine 70 or 18th century logic in 19.
Maia Storm 1:50:16
I think Haiti, um is, is not even in Macron vision at all. Right, Macron has other other things to worry about and and sending Kenyan here's the way we solve the problem in Haiti, we send Kenyan policemen there. I mean, really, as you look at the history of what the Kenyan police do to Kenyans, and we're going to send them to to Haiti, there's no common language, right? Can you Kenya
Brad 1:50:54
Was British colonized, and Haiti was French called, no, they don't,
Maia Storm 1:51:00
well, of course, they don't, well, of course, they don't speak Creole, but they don't even speak French, and the Haitians don't speak just Swahili. Yeah, it's like, what was anybody thinking? Is it like anybody could have said? And the poor Haitians, they'd interview some poor schmuck on the street and say, Well, what do you think of the Kenyan police, and they said, Well, you know, we need help, if they could do something, just not there try, but it's like you knew from day one that was going to be an utter disaster.
Brad 1:51:36
I thought, hey, Haiti is a desert like Haiti feels like the place where everyone tries out their bad ideas. It's like, you know, I, I'm a fan of of Bill Clinton. I, you know, I thought his presidency was significantly better than the one that followed, but he messed up bad in Haiti, like he, he destroyed the and it makes sense, when you think about it's like, Oh, if you keep shipping free food, then the people who are trying to produce food and sell it for a profit have no way to compete in that market. So you've just killed off the native industry. But yeah, it's, it's, just, you look at, hey, there's so many policies that people seem to want to enact. It's like, oh, we can fix Haiti. And it's like, you have a bad idea. You You had maybe, like, good intentions, but you didn't sit down with pen and paper and work this one out, but you'll dump it on Haiti.
Maia Storm 1:52:38
Nobody ever went and talked to the Haitians and asked what they wanted. Yeah, it's always it's always imposed. How can you be a Clinton fan? Look what he did to Rwanda. My God, that guy has a history of, well, I'm sorry all those people. You know, years later, he apologized. Gosh, maybe I didn't move quickly enough. I was like, hello.
Brad 1:52:59
How many people you have, you have to remember, I was born in 1989 so my political awakening was George Bush. So I was like, oh, Clinton. Clinton seems so much cooler than that guy.
Maia Storm 1:53:15
Well, yeah, but it was a low bar, right?
Brad 1:53:21
I mean, yeah, internationally, because I think, I think Clinton, I believe there was a was pretty strong economic growth under Clinton, domestically, in the US. But as for the International, because I think, I think the US response to the Bosnian genocide also fell on Clinton's watch. Yes, which was lacking would be a word that comes to mind for that one thing, NATO really kind of dropped the ball on that one, to be honest, dropping the bombs. Dropping whilst dropping the bombs. Yeah, pretty, pretty abysmal. Then again, I don't know. I don't know. I don't I don't want to sort of just pile more trash onto the US, because that's a very popular thing for non US people to do. But yeah, a lot, a lot of, a lot of bad presidential policies and decisions coming out of the US in the last century,
Maia Storm 1:54:20
You can. You can pile on because, because we don't let any of it touch us. We don't care what y'all say we're right, because we're Americans, right?
Brad 1:54:32
Yeah, that is the true way to do things. And, okay, okay. This is nothing to the immigration this is just a side thing. It just bought. It just bothers me that American foreign policy seems to be let's have great intentions and let's start with gusto and then just peter out. It's very much. Eddie Izzard does a does a bit on the US anthem like nobody seems. Know the words in the middle of the anthem, you start really strong, you end really strong, and the middles just sort of move your lips to the rhythm of the music. And it feels kind of like that, like, yes, like, go into Vietnam and go into Afghanistan and go into all these places. It's like, okay, cool. So now that the action movie stuff is done, and you can maybe spend some time building infrastructure and roads and schools and hospitals and internet and giving people, you know, scholarships to come study in the United States so they can upskill. And all of a sudden, it's crickets chirping in the background. And I'm like hearts and minds. This is how you do hearts and minds, not, not with napalm.
Maia Storm 1:55:41
Well, and then, and then screwing the people when it's all over. Yes, today I was, I've been trying to help an agency to help an Afghan person who, who, who did manage to get on one of the flights out, but in the United States, is supposed to be helping him. But, you know, the paperwork falls through. That takes, it takes months and months and months and months, and these guys are just languishing and and, you know, of course, they had to get out or they would be killed by the Taliban. But we just we take our own sweet we say we're going to do all these wonderful things, but it's the people like in the agencies who are trying to help them that are caught trying to sweep up the mistakes and try to get stuff pushed through, and God forbid. Now this guy's family made it with him. I have Afghan clients whose wife and kids are still back in Afghanistan. We can't fucking get them out, because there's no embassy, right? So the word is, well, try to get them to Qatar, and they can fly out of Qatar. Okay, fine. That's, that's easy to do.
Brad 1:56:59
So because, because, what, I think the Americans don't understand the impact that Americana has. Because immediately after the coup, I had so many of my students and people that I knew in Myanmar contacting me, going like, oh, like, we're fighting for democracy. So the Americans gonna, like, deploy soon. Like, what's gonna happen? Are they just gonna assassinate men online, or is it gonna be like, a landing, you know, at the beaches sort of deal? And I'm like, the Americans don't know where you are on a map, man, like, they don't care. And they genuinely thought they were gonna come in.
Maia Storm 1:57:39
Or, I remember seeing the signs that said, r 2p. Yes, right, yes, United Nations, r 2p. How many people? It just broke my heart, because they were so naive and thinking. And I guess I was a little naive myself. I thought we would help. Oh, we haven't helped. We don't need there's not even much air time given to Myanmar. We are pushed so far down the scale now it's, it's, you're lucky if you get a word or two from the High Commissioner for Human Rights, right? It's very but that yes, that breaks my heart. They said the United States is going to come. Yeah, right. And this is the United Nations. Just those solitary signs that said, R, 2p, Oh, please. Oh, please.
Brad 1:58:38
And I spoke to a guy. I spoke to the UN commissioner in in Myanmar. We did an interview with him recently, and he actually, he was, he was expelled from Myanmar as persona non grata for delivering a speech, not even on behalf of the United Nations, on behalf of himself, but as you know, a United Nations representative calling out the military for their treatment during the Saffron Revolution. And, and I was, I was really frustrated because he was saying, like, privately, all these people from the United Nations were contacting him and saying, Wow. Like, we're so happy you did that. We're so proud to be, you know, diplomats and you know, like what you said and what you did and standing up for these principles was so great. It's like, that's cool and all, but none of those people agreed ahead of time to give him permission to make that speech. He just had to go out and do it, because nobody wants to rock the boat. Nobody wants to upset anyone. And that's all these international organizations and all the big fish, they talk a big game, but when it comes crunch time, like, oh, but our stakeholders, our interests, our strategic allies, are this whatever else, and people are dying. So yeah, really sort of eye opening experience. But that's that's the problem is that everyone talks a good game and they don't follow up on it. So then for the people themselves, of the Myanmar people, like circling back to our sort of core thesis here. Do you have any insight into, like, what the Myanmar people should be trying to do if they are looking at their situation and they're feeling desperation, going like, Okay, this war is not going to magically end anytime soon. My home is not safe. I am actually at risk here. I could be taken out by a bullet. I could be taken out by a bombing. You're right. Urban guerrillas are operating in Yangon. There are bombing campaigns like as in terrorism style, bombing campaigns in Yangon at the moment, people are legitimately afraid for their lives. It's not an act. What? What would you recommend to these people to start doing and and to sort of maximize their chances of being able to make it out?
Maia Storm 2:00:59
Pray.
Brad 2:01:00
Good God.
Maia Storm 2:01:06
I don't have an answer. If they have no family here in the United States, if they cannot get a student visa, if they don't have enough documentation to ask for humanitarian parole, they're not going to come. They're not going to come. That's man if I had a way to bring, if I had a bleak, yeah, absolutely, it's bleak. If I had a way to bring people here from Burma, I'd be doing it.
Brad 2:01:54
So it's not, it's not a matter of like, hey guys like start taking photographs and make sure that you have documentary evidence of what your life is like, and.
Maia Storm 2:02:03
They cannot take photographs, because if their phones get seized, yeah, they're in deep shit. So people wipe their phones. People wipe their WhatsApp. Yeah, people I, can't get people to write letters of evidence. They can't get me evidence. They can't get me testimony, because how are they going to get it to me? Right? People can't even get back in the village to get any kind of household registry or birth certificate, if they have one. No, I almost every day I'm talking to somebody trying to see how they can get here. But once they get here, I can help them. I can file an asylum claim for them, but I cannot get their I cannot get them here.
Brad 2:03:08
And there's no special program that it's not likely that there'll be a special program to create a an avenue for for Burmese people.
Maia Storm 2:03:16
No, no, no. I mean humanitarian parole program is the closest that comes to it. And again, I have not had good luck with that, although other other attorneys may have, I haven't found one yet, but it's very difficult to get those.
Brad 2:03:36
Because you said that Haiti and Venezuela and Ukraine Afghanistan have had special programs implemented.
Maia Storm 2:03:42
You have a but this country, for whatever reason, doesn't care about Myanmar. They just don't care if they did, the embassy would be a lot freer with handing out visas. Don't you think?
Brad 2:04:02
So it really feels like the chips are just stacked against them. Then that the system is set up so that you could apply for asylum, because you have, you have very good, very legitimate reasons to want asylum if you could get to the United States, but we will do everything we can to prevent you getting to the United States.
Maia Storm 2:04:24
Yes, which is so, so bizarre. Well, once you get here, we can construct a pretty strong case for you, even with all the difficulty of because I can tell the in yours, when the asylum application, we can say, No, I don't have evidence of this because, of course, I had to wipe my phone, right? But I You You, and in fact, if you file for an asylum application online, which. You can do now. They they ask your permission for them to figure out your location, because if you're not, if your location is outside the United States, you cannot apply.
Brad 2:05:18
Jesus, I was like putting an obstacle course at the front of the physiotherapy ward. It's like, yeah, why? Why would you do this?
Maia Storm 2:05:29
Well, because we don't, because I, yeah, I don't know why.
Brad 2:05:33
So the solution is, seems to be more political. It's not, it's not about anything the refugees could be doing. It's about getting some actual action within the establishment, within the United States to change the policies.
Maia Storm 2:05:46
And do you see that? I don't see that. I don't see that. I mean, Obama and Biden deport people hand over fist. We were so nervous worried about Trump. Now he's now he's saying he's going to deport millions of people. But, I mean, Obama was a great, deep person to deport people. So there's there. There is no that's again, I go back to have you heard the politicians talk about the poor, the homeless, the undocumented, the people trying to get in for asylum. There's no There's no compassion for the for them. We're just too interested in making money for corporations. So corporations that get the attention and the compassion Not, not not people.
Brad 2:06:44
I mean, it's a truth, like, we know it's true, but it's just so depressing to hear. I'm trying to imagine, like, what it would be like. And I said, you keep going back to that segment that I saw, you know, watching, watching John Oliver with that lawyer, explaining to a bunch of Mexicans, kind of like guys, even if, even if you go back to Mexico and you're assassinated by the cartel, even that would not necessarily have been enough evidence to get you into America, if the cartel is not nice enough to leave a note saying we did it like the burden is beyond impossible.
Maia Storm 2:07:19
I had a client who was who I started representing in while he was already in immigration detention. It's a county jail, and I used to go in there once a week and give Know Your Rights presentations. Is what they were called. And he said, young man from Honduras is very, very handsome guy, handsome guy, head, Big Head of curly hair, and he was a gang he had been a gang member, and he had gang tattoos, and he was being deported back to Honduras, and my argument to the judge was he's going to be killed, yeah, Because at that time, you know that it was the vigilantes were going around, shooting, killing gang members and and I said, these tattoos are gonna get him killed. And the prosecutor thought that was funny, and said, Well, he can just wear long sleeve shirts. Cover Yeah, cover up his tattoos. Well, I lost that case, and he got deported, and a couple months later, he he went in the police station and I, I don't, I don't think we knew the people who told me. I don't think we knew why he entered the police station, but when he left, he was followed and shot and killed.
Brad 2:08:45
I just wonder, like Did, did the prosecutor feel any remorse after that?
Maia Storm 2:08:52
He wouldn't give a shit. He wouldn't give a shit. He would sit off. And he was a gang member. You know, they're just.
Brad 2:09:00
They're fine with sending people off to die.
Maia Storm 2:09:08
Well, I don't want to say every prosecutor is fine doing that, because there are some kind hearted, although it kills me to say that kind hearted prosecutors, because they're really not kind hearted, but they, but they're doing their they're doing their job, and they, I think they truly believe this person committed a crime, or this person was here undocumented, and that's the law, and the law says you have to go back to your country, right? And what happens to you when you go back to your country? Well, you should have thought of that before you got your tattoos, right? You should have thought of that before you joined the gang. You should have thought of that. I don't know how many times I've heard the one judge say that, well, you should have thought about that before. Or you rob the bank or or whatever, right? Like people don't mess up. You know, clients are always in the jails. Always used to complain to me, this is double jeopardy, right? They knew enough law to get them in trouble, right? So is it, we already been convicted of our crime. We did our time, and now we're now we're arrested again. And I said, Yep, you're right. That's the way the system works. You You broke a criminal law, and by doing that, you broke an immigration law, and that's what so that's a new law that you broke, and that's what you're being punished for. Yes, the prosecutor will say, that's the way the law is. So you are going back.
Brad 2:10:44
But, and I know that you understand this, but it's just this whole like, oh, you should have thought of that. You should have thought of like, man, shut up. Like it doesn't, it doesn't work that way, like when, when you know, you talk to to people who have been in gangs, right? Like, I've never been in a gang, but I've done some shady things. And you know, you I've done some shady things that could get me in prison for a long time. And the thing is, a lot of the it's not about you're sitting around going, Hmm, yes, yes, I would like to join this criminal enterprise. That sounds like a really good idea. More often than not, it's these are the people who exist in my environment, who seem to be a source of safety, who seem to be a source of opportunity.
Maia Storm 2:11:32
Yes, yeah, that's support, yeah.
Brad 2:11:34
And that's what you got. And it's like, well, especially in places like like Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, like these places, Death Squad is not an expression, it's a fact. And so when, when the government is just the biggest gang in town, getting into a gang could literally be a way for you to protect your community from from arbitrary you know, murder and rape and pillage and all these terrible things that government forces would do. And then to have those people who made the best possible decision that they could have made in the worst possible circumstance, judged by someone who's never been there saying, oh, you should have thought of that. It's like, well, I didn't exactly have time to think bullets were flying like, you know, you try thinking under that pressure, it's just so arrogant.
Maia Storm 2:12:27
And yeah, and that's a whole other brings up a whole other question of, how many times I tell a client, okay, you're talking to a judge who has never been in Rwanda, who has never been in Kenya and never been in Sudan, never been in Burma. And you have to present this, you have to present the story, so that they have some understanding of what it was like, because we don't know. That's why I'm so happy to get my hands on a client, because from any country, because I can ask them questions about, what is it really like? Tell me, you know, what do you think is going to happen? What really goes on? Yes, you're in a totally other country, where people have never been in your country, and you're trying to explain to them how things are on the ground. And the prosecutor will say, like, well, don't you know that? You know, in in Sudan, there's, there's a law. And then they'll give you the number of the law. It was passed in 2010 and it absolutely prohibits the police from from, you know, breaking your knees when they arrest you, and it's like, right? Well, I mean, all that's the law, but that's not the way it is in reality, but it's so you have to have document, you have to have testimony or witnesses or something to to argue against that, to argue against all that the prosecutor easily can bring up, saying, well, here's what your constitution says, here's what your laws say, right? Here's the President gave a speech, and here's what he said. And so that there's that's an extra barrier, an extra burden for for a client and the attorney to try to present to the court.
Brad 2:14:22
But that's so that's got to be facetious. I mean, there are laws in the United States, and we watched George Floyd be murdered by uniformed police. We watched it happen like and we know it's a crime because the guy was sentenced like you know, so it the idea that the existence of a law preventing police brutality would preclude police brutality. Surely, in the United States, nobody takes that line of argument seriously.
Maia Storm 2:14:59
I. Think the advent of cell phones has helped a great deal, right, because you can document, you can you can document things that before were not documented, right? The problem is in countries like Burma, where your or other countries, your phone just gets seized, and that's the end of that, right?
Brad 2:15:21
Well, you get shot for having a phone.
Maia Storm 2:15:24
Yeah, yeah, seen that happen as well.
Brad 2:15:27
It's, it's, it's terrific. And of course, the military have been very effective by by cutting off internet and electricity to the water regions. They're not able to take photographs because every camera's electronic these days, yeah, you can't charge them. There's no battery. So it's it.
Maia Storm 2:15:48
You know, when it, when it's over, you're down to, and I'm sure it's happening now as well. But it's, you know, it's down to people talking to people. It's people, it's individual testimonies and individual interviews, right? And when you get, you know, so many interviews that say the same thing, this is what happened. I mean, I think there will be accountability, yeah, I I guess I should say, I hope there will be accountability for all the horrific things going on in Burma, but it's just not going to be until it's over exactly.
Brad 2:16:27
And ultimately, we've been been speaking for a while, as the two of us are very want to do, and talking to you is it's always an interesting experience for me. I thoroughly enjoy it, and I thoroughly enjoy our conversations, even though they are, in every instance, deeply distressing and disturbing, because the state of the world is not good and has not been good for a very, very, very long time, unfortunately, but it's still I always find it fascinating, and I always find it very uplifting to know that there are at least some people within the system who are who are finding solutions and who are trying their best to to get the best possible outcome.
Maia Storm 2:17:12
What leaves immediately to mine is if everybody just did something, if everybody could just contribute in whatever way they felt they could. Money is good, that's fine, but we have to do more than that. You know? We have to rise above the hatred that is so pervasive today, and we have to like show. We have to display in everything we do every day, that love wins and hope is a strategy right. Hope wins and and we, we can, we can change things, but we have to do it together, and we have to do it, I think, in with loving compassion, and we just have to do it. We can't become so self absorbed and so worried about our own life that we can't stand up and reach out, you know, to somebody else. So I Guess that's my closing statement.
Host 2:19:28
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