Farmer informs Kiwanis Club about facts of immigration law

The area of immigration law has been in the local news lately, and Donald Trump’s successful appeal to the nativism and xenophobia of many Americans has raised him to the highest office in the land.

Tim Farmer of the Trey Sucher law firm in Perry stopped by the Feb. 27 meeting of the Perry Kiwanis Club to discuss this area of the law. Farmer’s firm operates the Second Street business with the name Abogado on the front. This is Spanish for lawyer.

Farmer said he lived in the country of Argentina for two years and learned to speak the Spanish language.

After graduating from college, he started working at Cargill in Illinois, he told the Kiwanians. He was working in the plant’s human resources department shortly after the federal government raided a third-party contractor who was employing undocumented workers on the overnight cleanup crew.

After this raid, the plant got serious about checking all of its employees for legal or illegal work status and proper documentation. Farmer’s job was to go through all of the employee files and check for anyone who might be illegal or have a questionable status.

His job was to call these people in and terminate them. Farmer said many of these people had been loyal and dedicated employees of the company for as long as 10 or 15 years.

Farmer shared a story about a woman he fired who wanted to keep her name tag so that she could show her family what she had done in terms of work in the U.S. He said he now feels bad that he did not let her keep the name tag.

Farmer said he felt this process was doing no good and hurting a lot of people who just wanted to make a better life for their families and themselves. He said he liked his work at Cargill overall but firing people was a bad experience. It made him want to go back to school to become an attorney in order to help these people.

He earned his law degree and specialized in immigration law.

Farmer said he does not personally know the Barco family that has been affected by recent rulings and does not know anything about Tyson Foods, which employees many immigrants in its pork plant west of Perry. Farmer said he is sure that Tyson screens all hires well.

The entire issue of immigration law is in flux, he said, and is oftentimes used for political gain.

Farmer stated that it takes several years to become a U.S. citizen, and the process is long, difficult and expensive.

Recently, we have heard in the news about children who were born abroad but brought to the U.S. illegally as small children and who grew up here. Some do not even speak their parents’ native language but only know English. President Obama started a program called deferred action for childhood arrivals (under DACA) that let these people stay in the U.S., but President Trump wants to deport them.

There are also cases of people who were allowed to come to the U.S. on a temporary basis but have exhausted their visas. Even when they have lived here legally for more than 20 years, they now are forced to move back to their country of origin.

Farmer said so-called chain migration has been another issue of concern politically. This occurs when a person comes to the U.S. legally and then legally brings family members here, too. Farmer states that this process also takes several years and up to 10 to 15 years, depending on who the relative is.

An immigrant’s country of origin also can affect the time that it takes for him or her to complete the immigration process. U.S. citizenship takes several years after that.

Farmer said it is easy to paint all immigrants as bad but that most are good people who only want a better life for their families and themselves. He said immigrants commit less crime than the population as a whole, and you need to look at each person individually.

Immigration issues are divisive, he said, and there are many hard questions for our government and the public as a whole to figure out. He said his goal is to help people immigrate legally and help them understand their rights in terms of all areas of legal matters.

Welcoming Farmer to the Tuesday luncheon was four-year Perry Kiwanian and current Kiwanis Club President Vince Sturm.