Name: Jerome Fishkin
Age: 71
City: Walnut Creek
Position: Partner at Fishkin & Slatter LLP
J.: In January, Sergio Garcia, who was born in Mexico in 1977, became the first undocumented immigrant to be admitted to the California Bar. It took a state Supreme Court ruling to make that happen, and you and your wife, Lindsay Slatter, represented Sergio pro bono. How and why?
Jerome Fishkin: We represent a lot of law students who have something in their background that needs explaining. We saw [Sergio] as just as another law student who had an issue that had to be explained.
He had applied for moral character certification and had been waiting for a year with no decision. He started calling around to various lawyers, got to Lindsay, and she agreed to represent him. It was obvious that he had very little money; he had spent the last 10 years in community college and then college and law school; he was an anonymous student in a small town, eligible for no loans and no scholarships. He had to do it all himself.
She told me she was going to take it pro bono, and I agreed, not giving it much thought. It started off because she was impressed with his work to date, and from our vantage point, it looked fairly prosaic. We didn’t see the immigration issue coming at us for about six months.
J.: Why did this case garner so much media attention?
JF: Shortly after Sergio went in for his informal interview, there was a press leak. Nobody knows who leaked it. It certainly wasn’t us, and it wasn’t Sergio, because at that point it was of no benefit to him for this to be public. But the press coverage focused on his immigration status and that became the issue. We are not experts in immigration law, but we learned quickly.
J.:
In court, you brought up the fact that you are a grandson of immigrants from Kodonov, a village in Lithuania that disappeared long ago. Why was that important for you to mention?
JF: I’ve been aware of it as long as I can remember, that our ancestors were immigrants. We’ve been immigrants for thousands of years, ever since the Second Temple, and as immigrants, sooner or later, things go bad in your [new] society and country. There is always a group of people who blame the immigrants.
Now [in the United States], there’s this debate over immigrants “taking jobs away” or “they’re the ones always on welfare.” I look at immigrants like Sergio — who has worked his ass off — as a symbol for not only what the United States can do for immigrants, but what they can do for the United States.
My grandfather and his brother started Fishkin Poultry as immigrants in Santa Barbara [during] the Depression. My father’s younger brother got bar mitzvah lessons in exchange for chickens. That immigration experience has been with me my whole life. These are people escaping something, and all they want to do is work hard, raise their families and give their kids a better break than they had.
J.:
This case was so important that your children kept your grandchildren out of school to watch you in court on the day you argued. Why was it important to you that they were there?
JF: Many reasons, but the first was standing up for what you believe in. When you make a good living, you do these kinds of things pro bono. I wanted them to see their grandpa standing up there, seeing one man who is an immigrant being represented by the grandson of an immigrant, arguing with the U.S. government that you can do all of that in this country.
J.: Do you feel it was your Jewish values or having immigrant grandparents that made you identify with Sergio so strongly?
JF: Both.
J.:
Are you still in touch with Sergio? What is he doing now?
JF: Though he is still a national symbol, and gets asked to speak a lot, he got his law license and set up his office in Chico, serving the same community of which he is a part. He is the son of one immigrant, helping others.
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