ARTICLE

VILLALOBOS & MOORE, LLP IMMIGRATION LAWYERS

Ever since Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, I find myself drawn to the writings of Timothy Snyder, the Yale historian most famous for writing On Tyranny in response to the 2016 election of Donald Trump. Snyder has written thousands of pages on Ukraine, Russia, and the Holocaust, and I’ve spent the past few months repeatedly rereading one of his books because it is the most relevant lens I have found to help me emotionally process what we all endured during the Trump administration. In Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, Snyder argues that the Nazi atrocities were worst where there was a double-destruction of the nation state—first by the Russian Soviets, then by the German Nationalists. The Nazis found it necessary to first deport their victims to these twice-stateless zones, unchecked by law and the social norm of human reciprocity. At the opposite pole, those who could rescue Jews in large numbers were almost all diplomats who had the authority to extend the protection of the nation to individuals through the issuance of identity documents. A common Jewish saying at the time, that “the passport was what held body and soul together” was true because those who held passports, even German Jews, were far more likely to survive the Holocaust than those without them, because they were far less likely to be deported to these lawless zones. The passport, or even a simple travel document, saved the bearer, because it reinforced the concept of reciprocal humanity, protected by nations. After the war, the world rejected the Nazi philosophy of a world made up of races, rather than of nations when the UN enacted the Refugee Convention, which serves as the basis of US asylum law. We declared that when a nation fails to protect human rights, via a reciprocal humanity, for all of its citizens, we would extend our protection, and statehood, to the victims. US law gives Asylum Officers, Immigration Judges, Immigration Officers, and Consular Officers the authority to extend the protection of our nation to individuals. These officials are the ones we have entrusted to “hold body and soul together,” not just for Ukrainians fleeing Putin’s war, but for all who need our help.