Joe ("Joe the Heckler") Wilson (Racist-SC) is now infamous for calling President Obama a liar during Mr. Obama's health care reform speech last week. This of course makes him a favorite of the Klan people who gathered on the Mall last weekend.
During an interview after his infamous outburst, Wilson that he had been an immigration lawyer. Is that just a lie?
Well-known immigration lawyer Greg Siskind of Nashville, who blogs on ILW.COM, investigated Mr. Wilson's claim and reports as follows:
See http://blogs.ilw.com/... --
I've been practicing immigration law in the Southfor nearly 20 years and know a lot of my fellow immigrationlawyers in this region. I didn't recognize the name Joe Wilson from West Columbia, South Carolina.
So I decided to call some of my friends in the Carolina immigration bar - including some from Columbia - and no one is aware of Congressman Wilson ever handling immigration matters. South Carolina's immigration bar is not large. And immigration in the state has only been substantial in recent years. Wilson left private practice in 2001 so the odds of him having an immigration practice that escaped the notice of the state's handful of other immigration lawyers is extremely remote.
Did Congressman Wilson - who is making national headlines for calling the President a liar - lie to the national media about his being an immigration lawyer? If so, why? Was it somehow to make it seem like his incorrect reading of the health care bill's immigration provision was accurate? Congressman Wilson can clear this up by producing evidence of having filed immigration cases and actually having knowledge of immigration law. Former immigration clients of Joe Wilson - speak up and show the world your former lawyer is not the liar he accuses the
President of being!
I'm also a long-time immigration lawyer, and I've also never heard of Wilson as an immigration lawyer. Who knows? Maybe he handled a few simple family green card cases. I'll bet anything he is almost totally clueless about the actual U.S. immigration law, which is incredibly complex.
UPDATE: I just noticed that TPM has a piece on this:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...
It was posted at 6:21 p.m., so I wonder if they picked it up from my diary here, but ran without credit? They misspelled Siskind's name.
But they do have some details beyond this diary. It's genuine Muck!
Added the next morning: Zach Roth of TPM who did that piece was working on it all day, so it's just coincidence that the two pieces were published about the same time. This is an ongoing issue. I think we may see more.
I got an email today from a law publisher who said a former INS officer had just told them that Wilson once said to a small conference discussing Bush administration immigration law reform proposals, that he'd handled a handful of immigration cases, so he knew something of the complexity of the law. That's just in line with what I and others speculated about below.