The Asian reporter., April 03, 2017, Page Page 7, Image 7

April 3, 2017
U.S.A.
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
Travel ban fight personal for Hawai‘i’s ‘scholarly gentleman’
By Jennifer Sinco Kelleher
The Associated Press
ONOLULU — Growing up in
Washington state, Douglas Chin
says he was the stereotypical
“smart Chinese kid that got straight As.”
His parents taught him not to stick out too
much and used to say “don’t poke the lion.”
So when Chin, now the Hawai‘i attorney
general, was deciding on whether to
challenge the Trump administration’s
latest travel ban, he understood those who
said it wasn’t the state’s fight.
But the Stanford University-educated
lawyer stepped into the spotlight, making
Hawai‘i the first state to challenge
President Trump’s revised travel ban —
and convince a federal judge to
temporarily block it before it took effect.
His motivation was personal, he said.
Chin said he felt as if he was invisible
during his time in an overwhelmingly
white suburban Seattle high school, and
wanted to fight for an invisible minority in
Hawai‘i: Muslims.
“It really hits home with me,” he said. “It
worries me about this society and what’s
happening.”
Before his appointment as attorney
general, Chin, 50, was Honolulu’s
managing director (who would serve as
acting mayor when the mayor was out of
town) and a prosecutor. People who know
and worked with him say he is nice, smart,
and a fast walker.
Some, however, criticized him for
challenging the travel ban.
“Let’s allow the big states with more
resources to fight this issue,” Republican
state representative Gene Ward said in a
statement. “My sense is that the people of
Hawai‘i would rather see potholes fixed
rather than trying to lead the nation
against an executive order.”
Those who have worked with Chin say
the reason he is fighting the ban is simple:
He’s kind.
Jean Ireton was a fellow Honolulu
prosecutor with Chin, who started out in
traffic court. He had “some of the toughest,
most god-awful trials that we had there,”
H
she said.
Those kinds of cases showed her the
worst in humanity, she said, but Chin
didn’t see them that way: “He’s just a
kinder person than I am. I don’t have as
much faith in people as he does.”
Ireton and Chin have differing views on
the travel ban. “I do have a problem with
the amount of vetting they’re able to do in
those countries,” she said. “Doug sees it
from a people perspective. He sees it from
people who are suffering.”
U.S. district judge Derrick Watson
blocked the federal government from
enforcing its ban on travel from six mostly
Muslim countries and its suspension of the
nation’s refugee program.
The judge agreed with Hawai‘i that the
travel ban amounts to discrimination
based on nationality and religion.
Trump called the ruling an example of
“unprecedented judicial overreach” and
called his new travel ban a watered-down
version of the first one. He said the order
was a necessary measure to prevent
terrorists from entering the country.
For Chin, the issue of immigration is a
personal one. He is named after the
Christian missionary doctor who spon-
sored his Chinese parents’ immigration to
Washington state, where Chin was born.
His middle name Shih-Ging means
“scholarly gentleman, which is weird,”
Chin said.
“I think that’s where you probably can
catch a spark of a personal sense of duty
about this whole travel ban,” he said,
describing his parents emigrating in 1957
at a time when U.S. immigration policy
still imposed nation-based quotas.
Chin eventually moved to Honolulu in
1989 as part of a job transfer with IBM and
was exposed to Hawai‘i’s diversity. “All of a
sudden I wasn’t in this place where I felt
invisible anymore, so that was really
empowering,” he said.
Chin’s career after IBM took him to the
University of Hawai‘i law school and then
various stints in the Honolulu prosecutor’s
office and private practice.
On a bookshelf in Chin’s office is a
newspaper front page from a murder
conviction he won in 2010. A 15-year-old
boy who was tried as an adult and
PERSONAL SENSE OF DUTY. Hawai‘i attor-
ney general Douglas Chin sits in his office in Honolulu.
Hawai‘i was the first state to file a lawsuit challenging
President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban. For Chin,
the son of Chinese immigrants, fighting the travel ban
is personal. (AP Photo/Jennifer Sinco Kelleher)
convicted of murdering his 51-year-old
neighbor is one of Chin’s most memorable
cases.
Near the shelf are portraits of Chin’s
children and wife, who is white and from
New York. He describes his daughter, 18,
and son, 16, as hapa, a term locals in
Hawai‘i use for mixed-race people.
Former Honolulu prosecutor and former
mayor Peter Carlisle recalled first meeting
him at Chin’s church while Carlisle was
campaigning. Carlisle said he was so
impressed with Chin’s public speaking, he
told him to look him up if he ever needed a
job.
Chin attends Oahu Church of Christ, a
nondenominational Christian church that
meets in rented spaces at the university or
an elementary school. At church, Chin
arranges music and sings a capella — he
has perfect pitch, he notes sheepishly.
He found the time to go to Sunday
services the week of the Honolulu hearing.
After the hearing, Chin stopped at his
office and then to Waikiki where he was
hosting a meeting of the Conference of
Western Attorneys General because he’s
the group’s chairman.
Chin has also spent a lot of time giving
interviews
to
news
organizations
nationwide about his lawsuit. Part of the
reason he does that is to educate — even
those who live in Hawai‘i.
“It’s a no-brainer why we have to object
to this. I totally know how there’s another
segment of the population that, to them, it
just doesn’t connect,” he said. “What does
the Middle East have to do with
Hawai‘i?”
The answer, he said, is Hawai‘i’s some
5,000 Muslims are the invisible minority
and Chin knows first hand what that feels
like.
“People in Hawai‘i don’t know how to
process a Muslim other than what they see
on TV,” he said.
Trump Winery in Virginia seeks more foreign workers
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — As
President Donald Trump touts job creation
for Americans as a top priority, his son’s
Virginia winery is seeking permission to
hire foreign workers to cultivate its
grapes.
Trump Vineyard Estates, better known
as Trump Winery, asked to bring in 29
workers this season through the federal
H-2A visa program, The Daily Progress
reported. The program enables agricul-
tural employers who anticipate a shortage
of domestic workers to bring foreign
workers to the U.S. to do agricultural jobs
or perform other temporary or seasonal
q
Talking Story: The Safety Pin
Continued from page 6
intentions, inspiring words, then sudden,
silent withdrawal from all that. Seventy-
five years of this.
w
The Asian Reporter’s
Expanding American Lexicon
Ibu (Bahasa Indonesia): Madam or mother.
Does not have to be, in mainstream American
sense, your mom. Please let me clarify another
important issue that often comes up when
traditional folk use this respectful form of
address: With all my respect for evolving
feminism, in all its rich and life-enhancing,
ethno-cultural varieties — as used here,
“Mother” means a woman who generously
birthed us, who gently and sternly nurtured us.
Mother is (as in “Ibu Luat” Mother Ocean or “Ibu
Bumi” Mother Earth or Soil) to whom we owe
our existence, and for whose approval we do our
very best in this short, precious life. Like Ibu
Kathleen.
services.
Trump Vineyard Estates, owned by Eric
Trump, initially applied for six foreign
workers in December. Two months later,
the company applied for 23 more. Both job
orders for Trump Vineyard Estates say the
primary tasks include planting and
cultivating vines, adding grow tubes, and
pruning grape vines.
H-2A workers and U.S. workers in
corresponding employment must be paid a
certain rate — $10.72 an hour for vineyard
farm workers in Virginia this year.
Employers say they’ve been unable to find
American citizens to fill the jobs. At least
three other local vineyards also applied to
hire foreign workers.
“It’s difficult to find people,” said Libby
Whitley, an attorney who has worked with
employers, including Trump Winery, on
labor issues.
But news reports that followed the
winery’s December requests for the visas
prompted criticism over the request.
Trump campaigned on promises to create
new jobs for American workers and used
harsh rhetoric to talk about immigrants,
including his promise to build a border
wall to keep out people from Mexico and
Central America who make up much of the
migrant workforce in the U.S.
Whitely said she assumed her company
would be flooded with people applying for
the jobs because of the media coverage of
the winery’s initial request.
“Guess how many applicants we had? ...
13,” she said. “And they were all from
Continued on page 8
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