Tennessee Voices, Episode 233: Mario Ramos, immigration attorney

The last great reform of the U.S. immigration system took place during the Reagan era in the 1980s.

Since that time, several presidents, both Republican and Democratic, have promised additional reforms, but their efforts have failed due to political pressure.

President Joe Biden is being assailed by both conservative critics who accuse him making the immigration system too lax and progressive critics who say he has broken his promises to fix the system.

Mario Ramos, an immigration attorney in private practice in Nashville, has witnessed the legislative fits and starts and the fiery anti-immigrant rhetoric that has accompanied it over the decades. He spoke about the issue on this episode of the Tennessee Voices podcast.

His Colombian father and Belgian mother moved the family to Knoxville in the 1960s and he has observed the exponential growth of Latinos in the state, especially since 1980. Many came to the Volunteer State to seek employment and now make up nearly 7% of the state's population, according to the 2020 Census.

Ramos started his law practice 35 years ago and said the four years of the Trump era were the most difficult he has ever seen for clients and for the attorneys who represent them.

Related column: Hispanic voices rise in Nashville and Tennessee

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About Tennessee Voices

The Tennessee Voices videocast is a 20-minute program, which started in March 2020 and invites leaders, thinkers and innovators who have written guest columns for a USA TODAY Network Tennessee publication to share their insights and wisdom with me and our viewers.

Please email your ideas for future guests to me at dplazas@tennessean.com. Thank you for watching.

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David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network Tennessee and an editorial board member of The Tennessean. Tweet to him at @davidplazas.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Uphill battle to reform the immigration system with Mario Ramos: Video