BRIEFS
To say that Socheat Chea came to the
United States under dire circumstances
would be an understatement.
In 1975, with the insurgent Khmer Rouge
only five days away from taking the capital
city of Phnom Penh, the Chea family—
whose patriarch was a major in the army—
fled Cambodia by helicopter and landed at
a makeshift refugee camp on the deck of
the USS Okinawa in the Gulf of Thailand.
“It was clear that [if we stayed] we would
probably be killed,” Chea says, who was 9
at the time. “My father was in the war. We
were destined for death.”
Instead, Chea was destined for Georgia.
His father had worked with a U.S. military
officer named Col. Martin, who lived in
Georgia and who offered his home as a
safe haven for the Chea family until they
settled in. With a brief break for law school
at Boston College, he’s lived in Georgia
ever since.
“When I first came here, there wasn’t
much diversity,” he says, adding that there
were maybe three Chinese restaurants
in the city. “Eventually, they had the
Olympics, and the city really shifted in
terms of commerce. It grew by leaps and
bounds. It’s very exciting to live in a place
Immigration law found him. “It was
almost like fate,” he says. “I worked for a
guy that had an opening.”
Chea founded his solo firm in 1992 in
Midtown Atlanta, then moved to Duluth in
‘DESTINED FOR DEATH’ IN CAMBODIA, SOCHEAT CHEA NOW HELPS IMMIGRANTS MAKE NEW LIVES IN THE U.S.
BY ANDREW BRANDT
THE ‘CRIMINALIZATION OF IMMIGRATION’
2004, where, he notes, “you can break into
the field and make a name for yourself.”
Since the late ’90s, his five-attorney
immigration practice has focused on
helping researchers and scholars come to
the U.S.
Post-9/11, he has also experienced
what he calls “the criminalization of
immigrants,” and ticks off many new
detention centers and officers, as well as
jails being run by the private sector. He
describes current enforcement as akin to a
police state.
“Everybody got a bond back then,” he
says of life before 9/11. “You literally had
to be a mass killer not to get a bond. And
now, just for driving without a license, you
can’t get a bond.”
He adds, “We ended up getting a
lot more Muslim clients, because they
were being asked to come in to register.
And they’d register, and then they’d
end up getting arrested, put in removal
In general, he thinks U.S. immigration
law is dysfunctional.
“My corporate clients are very frustrated
with the fact that the laws are so behind
compared to the needs of society,” he says.
“You have to understand—the law that
we work on was passed in 1965, signed
into law by LBJ. The world has changed
In one way it has: It can now take years
or decades for applicants to become U.S.
citizens. “We have a backlog,” he says.
“If you have a brother and sister, it’ll take
you 12 years to file to get them over here;
if you’re from the Philippines, 20-plus
years; Mexico, maybe 30 years. If you’re
from India, you can wait 10 to 15 years
for your green card. And you constantly
have to keep renewing your work permit,
and somehow you have to be employed
throughout that whole time.”
As a refugee whose family came to
the United States seeking urgent relief,
Chea empathizes with those who are
disheartened with how sluggish the
process can be; but he remains an
optimist. “It’s new challenges every
day,” he says, adding that he hopes one
day there will be major changes to the
immigration process.
“My firm, we’re in the trenches,” he says.
“We’re a medic at the front line.”
