{"id":8081,"date":"2018-02-17T17:59:50","date_gmt":"2018-02-17T17:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.denverpost.com?p=2956115&amp;preview_id=2956115"},"modified":"2018-02-17T17:59:50","modified_gmt":"2018-02-17T17:59:50","slug":"non-u-s-citizens-advised-to-stay-away-from-jobs-in-colorado-marijuana-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/non-u-s-citizens-advised-to-stay-away-from-jobs-in-colorado-marijuana-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-U.S. citizens advised to stay away from jobs in Colorado marijuana industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0 5px 5px;float:right;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/non-u-s-citizens-advised-to-stay-away-from-jobs-in-colorado-marijuana-industry\/\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"large-10 large-centered small-12 columns\">\n<div class=\"entry-meta-date\">Published: Feb 17, 2018, 9:17 am \u2022 Updated: Feb 18, 2018, 9:29 am <span class=\"single-comments-link\" \/><\/div>\n<p class=\"byline\">By <strong>Ann Marie Awad<\/strong>, <em> Colorado Public Radio<\/em><\/p>\n<p>DENVER \u2014 Marijuana may be a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecannabist.co\/2018\/02\/09\/colorado-marijuana-sales-december-year-2017\/98606\/\">multi-billion dollar industry in Colorado<\/a>, but cannabis is still illegal federally \u2014 so any job in the industry can be considered trafficking in a controlled substance. Normally, this hasn\u2019t been a tricky distinction for the industry\u2019s state-licensed employees, except by one standard. Their immigration status.<\/p>\n<p>Simply having a job in a dispensary or grow house can get a legal resident, or other immigrant, deported and banned from the U.S., sometimes for life.<\/p>\n<p>Flo remembers being reluctant, at first, to pursue a job in the marijuana industry. This story does not use his full name, or the name of his employer, because of the questions surrounding immigration status and work in the industry. Flo came to the U.S. on a student visa to study English and live closer to his girlfriend, who was an American citizen. A neighbor who worked for a marijuana grow encouraged him to dip his toe in the water.<\/p>\n<p>It took him about a month to convince Flo, \u201cbecause it\u2019s not really what I wanted to do,\u201d he said. Back in France he worked at a recycling company, but in Denver he had trouble finding a job that paid as well. \u201cAnd I had no idea how I was going to explain this to my family, also, because that\u2019s really not what I was going for.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He started out trimming cannabis plants and then climbed the company ladder. By all accounts, things were going well. He and his girlfriend married, which meant he traded his student visa for a green card.<\/p>\n<p>As Flo explained it, \u201cwhen you get your green card via your spouse, they give it to you for two years,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cTwo years later, they want to make sure it wasn\u2019t a scam, that we actually are in love, and married, and living together and I didn\u2019t just give her some money so that I could get my green card.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When it came time for his review with federal immigration authorities, he asked his employer if he had anything to worry about, and they paid for him to consult an immigration attorney. The news was not good.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was just not much they could do for me if I was to get caught, then it would become very complicated for me, and so I made the decision to go back home,\u201d he said over the phone from Ales, a town in the south of France, where he and his wife are house-sitting while he looks for a new job.<\/p>\n<p>He left the U.S. last September, with only two months to uproot his life and move back to another country.<\/p>\n<p>This situation isn\u2019t just a dilemma for immigrants like Flo, but for the marijuana companies that would like to hire them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had no idea that that was going to happen, we had no idea that this was an issue that was going to be brought to our attention,\u201d said Kristi Kelly, head of the Marijuana Industry Group, a business and lobbying association that counts some of Colorado\u2019s biggest names in marijuana among its members.<\/p>\n<p>The issue came to their attention through a community partnership with Servicios de La Raza, a nonprofit that offers services to low income people. The two groups then banded together to create a PSA explaining all the ways that involvement with marijuana can get non-citizens thrown out of the country.<\/p>\n<p>Even tourists who stop into a dispensary for a joint during a visit to the Mile High City risk running afoul of customs agents who are increasingly searching phones and social media.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Related: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecannabist.co\/2017\/04\/18\/homeland-security-john-kelly-marijuana-enforcement-ice-tsa\/77649\/\">Homeland Security says ICE, TSA will \u201ctake action\u201d against marijuana<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Dean Heizer, the executive director of the LivWell chain of dispensaries, has the PSA playing in the lobby of every one of his stores. That\u2019s because he\u2019s dealt with this firsthand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn anticipation of potential immigration actions by the government, we have preemptively reached out to folks and advised them of the situation, and invariably, when they\u2019ve been advised, they\u2019ve chosen to quit,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s also tweaked LivWell\u2019s hiring process to include an upfront disclosure that working for the industry could get you deported. He has to take that approach, because Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prevents employers from asking about an applicant\u2019s immigration status.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re trying to address it through public education, because until either the immigration laws get changed, Title VII gets changed or the controlled substances act gets changed, there\u2019s no way out of this,\u201d Heizer said.<\/p>\n<p>The threat of deportation in these situations is not new to the Trump administration. In fact, deportations for drug possession increased 43 percent between 2007 and 2012, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. Violeta Chapin, an immigration attorney and law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said those numbers will likely grow. Combine President Trump\u2019s surge in immigration enforcement with a Justice Department hostile to marijuana, and Chapin said the outlook isn\u2019t great.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is something that we as a country really need to take a hard look at, which is how are we going to deal with the enforcement that happens around marijuana, still, at the federal level,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Since that question is not likely to be resolved any time soon, Chapin pointed to one easy way for immigrants to avoid this problem.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCertainly when people come to me and ask me, and I\u2019m always grateful that they ask me before they make any decision, I tell them don\u2019t get near it. Don\u2019t do it. I\u2019m sorry, you\u2019re just not like everybody else,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike, I could walk into a dispensary tomorrow and buy a joint and go to my house and smoke it. You, unfortunately, that\u2019s a huge risk for you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So long as Congress remains deadlocked on immigration, \u201cjust say no\u201d seems to be the only option for non-citizens right now. And, while some lawmakers have introduced bills to legalize or otherwise decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, it\u2019s unclear how much of a chance they have of passing.<\/p>\n<p>Information from: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cpr.org\/\">Colorado Public Radio<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#013; &#013; <\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><!-- .row --> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The situation isn&#8217;t just a dilemma for immigrants, but also for the cannabis companies that would like to hire them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1538,7520,2383,77,5577,9,5019,1,3,61,1736],"tags":[4106,7521,4947,2655,5580,5022],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8081"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}