Richard Hobbs has made it his life’s mission to tackle exploitative systems and help those in need.
As an immigration attorney for 35 years, he’s helped thousands of people apply for citizenship and represented many in court. His convictions were marked by encounters with extreme poverty in countries such as Mexico, El Salvador, India and others.
Some things he could not unsee, like children with hollowed-out stomachs begging for money. While he was volunteering with the Peace Corps in Afghanistan in the early 1970s, he saw people drinking out of the same muddied water used for toilets and to wash clothes. When civil war broke out, he evacuated.
“Traveling in countries with immense poverty really changed my life,” Hobbs told San José Spotlight. “Once you understand oppression on a worldwide level, you can understand the need to try to help oppressed people as much as you can.”
His experiences drove him to explore how worldwide inequality developed. In Mexico City, he dove into studying capitalism and the ways it created an exploitative system. He ended up doing a masters thesis on corruption in the Mexican government at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and later got a master’s degree in social science at San Jose State University, where he pursued a thesis on a theory of how to meet human needs.
He went on to establish several organizations including the Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN) — a prominent immigration services nonprofit in Santa Clara County. He also founded the South Bay Progressive Alliance and Human Agenda, which fights for basic human rights and seeks to combat undemocratic institutions through worker cooperatives.
“What attracted me to (Human Agenda) is Richard’s vision as to what the good society should be,” Human Agenda Board Secretary Salem Ajluni told San José Spotlight. “Not many, and probably (no organizations) in our area have such a robust vision of how we get there. A lot of that comes out of Richard’s experience and work over 35, 40 years.”
Experience matters
At age 36, Hobbs entered law school at Golden Gate University. His time living in Central America and being bilingual meant he had an intimate knowledge of his clients, who came from El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela. His first role out of law school was with Catholic Charities as director of the immigration program.
“I understand where they’re coming from, the kinds of problems that they have, and with that I can, I think, relate to them much better than a lot of attorneys,” Hobbs said.
In 1996, government assistance was overhauled through the Welfare Reform Act. It barred permanent legal residents, who have the right to live and work in the U.S., from accessing food stamps and Social Security income. Santa Clara County’s solution to preventing 51,000 people from losing their public benefits was to get them on the pathway to citizenship as soon as possible, Hobbs said.
Hobbs was tapped to lead the countywide effort to help these residents apply for citizenship through the then-Office of Human Relations, now known as the Office of Immigrant Relations. He obtained funding for nonprofits offering immigrant services and coordinated the county’s first ever citizenship days in 1997, where immigrants receive free help applying for citizenship. That program is still operating.
“Richard has been integral in the immigrant program in Santa Clara County,” Teresa Castellanos, coordinator at the Office of Immigrant Relations, told San José Spotlight. “He’s someone that is so committed to the work that he’s doing that he just keeps going, and (he) always brings along others with him to also do the work.”
At Hobbs’ law office on North Fourth Street in San Jose, he and his associates ring a bell in celebration every time someone receives citizenship. He estimates they’ve directly helped at least 3,000 people in the citizenship process since the office opened in 2011, and thousands more people in the citizenship programs he oversaw.
“Citizenship is transformational,” Castellanos said, who worked with Hobbs since the start of the county program. “You go from having access to some opportunities to having access to all opportunities, and not only for that individual, but for future generations.”
At a time when democratic institutions in the U.S. face unprecedented attack, Hobbs has been organizing groups to take a stand. He runs the Solidarity Unity Network, a group of two dozen organizations that gather to protest and brainstorm ways to support one another. Hobbs said he’s created multiple worker cooperatives as a way to tip the balance away from capitalist institutions, including a home care worker co-op in Gilroy.
“We need to get through this time with productive anger and compassion,” Hobbs said. “Worker owned cooperatives, to me, really are what should be the focus of the future.”
Contact Joyce Chu at [email protected] or @joyce_speaks on X.
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