"Any little thing might matter, please do be thorough."

"Of course. The engineers who invented it might be willing to come over and talk if you can't be confident from the papers."

"Perhaps that will prove necessary."

"We'll look forward to hearing your thoughts."

The theologian nods.

"I know you want your work to be insulated as much as possible from political concerns, but, ah, we're putting a lot of effort at this point into preventing well-intentioned parties from coming to Amenta to rescue the reds. A consensus on an acceptable method would do a lot to reduce the inclination of some parties to force our hand."

"Surely you can contain them somewhere dispensable in the interim? You've said you have ways to replace their labor."

"If it were definitely an interim while a process was approved, that'd be one thing, but if it was potentially indefinite if everything got rejected...and some people think that the reds might cooperate more with emigration if they can see that the other reds who've emigrated have been given clean bodies and citizenship and rights. If they just know they're getting shuffled off into quarantine somewhere, they're going to wonder why we'd ever bother getting them out, and then they'll probably resist deportation."

"Can they stop or even inconvenience you?"

"We can't move them all simultaneously when some of them are out at work, and it sounds like being rounded up is the sort of thing that has historically provoked riots. There's also not much political will for forcible deportation of innocents, and it's not even clear it'd be legal."

"Well. We're not judges you can bribe, you know."

"I understand completely why you'd want the theological question insulated as much as possible from the politics."

"It does sound like a very promising avenue."

"Oh good."

They leave it at that.

The Anitami team emails the reds' provided work order emails to invite them to make suggestions about how the aliens can help them.

This gets substantially better response rates than advertising themselves on the news.

Maybe no one actually reads the reds' emails even though it seems like the kind of thing an evil repressive government would do.

"They might just dislike them too much to think about how optimally to oppress them."

     "...yay?"

"I mean, I'll take it."

The two Rivikni murder cases go to trial. Since the victims weren't especially interested in testifying and the fact they're up and about could cause pollution hysteria it is not widely advertised.

The green wants a lawyer who does not have bizarre alien morality, as she feels unable to trust people with bizarre alien morality and the lawyer is supposed to be trusted to be on her side.

...there aren't lawyers who've passed the relevant law exam and who believe that reds aren't people. In fact, believing something like that would probably disqualify you from passing the law exam because people who believe things like that should not be allowed anywhere near a position of power.

Then they aren't taking their idea that she's got a right to counsel that is on her side in their "adversarial 'justice system'" particularly seriously.

She has a right to counsel that is accredited in the relevant legal system and entirely committed to providing her with the best defense permitted by law. She does not have a right to counsel who agree with her about the ethics of her conduct; the adversarial justice system was reinvented sixteen hundred times and in none of them has that been how it works. 

She is not saying they have to agree with her about the ethics of her conduct, she is saying she can't trust them and therefore the system can't work like they want it to if they are a morally incomprehensible alien instead of a person with normal amounts of difference in perspective, because morally incomprehensible aliens may take anything she says at random about anything whatsoever, and decide it's an atrocity and sabotage her case or hurt her or her daughter over it or something.

She is allowed to request a different lawyer, but the different lawyer will be appointed from the pool of lawyers who passed the relevant exam. 

"Uh," says her social worker, "we've explained that we are exactly like you except for believing that reds are people. Do you have trouble understanding the idea 'like us except for believing that reds are people', or do you not believe it?"

"I don't believe it," she says. "I had a roommate who studied something she called 'plant cognition' and this is weirder."

"I see."

The court dutifully presents her with a selection of accredited attorneys. If she picks one that attorney can represent her in place of her current one.

She grits her teeth and talks to them, trying to find one who makes any fucking sense.