Professor Wadhia raises awareness of immigration issues across Pennsylvania

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- As Inauguration Day moves closer for President-elect Donald Trump, whose campaign often featured controversial rhetoric on immigration, Penn State Law professor Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia has been busy.

Wadhia, an immigration law expert and director of the Penn State Law Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, has been hard at work educating others about the complicated nuances of immigration law, how national immigration policy may change under the incoming administration, and helping municipal government officials develop comprehensive education immigration policy at the local level—and she’s been recognized by media outlets across the state for doing so.

Just last week, Wadhia’s work was featured in the Centre Daily Times, StateCollege.com, The Daily Collegian, and WTAJ-TV after the State College Borough Council passed a comprehensive immigration policy resolution that Wadhia helped author. The resolution, which states the borough’s position that immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility, was also covered in the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Magazine, as well as the Philadelphia Business Journal.

But Wadhia, who has been working with the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic to host community events on immigration law since the November 2016 election, had another major initiative planned just a few days later.

The Penn State Law Teach-In on Immigrants’ Rights, held Jan. 12 in the Lewis Katz Building, brought together legal scholars and community leaders from across Pennsylvania to discuss topics including the basics of immigration law, the controversial proposal for a national “Muslim registry,” and the concepts of sanctuary and asylum as they apply to immigration law.

The teach-in was the subject of reports on WTAJ-TV, WJAC-TV, and WATM-TV, as well as the Centre Daily Times, helping raise awareness of the work of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic and the resources it offers to the community.

For more information on the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic and immigration law in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, the clinic has developed a resource page on its website covering immigration law post-election for members of the immigrant community and local community members alike.