Immigration Panel & Town Hall

Wednesday, March 21, 2018 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm

Penn Law, Fitts Auditorium 

3501 Sansom Street

Philadelphia, PA 19104 

This location is ADA accessible

http://www.upenn.edu/teachin/#schedule

Universities have found themselves enmeshed in debates around immigration policy over the past year, as students, alums, faculty, scholars and researchers have been caught up in Executive Orders seeking to halt entry to the United States of persons from certain countries as visitors or refugees, the stepping up of internal enforcement actions, the rescinding of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), and new limits on all immigration visas, including those for high-skilled workers. Universities have been challenged to respond to the executive orders and to the termination of DACA, with some calling for the declaration of "sanctuary campuses." What is the appropriate role of the University in responding to immigration policies and practices? What role can and should the University take to respond to and to shape immigration law and policy, protecting and promoting the direct interests of the university and its students, faculty, scholars and staff, as well as generating responses aimed at providing solidarity with the city in which we operate, and the immigrant communities that are our neighbors? Please join a Town Hall discussion with representatives from the Philadelphia Mayor's office and immigrant advocacy community, as well as members of the Penn faculty, who will explore these and related questions. Panelists will begin with brief introductory remarks followed by an open town hall forum for persons to ask questions, make recommendations, and further probe the role of the university and the individuals that comprise the university in responding to and helping shape immigration law and policy moving forward.

Panelists:

Sozi Pedro Tulante recently joined Penn Law, after serving as City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia, for the past two years. During his tenure as Philadelphia's chief legal officer, Mr. Tulante expanded the number of attorneys who represent abused and neglected children in the Department’s Child Welfare Unit, promoted diversity in hiring, and spearheaded the Department’s affirmative litigation practice. He also successfully sued the Department of Justice to challenge its efforts to withhold critical federal funds based on Philadelphia’s status as a "sanctuary city." 

Before joining the City, he spent five years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney at the US Attorney's Office in Philadelphia, where he represented the government in criminal investigations and prosecutions. Prior to entering government service, he was a partner at Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller, concentrating in general commercial litigation. He graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2001, and received his A.B. in 1997, cum laude, from Harvard College, where he was recognized with a John Harvard Scholarship. He is a proud graduate of Philadelphia’s public schools and attended Mary McLeod elementary school, Russell Conwell Middle School, and Northeast High School. Sozi has received multiple awards. He has been named one of Pennsylvania’s “Diversity Attorneys of the Year” by The Legal Intelligencer; one of the Philadelphia area’s “101 Next Generation Connectors,” by LEADERSHIP Philadelphia; and "40 Under 40” by The Philadelphia Business Journal. 

Sozi was born in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and came to Philadelphia as a political refugee in 1983 with his family and learned English in Philadelphia public schools. He has written about his experience growing up as a refugee in North Philadelphia in The Philadelphia Inquirer and in the This I Believe Program on NPR.

Miriam Enriquez, Executive Director of the Mayor's Office for Immigrant Affairs: Miriam Enriquez was born in the United States, but spent much of her childhood living in several different Latin American countries, including Nicaragua, her family's country of origin. Before joining the Office of Immigrant Affairs, Ms. Enriquez served as City Councilman-at-Large Dennis M. O'Brien's Director of Legislation and Policy, where she was instrumental in crafting and passing landmark legislation to protect consumers of immigration services in the City. Prior to her work on City Council, Ms. Enriquez served as an Assistant District Attorney at the Philadelphia D.A.'s Office. Enriquez received her B.A. with distinction from George Mason University and her J.D. from The Dickinson School of Law.

Sheila Quintana, Community Organizer, New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia: Sheila Quintana is an immigrant from Mexico who grew up in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Through public campaigns and community education on the system of detention and incarceration, she organized with Migrant Power Movement to stop the deportations of Philadelphia area community members at risk of being separated from their families. She has worked to build power across of the state with poor communities, immigrant and non-immigrant, to change what is politically possible in Pennsylvania. Ms. Quintana served as statewide co-coordinator with the Movement of Migrant Leaders in Pennsylvania in the fight for driver's licenses for undocumented people, and as the Southeast PA Field Coordinator with Put People First PA in the fight for universal healthcare.

Michael Jones-Correa, President's Distinguished Professor of Political Science, and Director, Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Immigration (CSERI): Prof. Jones-Correa is a co-author of Latinos in the New Millennium (Cambridge, 2012) and Latino Lives in America: Making It Home (Temple, 2010), the author of Between Two Nations: The Political Predicament of Latinos in New York City (Cornell, 1998), the editor of Governing American Cities: Inter-Ethnic Coalitions, Competition and Conflict(Russell Sage Foundation, 2001) and co-editor of Outsiders No More? Models of Immigrant Political Incorporation (Oxford 2013. His work has been published in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science and the Social Science Quarterly, among other journals.

Jones-Correa is a co-PI of the 2006 Latino National Survey, a national state-stratified survey of Latinos in the United States; the 2012 Latino Immigrant National Election Study, and the Philadelphia-Atlanta Project, a collaborative research project on contact, trust and civic participation among immigrant and native-born residents of Philadelphia and Atlanta. His research has received support from the Carnegie, Ford, MacArthur, Robert Wood Johnson, Russell Sage and National Science foundations, among others.

Jones-Correa was the team leader and ISS fellow for the 2010-2013 theme project "Immigration: Settlement, Immigration and Membership," at the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell. Jones-Correa has been a visiting fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation 1998-1999, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars 2003-2004, and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University in 2009-2010. In 2004-2005 he served on the Committee on the Redesign of US Naturalization Test for the National Academy of Sciences, in 2009 was elected as vice president of the American Political Science Association, from 2010-2013 to the American National Election Studies (ANES) Board of Overseers and from 2016- to the Council of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). He currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation. 

Sarah Paoletti, Practice Professor of Law and Director, Penn Law Transnational Legal Clinic. Students enrolled in the Transnational Legal Clinic at Penn Law provide direct representation to individuals in immigration proceedings, while also engaging in international human rights research and advocacy in partnership with and on behalf of organizations and individuals seeking to promote the human rights of migrants and immigrants, both in the United States and abroad. In her capacity as Director of the Transnational Legal Clinic, Prof. Paoletti has provided pro bono legal services to members of the University of Pennsylvania's immigrant community, and conducts information sessions, clinics, workshops and trainings across the university. Prof. Paoletti is the President of the Board of Directors of Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc. (Center for Migrant Rights), and is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Labor Recruitment Working Group. Her research focuses on the intersection of migration, labor and human rights. Her publications include: Migrant Workers Access to Justice at Home: Nepal (Open Society Foundations 2014) (co-author); Migrant workers Access to Justice at Home: Indonesia (Open Society Foundations 2013) (co-author); "Transnational Approaches to Transnational Exploitation: A Proposal for Bi-National Migrant Rights Clinics," 30 University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law 1171 (Summer 2009), and "Redefining Human Rights Lawyering Through the Lens of Critical Theory: Lessons for Pedagogy and Practice," 18 Georgetown Journal of Poverty Law & Policy 337 (2011) (co-author), and numerous amicus briefs. Prior to entering academia, she was an Independence Foundation Fellow and Skadden Fellow with Friends of Farmworkers, Inc., and she clerked for the Honorable Judge Anthony J. Scirica on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. 

Moderator: John Grogan, Law '93: John Grogan is a founding partner of Langer, Grogan & Diver P.C., in 2004. Since that time, Mr. Grogan has focused his practice on antitrust, consumer rights and constitutional matters. John has been active in representing immigrants in federal court. In conjunction with the ACLU of Pennsylvania John helped obtain a landmark precedent establishing the right of an undocumented alien to marry. Buck v. Stankovic, 485 F.Supp.2d 576 (M.D. Pa. 2007). Mr. Grogan is a frequent consultant with local non-profit organizations on issue affecting immigrants and their communities. Mr. Grogan graduated, magna cum laude, Order of the Coif, from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1993, where he was the Kramer Public Interest Scholar. Immediately following law school, John served as a law clerk to the Hon. Alan B. Handler, Associate Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court for the 1993-1994 Court term. In 1994, Mr. Grogan was named an Echoing Green Public Service Fellow and that fellowship allowed him to co-founded the Camden Center for Law and Social Justice, Inc.

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