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Immigration Issues Explored by Human Rights Center, Immigration Working Group at University of Dayton

Two University of Dayton (UD) groups -- the President’s Immigration Working Group and the Human Rights Center -- are working to explore immigration issues affecting the UD community, the United States, and the globe through programming, awareness, and advocacy.

The Immigration Working Group (IWG) is a coalition of University of Dayton faculty and staff initially composed and appointed by President Spina in 2017 in response to rapid changes in immigration policy in the United States.

“The Immigration Working Group provides a space to share information and details about events, research projects or programs taking place on and around campus around immigration issues,” says Youssef Farhat, who is a member of the working group, a Political Science Lecturer at UD, and the Partnerships and Communication Coordinator for the Human Rights Center.

“We maintain the same mission since our founding,” says Dr. Miranda Hallett, who is a member of the Immigration Working Group and this year's Chair, an Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at UD, and Research Fellow at the Human Rights Center. The mission of the Immigration Working Group is to have students, faculty, administration, Marianist and staff representatives come together to discuss the full set of issues related to the impacts of the Executive Orders, explore how UD can best support students, faculty, and staff as a full community, and explore whether UD is using our educational influence, both inside and outside the classroom, to deepen understanding about immigration to the U.S. and develop more just relationships to our immigrant neighbors.

In past years, the Immigration Working Group has provided campus support in response to the Presidential Proclamation of 9/24/2017 -- the Executive Order known as the “travel ban” -- including a forum on the impacts of the Executive Order. The group has also established campus resources for UD students, faculty, and staff, including the development of a campus-wide policies and protocol for responding to immigration agents and on-campus information regarding individual rights.

Complimenting the initiatives advanced by the Immigration Working Group, the University of Dayton’s Human Rights Center provides scholarship support for faculty and students to conduct research and advocacy projects focused on human rights issues, including immigration rights.

“One of our scholarships is the Linda C. Majka Fellowship, which provides one undergraduate student with an internship at the Human Rights Center, allowing them to focus on immigration work in the Dayton community,” says Farhat. “Jenny Sobnosky is our first intern and she is working on looking into barriers and challenges facing the refugees and migrant communities in Dayton.”

The Human Rights Center hosts projects that integrate interdisciplinary academic and experiential learning to develop human rights and rights-based research and advocacy. This includes the Moral Courage Project, which aims to highlight the stories of upstanders: individuals who stand up on behalf of others during moments of crisis. In May 2018, students working on the Moral Courage Project traveled to El Paso, Texas, to interview and photograph human rights advocates, community leaders, and faith leaders about their commitment to immigration rights work at the U.S.-Mexico border. America the Borderland - a multimedia exhibition and podcast, has been developed based on this work, and is set to premiere on April 11, 2019 as part of the the Romero Human Rights 2019 Award ceremony.

The crossover between the two campus groups has provided an opportunity to harness cross-campus discussion into action. As a Human Rights Center representative of the Immigration Working Group, Farhat sees many of the conversations in the working group as a way to engage the Human Rights Center and foster partnerships on issues pertaining to immigration. “Many cool ideas start as discussions in the IWG and can bloom into research projects supported by the center or conceptualize into panel discussions and themes for the center’s biannual conference and key initiatives.”

For Dr. Hallett, the Immigration Working Group is an intersection between her area of research and her interest in serving the UD community. “My research is on Central American migration, which has changed a lot over the 20 years I’ve been studying the phenomenon … Participating in the working group has been one way I try to serve the whole community at UD, especially those who are impacted by travel bans and other restrictions on migration and legal status,” says Dr. Hallett. “We’ve worked hard to provide spaces for learning and dialogue on campus, and to connect and network between these different efforts that may not have been in contact before.”

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