Immigrant Lawyer Discusses Issues with U.S. Immigration System

Erica Schommer gives a lecture on representing immigrants
in Texas (photo by Nick Smetzer)

By Nick Smetzer

The immigration systems in the United States is laden with various problems, from historical bias to contemporary challenges, immigrant lawyer Erica Schommer told an audience at Trinity University on Wednesday.

Schommer said the U.S. has a “history of exclusionary motives,” which has contributed to the shaping of the nation’s immigration policy and its flaws. She outlined how politics and policy were once used against immigrating Catholics, Asians and Jews, before recent political discourse turned towards demonizing immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

Trinity Lecture Series Explores Immigration and Gender through Film

Maria DiFrancesco thanks students after the lecture.
Photo by Johnna Guillerman

By Johnna Guillerman

As a crowd filed into the basement of Northrup Hall last night, students, faculty and members of the community could be heard speaking in mixed Spanish and English. They were discussing a film, “The Skin I Live In”, the subject of the second lecture in the Álvarez Seminar.

Maria DiFrancesco, a professor at Ithaca College, did a presentation about the gender and sexuality issues in the film. She opened her slideshow with a diagram of a stick figure explaining the differences between gender, sex and attraction. After the lecture, audience members asked questions about issues of queerness and transphobia in the film.

Kendall Hayes, a junior Spanish and Chinese double major, appreciated DiFrancesco’s commentary. “I thought Dr. DiFrancesco proposed a really passionate analysis of the movie. Her comments about the inherent sexuality and gender of objects is something I registered but never analyzed.”