Economics of Immigration blog

Post by Colin Liscord, Skidmore College, Class of 2020. I was not in this economics class, nor am I a Colgate student, still I was lucky enough to be a part of this trip. A professor of mine at Skidmore College, Diana Barnes, helped plan this trip and after a week or so of relentless begging she allowed me to tag along. As an anthropology major, I found it most interesting to view the conflict on the U.S – Mexico…

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Post by Sahil Lalwani and Ayush Sinha. Colgate Class of 2022. As we look back at an incredible week of learning, exploration and travelling, it is difficult to consolidate our experiences in trying to understand immigration and its challenges into one blog post. Over the course of the week, we became acquainted with the complexities of immigration, both at the policy and grassroots levels, as we talked to speakers from diverse backgrounds including journalism, art, scholarship, law and the not-for-profit…

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Post by Isabel Blume and Faith Christenson. Colgate Class of 2022. The time had come; it was the last day of our trip through the borderlands. After a collective effort to clean and check out of our Airbnb, we headed further into downtown Tucson. We were to see a streamline case at one of the federal district courts, but we were running early. We walked around Tuscon for a few hours and enjoyed our last chance to bask in the…

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Post written by Alyssa Kryzelle Reyes and Vani Kanoria. Colgate Class of 2022. Nine students and Professor Simpson started the day by helping at Casa Maria, a Catholic soup kitchen that serves the neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona. In addition to feeding about 400 people daily in a small, but efficient space, they provide spiritual support through mass, and empower community members to educate themselves about issues of inequality and injustice. Volunteering at the soup kitchen that morning turned out to…

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Post by Hilary Almanza and Mark Moreira. Colgate Class of 2022. On Sunday January 15th, our study group met with Shura Wallin in Green Valley Arizona at her home where she greeted us all and told us about her work in the organization she founded to help immigrants called the Green Valley Samaritans. The organization she described is mostly based in Nogales but also does work in Tuscon to support asylum seekers in many ways. She described aiding across the…

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Post written by Vanessa Lam and Bonnie Chin. Colgate Class of 2022. The town of Tombstone differed greatly during the day. The barren dirt roads were replaced with townspeople donning traditional western clothing and horse-drawn carriages. Tourists mingled in between and filled the streets. As we wandered around the town in the morning sun, we couldn’t help but gape at the town’s preservation of the Wild West. In the early afternoon, we took a walking tour of Tombstone’s history given…

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Blog written by Elizabeth Shaw and Steven Dampf, Class of 2022 El Paso is Spanish for “The Pass,” and the city is now behind us in the scope of our SRS journey. Today, we had the chance to speak with Professor Dulcinea Lara from the New Mexico State University Criminal Justice Department. Dr. Lara’s presentation was entitled “Colonization’s Long Term Effects in New Mexico” and she began by offering a new perspective on assimilation. She argued that assimilation is fundamentally…

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Post by Kate Maro and Bridget Boerger. Colgate Class of 2022. Today our class got the opportunity to hear two opposing sides of the story on immigration at the southern United States border. We heard from two Border Patrol agents and Ruben Garcia, the director of Annunciation House.  To start the day, we met with Agent Antúnez and Agent Mena, both of whom have worked under Customs and Border Patrol  for more than a decade. They focused largely on the…

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Post written by Domen Xu Jinwen and Xiying Feng, Colgate 2022. After escaping the chilling weather in upstate New York, we were welcomed by warm gentle breezes in El Paso, a city located in southern Texas just along the border. Due to the nature of its location and its sisterhood with Juarez, the city across the border in Mexico, it becomes one of the most ideal places for us to learn more about immigration policies and what people on the…

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