Franklin & Marshall Students Help Asylum Seekers

From the Associated Press:

A few years after leaving Franklin and Marshall College’s leafy campus in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, alumna Kristen Stephen and Morgan Marks reconnected last month at an apartment on a gritty North Philadelphia street.

Inside, a 25-year-old woman from Sierra Leone rocked her new baby and mixed warm tea with cocoa for her 3-year-old as the college friends recalled the life-changing day in 2007 they had met the woman at the York County Prison.

“I was scared out of my mind walking into that prison. And she’s in there with women who have actually committed crimes,” Marks said. “She was just turning 20, younger than us. … I couldn’t imagine myself reversing roles.”

The woman was seeking asylum. Marks, 25, and Stephen, 26, were assigned to help her case as part of a unique seminar at F&M called Human Rights/Human Wrongs.

Dr. Susan Dicklitch, an associate dean, started the class in 2002 to offer students a chance to see the nation’s immigration policy play out on the local level, even in Lancaster, a hub of Amish culture that’s hardly a cross-cultural hotspot.

Just 25 miles away, 700 immigrants are detained at the prison, along with 1,700 criminal inmates.

In the seminar, pairs of students are matched with asylum-seekers referred by nonprofits or local immigration lawyers. The students meet with the applicants and help lawyers prepare affidavits, briefs and country condition reports. Read more….

bh