“The thing about this course,” Ted Peebles said, “is the devil’s in the details. And there’s a lot of details.”
Peebles is teaching Living on La Frontera, which focuses on the U.S.-Mexico border and the implications of immigration. Immigration is a complicated and messy issue, and with more than 40 million immigrants now in the United States, its political significance continues to grow.
The course could not come at a better time, Peebles said, especially with strong positions on immigration coming from presidential hopeful Donald Trump and other leading candidates.
The students in the class have taken note of the political language surrounding the issue. “The GOP, they were talking about ‘illegals.’ In the Democratic debate, they were talking about ‘undocumented,’” said student Avery Carter, ’18.
In the fall, the students attended the annual Immigration Law and Policy Conference at Georgetown University Law School and heard from guest speakers such as UR student Silvia Garcia Murcia, who emigrated from Guatemala as an unaccompanied minor and was abducted by human traffickers.
In early January, the class visited the U.S.-Mexico border, which allowed students to understand immigration beyond what they see and hear in the media, Peebles said.
Jane Schmidt, ’18, who enrolled in the class to explore her interest in immigration, said she was excited for the class trip.
“I need to have a picture in my mind about what is going on down there,” she said. “It’s one thing to read about the situation; it’s another thing to hear personal accounts from the border. But it’s a whole different story to actually see it with your own eyes.”