Laura Pontius, Albion, Ind., has found her legal career moving increasingly toward public education. This fall, her speaking gigs will include teaching Environmental Policy and Politics in Merry Lea’s Sustainability Leadership Semester (SLS).
Students in the SLS live at Merry Lea’s Rieth Village for the fall semester, taking the same block of courses, exploring the region and meeting leaders involved in positive change. The program is interdisciplinary because the complex environmental challenges it deals with require collaboration from many perspectives.
What does immigration law have to do with sustainability? Increased global migration caused by climate change is the connecting point.
“We are seeing a major increase to climate migrants and refugees in recent years, with large amounts of movement coming from around the equator,” Laura says.
Policy responds to climate change
Laura’s SLS course will look at how policy is formed at the international, national, state and local levels. At the international level, the group will study the effect climate change has on global migration patterns. Regionally, students may meet with a legislator working with state-level policy or examine how a city is approaching climate change through enacted regulations and policies.
Laura has practiced immigration law ever since she finished law school. She has shepherded immigrants through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals process; helped reunite marriage partners and worked with corporations on employment-based immigration. Asylum cases, trafficking cases and student visas have also been part of her workday.
Addressing fear and anxiety
Currently, Laura sees fewer clients and devotes more of her time to the Fort Wayne office of the Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic. On September 19, Welcoming Fort Wayne recognized her work on public education with a diversity award for community organization. The award recognized both Laura’s work educating the immigrant community about their legal options and a new program she helped launch that educates churches, non-profits and other community members about immigration. In both cases, Laura’s job involves dispelling rumors and demystifying what people hear in the mainstream media. She tries to address the fear and anxiety present in immigrant and non-immigrant communities alike.
Meanwhile, the SLS students await their policy course, which falls in November.
“I’m excited to learn ways that I might be able to help influence a political system that feels so far beyond my control!” says Christian Gehman, a Goshen College senior.
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