Professor Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia appears on panel at 2026 APALSA-ALR Annual Conference

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.—Professor Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia appeared on a panel at the Penn Carey Law 2026 Sarah Best APALSA-ALR Annual Conference. The event, titled “Shifting Borders of Globalization: Trade, Investment, and Labor Migration at a Crossroads,” was held on January 24 at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

Wadhia participated in a panel titled “Labor and Migration Workers’ Rights,” appearing alongside Professor Kate Evans of Duke University School of Law; Judy Gearhart of the School of International Service at American University; Professor Jennifer Gordon of Fordham University School of Law; Aaron Halegua, founder of Aaron Halegua PLLC; Anu Peshawaria, attorney and legal advisor for Consulate General of India, New York; and Emma Tuohy, partner at Simon, Choi & Tuohy.

Professor Wadhia provided an overview of the work-based classifications in U.S. immigration law and the less visible ways a noncitizen may be employed, like as the spouse of a green card holder, as well as the types of legal protections available. She considered what history can teach by discussing how some of the earliest immigration laws impacted Chinese workers and the ways Asian immigration spurred work after 1965.

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia is a nationally respected immigration scholar, law professor, author, and attorney. She joined Penn State Dickinson Law as a Clinical Professor of Law in 2008 and was named Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar in 2013.

Wadhia's scholarship has focused on the role of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law and policy and the intersection of immigration, race, and national security. She is the author of two award-winning academic press books by New York University Press and co-author of a textbook on Immigration & Nationality Law by Carolina Academic Press.