My Story
My name is Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia. I am passionate about immigration law and policy, training the next generation, and writing. I have called State College, Pennsylvania, home since 2008, the same year joined the faculty of Penn State Dickinson Law. I teach classes in immigration and asylum, and direct the Center for Immigrants' Rights, a clinic I founded in 2008. I have written widely on immigration and have published books with New York University Press, one on the history of prosecutorial discretion and the other on immigration enforcement more broadly. In 2025, I was appointed as co-editor of the industry-leading treatise on immigration, and in 2026, I published a new edition of a textbook on immigration with Carolina Academic Press- both a labor of love. I am currently working on a manuscript (under contract with NYU Press) that weaves together memoir, history, and immigration. I am excited and nervous to bring this book out into the world - it centers on my family's immigration story.
From 2023-2024, I served in a presidentially appointed position as the Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It was a life changing experience with a tremendously talented workforce. In the first decade of my career, I practiced immigration law and worked closely on a number of efforts to reform immigration legislatively or through executive action.
Recently, I joined in the celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the Office of Public Interest at Georgetown Law and was asked to speak alumni (I am one of them, from nearly 30 years ago!) about what keeps me going during challenging times. Reflecting on this question is one way to share my story (one short excerpt shared here): "My career after law school has often required me to keep going even when I lacked the vocabulary or tools to carry on. The moments of butterflies in my stomach as a 25 year-old in immigration court, a sleep deprived new mom teaching immigration law, or in federal service to ensure civil rights and civil liberties were part of the homeland security enterprise represent just a few of these moments... There were also inflection points that challenged me - the practice of immigration law on 9/11 followed by a wave of policies impacting Arab, Muslim and South Asian communities, years later with a sea of never seen before executive actions testing the boundaries of the immigration statute and family separation, and the current moment where consultations consist of never seen before fact patterns and where law students wonder about the rule of law..."
​​I am inspired by community, family, service, and the human condition. I am grateful to the clients, colleagues, friends, mentors, and students I continue to learn and draw wisdom from. ​