Lenoir-Rhyne senior hopes to make a difference for immigrants

Amy Greensfelder, a senior at Lenoir-Rhyne College, wants to influence national immigration policy. That might seem like a tall order, but she’s already moving toward her goal.

This summer she interned with the American Bar Association Commission on Immigration. She was one of only two chosen as interns in that department, and one of the few undergraduate students selected for an ABA internship. During her three months in the association’s Washington headquarters, she helped work on the ABA’s response to the Department of Homeland Security’s proposed implementation plan for detaining and removing all undocumented immigrants.

She also worked directly with immigrants who have run afoul of the law. She explained that immigration law is one of the most complicated parts of American law and often differs significantly from the laws applied to U.S. citizens. Many immigrants are held in American jails for lengthy periods for relatively minor crimes. They may not understand what charges they are facing or what their rights are. They may also be detained without specific charges while facing deportation. During her internship, she tried to match the detainees with local lawyers willing to take their cases.

Greensfelder, who is from Tampa, Fla., has had a longstanding interest in helping immigrants. When she was in second grade, her mother, Marcia, volunteered to tutor a Chinese boy who was in Amy’s class. “She has just set an example of service for me.”

While Greensfelder was in high school, her church in Lutz, Fla. — All Saint’s Lutheran — sponsored a family of Afghani immigrants. She volunteered to work with them, helping them solve the daily problems of recent immigrants. She received the Girl Scout Gold Award for this service.

In her freshman year at Lenoir-Rhyne, she began working with the local Hmong community from Southeast Asia. It was a class project, but she continued to tutor the Hmong children after the class ended and still maintains contact with local Hmong residents.

After her sophomore year in college, she volunteered with Lutheran Family Services in Columbia, S.C. During a three-month period, she helped organize a summer program for about 50 children of Somali Bantu refugees. “Most of the kids had grown up in a refugee camp,” she said. “We tried to go on field trips so they would have a normal childhood,” she said. They also tutored the children to reinforce what they had learned during the school year. The program allowed the parents to go to work without worrying about their children.

“I went into it thinking I wanted to do something with direct service, such as social work,” she said. However, after learning of the legal problems that many immigrants face, she decided she wanted to concentrate on fixing the system.

She is majoring in English, and theology and philosophy, and minoring in classics. “I’ve been a reader all my life,” she explained. “I think it’s through poetry and books that we find answers. Literature addresses our questions obliquely, while philosophy is more direct,” she said.

Earlier, she thought about becoming a Lutheran pastor. In high school, she was president of the synod-wide youth group LYFBOT (Lutheran Youth of Florida and Bahamas Organized Together). In this role, she helped organize Lutheran youth activities for the Florida-Bahamas Synod. Several church leaders who were Lenoir-Rhyne alumni encouraged her to consider attending their alma mater. At first she resisted the idea of going to a Lutheran college in a small North Carolina town, but that changed when she visited the campus. “I visited in my junior year and I just fell in love with it,” she said. “People were very friendly here.”

Greensfelder is active in many areas at the college. This year she is editor of the HACAWA, the college yearbook; and assistant editor of The Lenoir-Rhynean, the student newspaper. She works in the college’s Writing Center and is an assistant for the college’s Visiting Writers Series. In addition, she has assisted Dr. Rand Brandes, one of her English professors, in compiling a scholarly commentary on the works of Irish poet Seamus Heaney.

After graduation, she plans to attend law school and then specialize in immigration law. Although her long-term goals aren’t clear, Greensfelder believes her passion for service and justice will lead her in the right direction.

©2006 Lenoir-Rhyne College