How To Host Public Conversations About Immigration

January 5, 2011 — In 2002, on my way to an American Friends Service Committee work camp in Tijuana, I first encountered the wall the U.S. government is building at the U.S./Mexico border, a wall between two friendly nations. Knowing separation barriers and walls are being built throughout the world to stem the tide of forced migration, I felt a deep sadness to see this wall go up. I began to study the history of the wall, to walk along it, to talk to migrants and to border patrol, to look at the art on the Mexican side, to accompany people putting water out in the desert, to listen to the speeches of Minutemen, and to help make art memorials to the thousands who have perished in the desert trying to meet their families basic needs for food, shelter, healthcare, and education.

I slowly formed a basic hypothesis: we would not, as a nation, allow such a wall to be built if we were not already living these walls every day in our home communities. I turned back to Santa Barbara, CA, where I have lived for 15 years, and began to see how the wall at the border flowed out of the “walls” between Anglo and Mexican neighborhoods, clinics, and schools, between the front and the back of businesses and restaurants. During this period talking about immigration reform has become more heated, violence against immigrants has increased, and states and municipalities have stepped into the breach created by the failure of the federal government to tackle immigration reform. Some have welcomed immigrants, while others have moved toward racial profiling and increased detention and deportation.

What is often missing is a deeper sharing of perspectives on immigration and the personal experiences that feed these points of view. I am reminded of the early history of the Public Conversations Project. PCP began its work in response to abortion clinic violence in 1994, when founder, Laura Chasin, observed leaders from each side yelling at each other, rather than modeling respectful dialogue and mutual inquiry for their constituents. The approaches generated from the early participatory action inquiry of pro-choice and pro-life leaders in consultation with PCP, and refined over the last 16 years by PCP in many varied contexts, are needed now as xenophobia, attacks against migrants, rising unemployment, and community polarization over immigration deepens, threatening further violence. Immigration policy has re-emerged as one of the most divisive topics in American life, cutting across ethnic, racial, class, and religious lines.

Within families, neighborhoods, faith communities, workplaces, and civic groups, family members, friends, and colleagues find themselves polarized in their perspectives on immigration reform, the contributions of immigrants to American life, and the role of communities in welcoming or forcibly discouraging immigrants without documents. Pernicious divisions familiar to us from earlier chapters in American immigration history have taken center stage again. The ongoing economic collapse that has catapulted many into poverty and financial insecurity exacerbates these tensions.

As a response to this blog post, we welcome you to contribute dialogue formats that you have used in group and community work around immigration issues. Many faith and civic groups are involving their members in thoughtful reflection on the global pressures that have increased forced migration, and local communities’ responses to this. Some have used a documentary, film, Bible passages, testimony from immigrants, or presentations from Homeland Security, the ACLU, or local Immigration Control Enforcement (ICE) to seed a dialogue. What have you done? How did it go? What would you suggest in the light of your experience?

I begin this sharing of possible formats by attaching my own adaptation of the Public Conversations format to the immigration issue, Thinking Together About Immigration. Feel free to use it and, please, let us know how it went! Further, introduce us to how you are hosting dialogue about immigration in your group or community setting!

Mary Watkins, Ph.D.
Dr. Watkins is a core faculty member and the Coordinator of Community and Ecological Fieldwork and Research in the M.A./Ph.D. Depth Psychology Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She has worked as a clinical psychologist with adults, children, and families, and with small and large groups around issues of peace, envisioning the future, diversity, vocation, immigration and social justice. She is also a Peacebuilding Associate of the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding