NWOD Forum #4: Immigration: What Should We Do?

The College National Week of Deliberation CGA college forum series connects college students from across the country to discuss and make choices together about today’s most pressing, wicked issues. As more campuses become ideological bubbles, this initiative hopes to give students a space to talk across geographic and ideological divides to see what common ground we have to act on wicked issues.

The immigration issue affects virtually every American, directly or indirectly, often in deeply personal ways. This guide is designed to help people deliberate together about how we should approach the issue. The three options presented here reflect different ways of understanding what is at stake and force us to think about what matters most to us when we face difficult problems that involve all of us and that do not have perfect solutions.

The US government essentially shut down immigration, at least temporarily, during the coronavirus pandemic. But as our country begins to reopen, difficult questions remain:

Should we strictly enforce the law and deport people who are
here without permission, or would deporting millions of people outweigh their crime?
Should we welcome more newcomers to build a more vibrant and diverse society, or does this pose too great a threat to national unity?
Should we accept more of the millions of refugees and asylum seekers fleeing gang violence and war, or should we avoid the risk of taking in people whose backgrounds may not have been fully checked?
Should our priority be to help immigrants assimilate into our distinctively American way of life and insist they learn English, or should we instead celebrate a growing mosaic of different peoples?