Deliberation Reflection

I attended a deliberation on a topic similar to our topic of immigration, namely, “Immigration Nation: A Deliberation on Sanctuary Cities”. This subject proved poignant and timely, especially with regard to the Penn State community. Their approaches dealt with perspectives such as legality, fairness/equal opportunity, and security. This put a different spin on how to look at an issue, apart from a simple “yes” or “no”, which we always try to avoid via the deliberation process. In this way, they honed in on the value systems of our nation as displayed in the audience members present, as opposed to focusing on specific policy choices.

The atmosphere was very conducive to personal sharing and an open forum. This was due, in part, to the nature of the students leading the deliberation, who engaged the audience from the beginning through requests for introductory responses. Also, the casual, coffee shop feel of Webster’s Café lent itself to an open, yet calm audience vibe. It was ideal for a small deliberation, and I believe worked to lessen stress levels even there were points of tension. However, if the group present had been much larger, it would have been challenging to moderate such a deliberation, while keeping all feeling involved, in this setting. I think that is the risk run by holding a deliberation in this location, although it automatically is able to provide an environment more relaxed than the intimidating State College Municipal Building, for instance.

During the deliberation, I noted a few specific comments from audience members. One adult, who was involved in community development, made sure to point out the significance of referring to individuals as “undocumented citizens” rather than “illegal immigrants”. This struck a chord with us for our own deliberation, reminding us to watch the pathos behind certain choices of loaded diction. There was also valuable discussion of the economics behind sanctuary cities. It is expensive both to increase deportation laws or to increase border control. With this in mind, we considered the role of the federal government versus local government in creating sanctuary city policy. This was a point of debate because we largely saw immigration as a federal issue, and felt a type of disconnect because sanctuary cities are controlled by states, and even the cities themselves. For a period of time, there were many references to the link between sanctuary cities and crime rates in urban areas. I had not previously realized the argument for retaining undocumented citizens based on their ability to report crimes without fear of deportation. On the other hand, we also mentioned the potential risk of always associating immigrants in some way with crime, even in a positive nature.

Overall, the deliberation group was skilled at moderating and leading the conversation in a new direction when intervention was necessary. Likewise, they allocated the time evenly between the introduction, three approaches, and summary. They tied everything together by drawing upon the points which elicited similar audience reactions, while also reminding us of the struggle we had to reach a point of agreement on a few ideas. We did, however, note that due to a slight lacking of audience and deliberation group diversity, some more experience-based perspectives may not have been as well heard. In general, though, this deliberation provided a prime example of the possibility of successful discussion through the deliberation process.

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