This course will be held January 6-8, 2022.
IPE 2022 Scenario: Immigration Reform in the United States
The 2022 IPE will focus on immigration reform in the United States. Students will role-play a selected group of U.S. senators, business and labor organizations, and advocacy groups of all sorts as they try to create, or block, legislation to reform America’s legal immigration system. The simulation will require students to think about both policy (which proposals would best address the nation’s problems) and politics (which proposals are able to gain the requisite political support).
New for 2022: The IPE will include parallel simulations – two simulations on the same topic with similar actors, each proceeding in isolation from the other. At the end of the simulation, we will debrief the results to learn why the simulations ended up with similar or different outcomes.
The activity: In the last 30 years, each attempt at creating immigration legislation has started with a bipartisan group of senators working to craft a document that a majority of senators can support. At the same time, the increasing partisan polarization of the Senate has caused each of these attempts to fail. This year’s IPE will feature:
- a group of senators trying to find a winning mix of proposals
- Senate leaders of both parties, who are concerned with maximizing party success
- senators who oppose immigration reform and want to recruit other senators to block it
- business associations and labor unions, who are advancing their constituency’s interests
- both pro-immigration and pro-restriction advocacy groups
- representatives of international organizations and immigrant sending-countries
- media outlets, who will be covering IPE events in real time
Roles: Students will receive an interest survey in mid-October, and will be assigned to a role in mid-November. They are strongly encouraged to contact the real-life counterpart of their role on their own time, before the IPE begins.
Preparatory assignment: By January 5, 2022, students must complete (1) a one-page brief about the senator, organization, or country they represent; (2) an asynchronous introduction to immigration problems and policy, consisting of short videos/articles and entries on discussion boards. There are no required in-person meetings to prepare.
Simulation: Thursday January 6 (6:30-8:30 pm); Friday, January 7 (9:30 am-5:30 pm); and Saturday, January 8 (9:30 am-3:30 pm). All Ford School classes are cancelled on Friday, January 7 to allow students to participate in the IPE. In-person or remote format will be determined later.
Questions? Contact the faculty organizer (Ann Lin) and GSIs (Miguel Lopez and Karissa Kresge) at [email protected].
