Class Exercise on Immigration Reform

From the Immprof Listserve:

Immprof members: I have created a simulation exercise to engage students in critiquing HR 4437 (and secondarily, to teach them something about the difficulty of organizing coalitions to fight massive multi-issue immigration bills).

(I thought about focusing on the Specter bill rather than H.R. 4437, but it is too much of a moving target to be able even to describe it). I am posting the H.R. 4437 exercise here (attached) in case anyone else wants to use it (or modify it and use it).

As written, this exercise is designed for 12 students and about two hours of class time, because that is what I have in my clinical seminar. However, you could modify it, if you wish, for more or fewer students, and more or less (probably not much less) class time.

I know that it works well in class because I conducted a very similar exercise last year while the REAL ID Act was pending.

If I were going to use this exercise in a large class, I would get some breakout rooms and keep the size of the group in each breakout room to about 12 (if the number of students is not evenly divisible by 12 you could reduce the number in one or two groups by having individual students rather than pairs or threesomes represent one or more of the organizations in one or more of the breakout groups).

The exercise is written as if the class were going to take place within the next week or two. If you want to use this exercise in April and the Senate has by then passed a bill that is going to conference with the House, you could easily modify the exercise. Conference reports are not subject to amendment, but they are subject to filibuster. So your modified exercise for use after the Senate passes its bill could either be focused around a proposed filibuster of an expected conference report or around Coalition lobbying of members of the conference committee.

The exercise is Download refugee_policy_class_spring_2006_for_immprof.doc

Philip Schrag, Georgetown University

KJ