Utah community takes a long and broad view of immigration

Town uses adapted study circle guide, evening of dialogue to address hot issue

by Julie Fanselow

April 21, 2006 | | Provo, Utah

In Provo, Utah, residents decided to do something in the midst of the national spotlight on immigration. This story shows one way communities are using the Study Circles Resource Center’s materials on immigration to focus on the local implications of the national debate. Even this short pilot program moved beyond talk: Participants in the interactive “action forum” at the end of the study circles took their first small steps toward community change.

Amid the wave of immigration-related marches held across the United States this spring, residents of Provo, Utah, took another approach toward the issue: They met for an interactive Immigration Dialogue to learn more about how immigration has affected America past, present, and future.

The evening was the culmination of a four-session series of conversations adapted from the Study Circles Resource Center’s guide, Changing Faces, Changing Communities: Immigration and race, jobs, schools, and language differences. Joan Dixon organized the event through Centro Hispano, an organization that assists Hispanic newcomers to the Utah Valley, with the help of educators and students from Brigham Young University and Independence High School, as well as the Provo City Library and the Daily Herald newspaper.

Two parallel circles – one in English and another in Spanish – were held over two weeks, meeting Tuesday, Thursday, and the following Tuesday. About 35 people took part in these sessions. The fourth session featured a twist on the usual action forum format in which participants choose action steps as a culmination and outgrowth of the dialogues.

Held at the Provo City Library with students as facilitators, the event was open to the public and billed as a way to talk about immigration “in a non-confrontational environment.” Citizens made their way from station to station to view and discuss such exhibits as a timeline of local immigration, an oral history corner, and a board game that helped participants simulate how immigrants navigate the social services and legal systems.

At another station, people could write letters about immigration to the local newspaper and to U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon, whose district includes Provo. When people asked for copies of various viewpoints on immigration taken from SCRC’s study guide and posted at another station, Dixon pointed them toward SCRC’s website, where the full guide is available for download.

“I felt like a lot of good conversations were going on ... people weren’t used to having so much participation,” says Dixon, who teaches a capstone class in international studies and works at the Center for Economic Self-Reliance at BYU. Normally, she noted, public meetings feature a panel of experts and perhaps some time for questions and answers. But the interactive approach gave participants time to talk with one another and think through the issues.

Study circles always strive for neutrality, and some anti-immigration people who attended (including a political opponent of Cannon) felt the event and material presented in the displays was too pro-immigration. Dixon told SCRC program director Gloria Mengual that if she planned a similar event again, she would aim to present a wider range of perspectives on immigration.

Many of the people attending seemed to be middle-of-the-road on the immigration issue, simply curious about what is happening and who their neighbors are. In a wrap-up at the end of the evening, however, one Native American participant remarked how “I should tell you all to go home,” adding that “one reason we got displaced is because we weren’t paying attention.” However, he concluded his remarks by saying, “We should do what we preach – we are all brothers and sisters.”

“It was an interesting perspective,” Dixon says. She adds that if Provo runs another series of study circles (which may happen this fall), she would do the open house-style dialogue first, then invite people who are really interested to sign up for study circles. Meanwhile, Dixon has been invited to talk about study circles at the Educators for Diversity Conference in Salt Lake City on April 28-29.

Read Daily Herald's coverage of the Provo event. The newspaper also plans to post video footage from the English-speaking study circle on its website, and possibly hold an online dialogue on immigration.

Learn more: Immigration