Consensus Building Institute

Semester: 2007 Fall

Students: Benet Magnuson & Amy Turner

Using innovative strategies, The Consensus Building Institute improves the way leaders, advocates, experts and communities make public and organizational decisions.

In the summer of 2007, an omnibus bill to address a range of immigration issues across the United States failed to pass the U.S. Senate. Without an overarching federal framework to address immigration, these issues remain unaddressed. CBI proposed to convene a dialogue of municipalities, immigration advocacy groups of various views, and other appropriate stakeholders in a public policy dialogue to develop concrete, effective legal policy recommendations for counties and municipalities regarding these issues. The challenge of this project was to produce a viable design for a consensus process that could be funded, draw broad participation, and be initiated in 2008.

Our work

Step 1: Research local laws that have been passed regarding immigration.

Step 2: Identify the key issues that municipalities have sought to address through local policy reforms.

Step 3: Frame a possible purpose statement, objectives and process design for the dialogue.

Step 4: Identify the key stakeholders and potential partners, their interests, and reasons why they may support such an effort.

Final Product

A report outlining the results of the interviews, the results of the research, and, based on this data, a recommendation whether to hold a policy dialogue, and if so, how it should be framed, structured, and possibly funded.

 

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