In Up With People Land...

Dronten Week was Immigration Week. Immigration is a big issue in the Netherlands and we learned about it a lot from our intensive education sessions and activities. For me, it was one of the busiest, most interesting, most intellectually-challenging, discussion-heaviest week of all.

One part of it was the Up With People Land game which simulated a country with immigration issues. Upon our arrival in Dronten, each cast member was issued a "Passport" which stated our citizenship/migrant status. There were Citizens, Migrant Workers, Legal Aliens and Illegal Aliens. The paperwork also had information about our "personal life" and the role we had to play in the game. There were business owners, employers and employees, asylum seekers, refugees, students, and unemployed people. We had the Justices of Peace who can perform marriages, and the Border Patrol Officers who had the authority to inspect passports. We had education background information and also the types of housing we have: whether we own it, rent it, or if we were homeless.


The game lasted for the whole week and we would role play throughout the day, which included priority rights for Legal Citzens. At the beginning of the week I was issued a Citizen passport ( I was so relieved!) unemployed, with a College education. I was also renting a room with Clara.

At the end of the week, I was able to get a job!

It was really a cool role playing game, that made us learn about the country and human side of immigration. We learned how it was to be robbed of our citizenships (better keep an eye on your passports!) , and to gain better insight on the plight of migrant workers, illegal immigrants, and refugees.

Another part of our Immigration Week was working with Dutch high school students to come up with 5 workable and realistic laws within a new Immigration policy. We had two days of guest speakers on Immigration plus trips to the Mosque and the Refugee Center to learn all that we can, and then we were split into groups to create the policies.

Oh, I had such a headache thinking about the policies, and it was so HARD. It had to be humane , but not too lenient, and had to be realistic enough to work in a country (meaning; no magical fast processing of papers or a totally free country who accepts people with no questions asked). What also made it harder was the diversity of the group and all the different opinions on immigration. It was great hearing thoughts from people from rich countries vs people from poorer countries.

Each group presented their policies to a panel of judges - some staff members plus some Dutch immigration experts, who were to decide which set of new laws were both ideal and applicable to a real country.

The headache was worth it. :-) Our group won!