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1882 newspaper headline following the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The 100-Year-Old Racist Law that Broke America’s Immigration System

The legacy of the Immigration Act of 1924 and the launching of the Border Patrol, which inaugurated the most restrictive era of US immigration until our own.
by Mae Ngai via Public Books on May 28, 2024
Man holding Israel flag and Palestine flag

Who Created the Israel-Palestine Conflict?

It wasn’t really Jews or Palestinians. It was the U.S. Congress, which closed American borders 100 years ago this month.
by Harold Meyerson via The American Prospect on May 6, 2024

Manufacturing Illegality

Historian Mae Ngai reflects on how a century of immigration law created a crisis.
by Mae Ngai, Peter Costantini via Foreign Policy in Focus on January 16, 2019
partner

Trump’s Views on Immigration Aren’t as Bad as Those in The 1920s. They’re Worse.

The designers of the quota system at least tried to hide their racism.
by David C. Atkinson via Made By History on January 14, 2018

The Real History of American Immigration

Trump's break with tradition may be good or bad, but it's definitely different.
by Joshua Zeitz via Politico Magazine on August 6, 2017

What History Can Tell Us About the Fallout From Restricting Immigration

U.S. immigration policies are inextricably linked to American foreign relations.
by David C. Atkinson via TIME on February 3, 2017
Lyndon B. Johnson signing the 1965 Immigration Act.

The Contradictory Legacy of the 1965 Immigration Act

A law designed to repair flaws in the fabric of American justice also created new ones.
by Erika Lee via What It Means to Be American on September 29, 2015
ICE officers knock on the door of a residence.

Trump Is Drawing on Cold War–Era Repressive Tactics

A previous, dark period of American history paired ethnic exclusion through mass deportations and ideological exclusion through political repression.
by David Bacon via Jacobin on January 29, 2025
Frances Perkins

How the First ‘Madam Secretary’ Fought to Save Jewish Refugees Fleeing From Nazi Germany

Frances Perkins’ challenged the United States’ restrictive immigration policies as FDR’s Secretary of Labor.
by Sara Georgini, Rebecca Brenner Graham via Smithsonian on January 21, 2025
4 photographs of Josie Rudolph Thurnauer through the years 1874-1938.

Josie’s Story: From 19th-Century Sitka To Her Escape From The Holocaust

Josie Rudolph’s life, in an era of worldwide migration and colonial ambition, offers a new perspective on the familiar tale of modern Alaska’s birth.
by Tom Kizzia via Anchorage Daily News on October 28, 2024
Wong Gin Foo to Wong Kim (in Chinese), March 31, 1930.

Paper Sons in the Era of Immigration Restriction

Chinese immigration and the Immigration Act of 1924.
by Ryan Reft via Library of Congress Blog on May 23, 2024
graph of historic immigration data

How America Tried and Failed to Stay White

100 years ago the U.S. tried to limit immigration to White Europeans. Instead, diversity triumphed.
by Eduardo Porter, Youyou Zhou via Washington Post on May 15, 2024
Collage of photographs of U.S. Border Patrol.

The Racist Origins of America’s Broken Immigration System

How a little-known, century-old law perpetuated the odious notion that certain types of immigrants degrade our nation’s character.
by Felipe De La Hoz via The New Republic on May 1, 2024
English representative Lord Winterton delivers a speech at the Evian Conference, 1938.

Inside America’s Failed, Forgotten Conference to Save Jews from Hitler

Franklin D. Roosevelt called the Evian Conference in France in 1938, as the Holocaust loomed. It remains “an indelible stain on American and world history.”
by Gordon F. Sander via Retropolis on July 15, 2023
The cover of Dunbar-Ortiz's book alongside a picture of Mexican workers awaiting entry into the U.S.
partner

The Border and the Contingent Status of Mexican Workers

An excerpt from the most recent book, "Not 'A Nation of Immigrants': Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion."
by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz via HNN on August 24, 2021
Yuri Kochiyama depicted in a Pop Art style panel of images

1921 Marks Anniversaries of Both American Exclusion and Inclusion

On the 100th anniversary of Yuri Kochiyama’s birth and the passage of the Emergency Quota Act, Railton explores inclusion and exclusion in US history.
by Ben Railton via The Saturday Evening Post on May 19, 2021
Illustration by Valerie Chiang; Source text from PBS; Library of Congress; Source photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnston / Library of Congress / Corbis / Getty (children); Getty (other)

The Forgotten History of the Campaign to Purge Chinese from America

The surge in violence against Asian-Americans is a reminder that America’s present reality reflects its exclusionary past.
by Michael Luo via The New Yorker on April 22, 2021
Asian-American men waiting to be questioned by white police officers

Racism Has Always Been Part of the Asian American Experience

If we don’t understand the history of Asian exclusion, we cannot understand the racist hatred of the present.
by Mae Ngai via The Atlantic on April 21, 2021
A Border Patrol agent stands by an opening in the U.S. Mexico Border wall.
partner

Trump’s Border Wall Belongs to Biden Now

A border policy divorced from history can’t do what policymakers want.
by Kevan Q. Malone via Made By History on April 11, 2021
Demonstrators listen to speakers during a rally outside the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond
partner

Trump’s Attacks on Refugees Expose the Inadequacy of the Current System

The administration’s historically low ceiling for refugee resettlement may signal the end of an era.
by Carl J. Bon Tempo via Made By History on October 6, 2020

The 1619 Project is Wrong on the 1965 Immigration Act

Nikole Hannah-Jones gives the credit for ending quotas to civil rights reformers. The truth is a bit more complicated.
by Zaid Jilani via The American Conservative on September 21, 2020
Men lined up on a set of stairs.

Who Is "Essential"?

On the need to rethink the U.S. immigration and refugee policy, which was shaped as part of Cold War strategy.
by Mae Ngai via Perspectives on History on August 21, 2020
An outline of the United States filled with black figures who are outlined by a continuous white line.

"Other": A Brief History of American Xenophobia

The United States often touts itself as a "nation of immigrants," but this obscures the real story.
via Densho: Japanese American Incarceration and Japanese Internment on July 11, 2020

Another Time a President Used the “Emergency” Excuse to Restrict Immigration

It was 1921, and it changed the character of the United States for decades.
by Joshua Zeitz via Politico Magazine on April 22, 2020

American Immigration: A Century of Racism

On Daniel Okrent's "The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America."
by Sarah Churchwell via New York Review of Books on September 12, 2019

No Refuge

When Congress gave the Secretary of Labor discretion over any immigrant “likely to become a public charge,” they weren’t expecting someone like Frances Perkins.
by Rebecca Brenner Graham via Contingent on August 23, 2019
Immigrants after their arrival in Ellis Island by ship in 1902.

Not So Evident

How experts and their facts created immigration restriction.
by Katherine Benton-Cohen via Perspectives on History on March 25, 2019

When the Frontier Becomes the Wall

What the border fight means for one of the nation’s most potent, and most violent, myths.
by Francisco Cantú via The New Yorker on March 4, 2019
Image of Hassan, a Syrian-American man

Syrian in Sioux Falls

In the 1920s, Syrian-Americans were compelled to prove their worth in a society where nativism was on the rise and citizenship often meant being considered white.
by Chris Gratien via Ottoman History Podcast on November 5, 2018

The 41-Volume Government Report That Turned Immigration into a Problem

In 1911, the Dillingham Commission set a half-century precedent for screening out 'undesirable' newcomers.
by Robert F. Zeidel via Zócalo Public Square on July 16, 2018
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