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The U.S. Constitution and Immigration

June 3, 2017

The U.S. Constitution gives very few specifics about the way U.S. immigration policy should look, but it provides broad guidelines as to who has authority to make such policy, as well as the legal means for challenges to elements of… View Article


Thomas Jefferson and Immigration

May 21, 2017

In his Notes on Virginia, written in the early 1780s, Thomas Jefferson expressed skepticism that large numbers of immigrants from culturally different countries would help the U.S. to thrive. “Suppose 20 millions of republican Americans thrown all of a sudden into… View Article


Eisenhower and Immigration

May 21, 2017

The presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower saw two significant initiatives affecting U.S. immigration and immigrants.In 1953 Eisenhower signed the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, welcoming 214,000 more European immigrants to the U.S. than were allowed under the current system of… View Article


Immigration Policies Under Barack Obama

May 21, 2017

Taken together, President Barack Obama’s immigration policies amounted to a centrist approach, with individual policies garnering harsh criticism from both extremes of the debate on U.S. immigration as he balanced a desire to welcome new immigrants and provide sensible reform… View Article


Recommended Textbooks on Immigration

May 18, 2017

In January of 2017, historians affiliated with the Immigration History Research Center and the Immigration and Ethnic History Society created a hashtagged #immigrationSyllabus, collecting textbooks and other readings to orient students on the past, present and future of immigration in… View Article





Immigration Under President Johnson

May 8, 2017

As president, Lyndon B. Johnson oversaw numerous key actions that affected immigration to the U.S., the most important of which was the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which eliminated a longstanding quota system in favor of preferences that favored family… View Article