S. Deborah Kang
Pathways to Citizenship: Undocumented European Immigrants in the United States, 1906-1986
During the Great Depression, states and localities expelled nearly one million ethnic Mexicans from the US. Yet, in the midst of these removals, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) launched an initiative to reform the hardships surrounding federal deportation policy. In the process, it expanded the legal architecture by which undocumented Europeans could be legalized. Based upon 500 case files, this presentation will describe a legalization program created for Russian immigrants and its implications for the development of US refugee and immigration policies, with a focus on the legalization provisions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.
Beth Lew-Williams
Paper Lives of Chinese Migrants and the History of the Undocumented in America
Despite emerging research, historians know a lot more about the laws and policies that created undocumented status than the people who had to live with it. In this article, I contemplate how to tell a long history of the undocumented, using Chinese migrants as a case study. Focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, I move beyond the border and archives produced by federal immigration control in order to draw attention to undocumented lives within the nation and sources produced by Chinese migrants themselves.
Respondent: Angela Garcia, University of Chicago