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Immigration History

The Author’s Corner with Yii-Jan Lin 

Rachel Petroziello   |  February 10, 2025

Yii-Jan Lin is Associate Professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School. This interview is based on her new book, Immigration and Apocalypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration (Yale University Press, 2024). JF: What led you to write Immigration and […]

Trump’s immigration policy has a long history

John Fea   |  January 22, 2025

Here is historian Ana Raquel Minian at The New York Times: Donald Trump has long explicitly challenged a foundational myth of American identity: the idea of the United States as a nation of immigrants that welcomes the world’s “huddled masses […]

Daniel Okrent on the Immigration Act of 1924

John Fea   |  June 10, 2024

Last month, The Arena ran a piece by historian Jay Green (who is Current‘s Managing Editor) on the 100th anniversary of the Johnson Reed Act. Today, I want to call your attention to the World Socialist Web Site’s interview with […]

The Author’s Corner with Mark Richard

Rachel Petroziello   |  March 15, 2024

Mark Richard is Professor of History and Canadian Studies at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. This interview is based on his new book, Catholics Across Borders: Canadian Immigrants in the North Country, Plattsburgh, New York, 1850-1950 (State […]

The Author’s Corner with Kevin Kenny

Rachel Petroziello   |  April 26, 2023

Kevin Kenny is Professor of History and Glucksman Professor in Irish Studies at New York University. This interview is based on his new book, The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic: Policing Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Oxford […]

How turn-of-the-20th-century Italian immigrants were tricked into debt peonage

John Fea   |  October 3, 2022

Writer Brad Ricca tells the story of the Italian immigrants of Sunnyside Plantation in Arkansas. Here is a taste of his piece at The Washington Post: In the early 1900s, a small travel agency in Greenville, Miss., began sending representatives […]