James S. Schouler Lecture | The Whites-Only Immigration Regime, 1803 to Now

Description

Kelly Lytle Hernández, the chair of History at UCLA, will give the James S. Schouler Lecture titled "The Whites-Only Immigration Regime, 1803 to Now" for the History Department.

During the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), Congress passed the nation's first immigration ban, targeting free Black migrants, namely Haitians, for exclusion. After the Civil War, federal authorities wildly expanded the nation's immigration system to target Black, Asian, and other nonwhite immigrants for exclusion, punishment, and removal, creating the framework for our modern immigration system. By the 1930s, Congress had adopted a whites-only immigration regime in all but name. That regime effectively hung a "whites only" sign on the nation's front door while propping the nation's "backdoor" open to a racialized, criminalized, and deportable workforce. To date, federal authorities have revised but never repealed this system. This talk chronicles the rise, evolution, and persistence of the whites-only immigration regime, from 1803 to now.