Thursday, November 6, 2014 at 6:00 pm at the National Humanities Center
As the United States confronts a surge of unaccompanied minors at its southern border, the political activity of undocumented immigrants within its borders, and unprecedented levels of deportation, the country faces—yet again—a series of familiar questions. How many immigrants should we admit? What do we owe to immigrants? How should we treat them after they have arrived? In grappling with such questions, however, we do not often examine the long history of immigration and citizenship law.
In this lecture, legal historian Kunal Parker ranges over four centuries of immigration and citizenship law and canvass the histories of immigrants, Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, women, and the poor, exploring the American legal tradition of not only excluding and removing those from other countries, but also of rendering foreign their own populations.