The Historical Roots of Today’s Immigration Debates.
In person, March 3, 6-7:30 pm. Edith Stone Room Albany Library, 1249 Marin Ave. Albany CA.

Since the earliest days of the U.S., immigration and citizenship law has reflected attitudes about race and belonging as well as the economic interests of people in power. While recent events have highlighted the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and 19th century birthright citizenship cases, examining the broader history of immigration law reveals a long tension between reliance on immigrant labor and the exclusion of outsiders. Fears of leftist agitators and foreign spies of all stripes have historically shaped immigration law, while Presidential executive orders eliminating civil rights are nothing new.

Carlotta de la Cal

This will be a talk by Carlotta Wright de la Cal, PhD candidate at the UC Berkeley Department of History, in conversation with Ming H. Chen, Harry & Lillian Hastings Professor of Law, UC Law San Francisco.
Carlotta Wright de la Cal specializes in immigration, legal, and labor history. Carlotta’s dissertation examines how the expansion of railroad corporations in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands reshaped mobility patterns, labor recruitment, and border control in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Ming H. Chen

Ming H. Chen focuses on the intersections of citizenship, race and equality in Constitutional and administrative law. Her current research is about temporary migrants in the U.S. and Canada. She is the author of Pursuing Citizenship in the Enforcement Era and Faculty-Director of the Center for Race, Immigration, Citizenship and Equality (RICE).

This talk is part of Path to Belonging, a year-long community art project that aims to build a sense of inclusion for all people in Albany.