Laws of immigration
India, June 14 -- As the protests in Los Angeles show, the politicisation of immigration - legal and undocumented - has significant divisive potential. The US, built on the shoulders of the immigrants it welcomed, is now, under Donald Trump, deporting "illegals" by the busload. Given certain communities have become the focus of, is there an element of discrimination?
Joel Perlmann's America Classifies the Immigrants (2018) provides some perspective here. Perlmann, a Bard College professor, traces the early history of immigration to the US, and how prevailing ideas and biases about race and nationality got embedded into the 1897 List of Races and Peoples, which is foundational for the country's immigration laws, census, and the exclusion these created. America Classifies shows how, despite several later reforms, US immigration law and its treatment of undocumented immigrants, continue to be shaped by centuries-old biases....
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