Immigration History

The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act (Hart-Cellar Act) ended nearly half a century of immigration restriction in the United States.  Since then, the numbers of immigrants, their countries of origin, and their reception in the nation have all changed dramatically, making America a nation of immigrants once again.  The Archive of Immigrant Voices offers insight into the complexities and import of the contemporary American immigrant experience. 

The Archive also shares in the mission of the Center for Global Migration Studies (its parent organization) to contribute to a global understanding of the history of the United States by exploring the nation’s immigrant past and contemporary immigrant experience. This page provides further background information on U.S. immigration history, including links to helpful sites regarding immigration and migration and a recommended bibliography.  


Additional Immigration Programs and Centers

Immigration History Research Center

Sussex Centre for Migration Research

PRIEC: Politics of Race, Immigration, and Ethnicity Consortium

The Tomás Rivera Policy Institute 

International Migration Institute, University of Oxford

Interdisciplinary Immigration Workshop, UC Berkeley 

Mexican Migration Project, Princeton University

International Metropolis Project   

Immigration History

Library of Congress Immigration Timeline

Bureau of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services

Ellis Island Immigration Museum 

New York Times Immigration Explorer

Recommended Readings (bolded titles focus particularly on post-1965 immigration)

Azuma, Elichiro.  Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Bailyn, Bernard.  Voyagers of the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution.  New York: Vintage Books, 1986.

Berlin, Ira.  The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations.  New York: Viking Penguin, 2010.  

DeWind, Josh, Charles Hirschman, and Philip Kasinitz.  The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience.  New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999. 

Foner, Nancy.  From Ellis Island to JFK: New York's Two Great Waves of Immigration.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. 

Freidenberg, Judith N.  Growing Old in El Barrio.  New York: New York University Press, 2000. 

Gabaccia, Donna.  From the Other Side: Women, Gender, and Immmigrant Life in the U.S., 1820-1990.  

Gabaccia, Donna and Vicki L. Ruiz, editors.  American Dreaming, Global Realities: Rethinking U.S. Immigration History.

Gerstle, Gary.  American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Guerin-Gonzales, Camille.  Mexican Workers and American Dreams: Immigration, Repatriation, and California Farm Labor, 1900-1939.  New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994. 

Kasinitz, Philip et. al.  Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age.  New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008.  

Lee, Erika.  At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. 

Lee, Erika and Judy Yung.  Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.  

Ngai, Mae M.  Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 

Ngai, Mae M.  The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America.  New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.  

Takaki, Ronald.  Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans.  New York: Back Bay Books, 1998.  

Takaki, Ronald.  A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America.  New York: Back Bay Books, 2008. 

Waters, Mary C.  Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities.  New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999.

Waters, Mary C.  Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.