Immigration, the hallmark issue of the Trump presidency, was front page news all year. Assaults on birthright citizenship, Trump’s family separation policy, a new proposed public charge rule, the asylum ban, the lowest refugee cap ever, fearmongering the migrant caravan, the tragic deaths of children in U.S. custody, and the fight to fund Trump’s wall; at every turn the cruelty of U.S. immigration policy past and present has been on full display. The news cried out for historical analysis and framing – while the scale of Trump’s brutality is overwhelming, his policies and actions have deep roots – and scholars of migration history heeded the call.
Below are just a sample of op-eds by historians and stories citing historians published this year – these may be helpful for teaching or just sharing when these issues arise again in 2019. (Please send me your clips and I’ll add them to this blog post – I pulled these together in haste! carlygoodman at gmail.) For all who spent this year teaching, thinking, advocating, talking, writing about immigration history THANK YOU.
January
Hidetaka Hirota: Fans of Trump’s views on immigration should remember how figures like him targeted their ancestors
Mae Ngai: Immigration’s Border-Enforcement Myth
Carly Goodman: Trump doesn’t recognize foreign-born black and brown people as American
Paul Kramer: Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Racism Represents an American Tradition
Rick Baldoz: How Republicans set the stage for Trump’s corrosive ideas on immigration
February
Arissa H. Oh and Ellen Wu: Why immigration advocates must take back the term ‘chain migration’
Carly Goodman and Marisa Gerstein Pineau: Why Donald Trump could win the immigration fight, and how immigration activists can turn the tide
Nicholas Pruitt: Protestants and Immigration, Past and Present
April
Carl Lindskoog: How the Haitian refugee crisis led to the indefinite detention of immigrants
Matthew Guariglia: The real goal of Donald Trump’s MS-13 fearmongering
June
Mary Mendoza: The Trump administration is right about the problem at the border. But its ‘solutions’ would just make things worse.
Carly Goodman: Angry that ICE is ripping families apart? Don’t just blame Trump. Blame Clinton, Bush and Obama, too
Maria Cristina Garcia: How the American Asylum Bureaucracy Grew
Deborah S. Kang: Interview “15 Years After Its Creation, Critics Want To Abolish ICE”
Allyson Hobbs and Ana Raquel Minian: A firsthand look at the horrors of immigration detention
Carl Lindskoog: Mistreating refugee children is, sadly, all too American
Paul Kramer: Family reunification has long been a cornerstone of U.S. immigration policy
Erika Lee and Carly Goodman: New York Times Facebook Live on immigration, race, and President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy to separate migrant children from their families
July
Hidetaka Hirota and Natalia Molina: It’s time to fulfill the promise of citizenship
Martha S. Jones: Birthright citizenship is a powerful weapon against racism. That’s why we must protect it.
Carly Goodman: Like Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan tried to keep out asylum seekers. Activists thwarted him
Simeon Man: Discharging immigrant soldiers is the American way. That’s the problem.
Carly Goodman: Letters & Politics radio interview on Reagan’s asylum policies
August
Torrie Hester, Mary E. Mendoza, Deirdre Moloney and Mae Ngai: Now the Trump administration is trying to punish legal immigrants for being poor
Louis Hyman: The undocumented workers who built Silicon Valley
Rebecca Brenner: How to stop President Trump’s latest attack on immigrants
September
Walter D. Kamphoefner: President Trump’s in-laws benefited from chain migration. That’s a good thing.
Susan Pearson: Birth certificates have always been a weapon for white supremacists
Carly Goodman: The shadowy network shaping Trump’s anti-immigration policies
Hidetaka Hirota featured in An Old Anti-Irish Law Is at the Heart of Trump’s Plan to Reshape Legal Immigration
October
Jeanne Petit: Refugees or threat? How we see migrants reveals our competing visions for America
Grainne McEvoy: What would you do? Take an immigrant’s journey.
Alan Kraut featured in Diseases Linked to Migrant Caravan “Couldn’t Be Farther From the Truth”
Sarah Sklaw: American policy is responsible for the migrant caravan
Arica L. Coleman: How a business-first foreign policy triggered the migration caravans
Jaclyn Granick and Britt Tevis: Why the Pittsburgh shooter raged about immigration before attacking a synagogue
Kevin Caprice: What the 2018 election means for immigrants in the U.S.
Carly Goodman: How to talk about the migrant caravan
November
Carly Goodman featured in When Environmentalism Meets Xenophobia
Carly Goodman: What you need to know about Trump’s asylum ban
December
Christopher Petrella: What we get wrong about the “poor huddled masses”
Ana Raquel Minian: America Didn’t Always Lock Up Immigrants