Event
The ASAM program and Department of History invite you to a symposium to mark the centennial of the Immigration Act of 1924. Hosted by Hardeep Dhillon, Assistant Professor of History at Penn and Eiichiro Azuma, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History at Penn.
This symposium will consist of two panels, "Asian American History and the Making of US Citizenship" and "Empire, Racial Formations, and 1920s Immigration Control," and a keynote with Professor Mae Ngai.
2024 marks a significant historical conjuncture in the making of modern US citizenship and immigration control. 100 years ago, the Immigration Act of 1924 remade the racial demographics of the United States by creating the United States’ modern regime of immigration quotas and barring “aliens ineligible to citizenship.” The new regime of immigration quotas ranked Europeans in a hierarchy of desirability based on national origin while citizenship eligibility barred most Asian immigrants recently deemed ineligible for naturalization by the US Supreme Court in Ozawa (1922) and Thind (1923) on the basis of race. The movement to police the racial boundaries of US immigration excluded Asian immigrants from the nation and remade racial hierarchies within the United States. Two days after Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, it also supported the creation of the US Border Patrol. Tasked with securing the nation's borders, the USBP became instrumental in policing the racial hierarchies created through federal immigration law. This conference revisits these historical events on their centennial anniversary and casts light on the significance of Asian American history to the making of modern immigration control and US citizenship.
Co-sponsored by CSERI