Manny’s: Lessons from the Past: The 100th Anniversary of the Immigration Act of 1924

On May 26th, 1924, the Johnson-Reed Act, officially known as the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924, officially became law in the United States. The legislation prevented immigration from nearly all of Asia and set strict quotas on the number of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, limiting large-scale immigration to the U.S. for decades.. It also created the U.S. Border Patrol. Exactly a century later, the U.S. population is divided by approaches to immigration overall, facing new calls to limit illegal immigration, and a Presidential candidate who threatens to deport millions of undocumented immigrants if he is elected. What can the U.S. learn from its history 100 years ago when fear of the country’s changing racial demographics and a growing eugenics movement led to strict immigration laws that shaped the country’s politics, set a path to Japanese internment, fueled antisemitism and called into question the U.S. as a nation of immigrants?

Please join us for a special conversation on the lessons of the past with two Bay Area icons: noted writer and historian, Adam Hochschild, author of American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis. and leading immigration advocate, Bill Ong Hing. Professor, Founding Director of the Immigration and Deportation Defense Clinic, and Dean’s Circle Scholar, University of San Francisco

Speakers

Adam Hochschild, author, American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis., and multiple other books.

Bill Ong Hing, Professor, Founding Director of the Immigration and Deportation Defense Clinic, and Dean’s Circle Scholar, University of San Francisco; Author, Humanizing Immigration: How to Transform Our Racist and Unjust System

Moderated by Tyche Hendricks, KQED Senior Editor, Immigration