Mae Ngai quoted in CBS News
Undocumented migrants have come to the U.S. for centuries. Why do we treat them differently today?
Mae Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History, was quoted in CBS News.
The surge in people arriving at the United States southern border comes as the Biden administration hopes to overhaul an immigration system often described as broken...
... Later, Japanese immigrants, Asian Indians and others from Asia would also become targets of exclusion — that guaranteed people of Asian descent "…would be but a small, marginalized population…" for nearly a century, according to "Impossible Subjects", a book written by Columbia University history and Asian American studies professor Mae Ngai.
Despite that, according to Ngai, almost everyone who made it to America got to stay in America if they arrived before the first national immigration act was passed in 1924.
"You just showed up," Ngai said. "You didn't need a passport, you didn't need a visa. There was no such thing as a green card."
If there are no restrictions, Ngai explained, then everyone would be legal....