What if almost everything you've heard about the history of American immigration is missing half the story?

Less than 24 hours after the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship with its decision in Trump v. Barbara, historian Anna O. Law joined The Clio Dialogues to explain why today's debates over birthright citizenship and immigration reach back centuries.

To better understand the controversy over birthright citizenship, Law takes listeners into colonial America, the expansion of slavery, Native American dispossession, Reconstruction, and the struggle over who had the right not only to cross borders, but to remain. Along the way, she challenges familiar myths about "open borders," explains why immigration remained under state control for nearly a century after independence, and reveals how the history of slavery profoundly shaped American immigration law.

The conversation also explores how the Fourteenth Amendment transformed citizenship, why the landmark case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark remains foundational today, and why understanding this history matters more than ever.

In this episode

• Why birthright citizenship became a flashpoint in contemporary politics

• Why the phrase "nation of immigrants" leaves out essential parts of American history

• How Native American removal, westward expansion, and slavery shaped immigration policy

• Why America's borders were never actually "open"

• What the "right to remain" meant before immigration became a federal responsibility

• How the abolition of slavery transformed immigration politics

• Why Chinese immigration became central to the creation of federal immigration law

• How United States v. Wong Kim Ark established modern birthright citizenship

• What historians can contribute to today's constitutional debates

Featured Guest

Anna O. Law is a political scientist whose work examines immigration, citizenship, constitutional development, and American political history. Her latest book, Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African-Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants, traces the intertwined histories of migration, slavery, Native American removal, and citizenship from the colonial period through the federalization of immigration law.

Buy the Book: 

Anna O. Law, Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African-Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants https://amzn.to/3Rl9JVg

Also mentioned:

Samantha Seeley, Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain: Migration and the Making of the United States https://amzn.to/4vKDM7H 

Moon-Ho Jung, Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation https://amzn.to/3QzqmMQ

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