Immigration History, Politics, and Prejudices: Jia Lynn Yang with Caitlin Dickerson

The New York Times national editor surveys the 40-years between 1924 and 1965 and the battle to "codify the idea that a person could become wholly American, no matter where she had been born." 

America wasn't always a nation of immigrants. Though the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act opened doors to people from all over the world, just 40 years earlier, the 1924 Immigration Act had banned people from nearly all of Asia from coming here, and choked levels of immigration from everywhere else, particularly southern and eastern Europe. In the intervening 40 years, a long and concerted attempt to abolish the law was made by a fascinating cast of lawmakers, activists, and presidents. Jia Lynn Yang charts this struggle in One Mighty and Irresistible Tide, and demonstrates how the 1965 law was one of the most transformative in the country's history. But it also had impacts no one imagined, including laying the groundwork for much of the viciousness that reigns over immigration arguments today. 

Jia Lynn Yang speaks about the paradoxes and the promises of the American idea of itself as a nation of immigrants.

This program will be streamed live on the NYPL event page.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Jia Lynn Yang is the national editor at The New York Times. She was previously deputy national security editor at The Washington Post, where she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Trump and Russia. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Caitlin Dickerson is an award winning reporter and staff writer for The Atlantic who covers immigration to the United States. Previously, she worked as correspondent for The New York Times and National Public Radio. She has been awarded a Peabody and Edward R. Murrow award, and is a three time finalist for the Livingston Award for her work as an investigative reporter. 

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Jia Lynn Yang © Lorin Klaris

Caitlin Dickerson © Earl Wilson/The New York Times