Kevin Kenny

The federal government has long controlled immigration law—and for very good reason.

The newly empowered federal state created during Reconstruction could restrict immigration much more comprehensively than any state—as Chinese laborers soon discovered.

Until the Civil War, regulating immigration to the US was left to individual states. That changed with Emancipation and the legal end of slavery.

Who were the Molly Maguires, what did they do, and why did they do it?

Examining slavery, Indian removal, and state policies regulating mobility to trace the constitutional origins of immigration restriction in the 1800s.