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Cuban refugee children.

When the U.S. Welcomed the ‘Pedro Pan’ Migrants of Cuba

Cold War America resettled unaccompanied minors as an anti-communist imperative. Today, the nation forgets this history.
Americans with signs and a banner Abdisellam Hassen Ahmed and his family to the US.
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Welcome Corps, the Newest Idea in Refugee Resettlement, Has Deep Roots

The new program might strengthen personal connections to refugees, but history shows there are potential downsides, as well.
Utica, New York

How Utica Became a City Where Refugees Came to Rebuild

Utica became a refugee magnet by accident.
Drawing depicting different groups of refugees. Above, a white woman carries an infant and holds the hand of a young child. They are wearing yellow and blue--the colors of Ukraine. They are standing on a red carpet, and it is being rolled out for them--an easy entrance amidst barbed wire. Meanwhile, at bottom right, other refugees are obscured in shadow, and covered by a thick red line (potentially another carpet). They are non-white refugees, and their faces are turned away from the viewer.

United States to Refugees: Don't Give us Your Tired, Your Poor!

Putting out the welcome mat for white Christians—while slamming the door in the faces of other migrants—is an American tradition.
An Afghan child being welcomed by a U.S. soldier.
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How the U.S. Has Treated Wartime Refugees

What obligation does the US have toward people who are uprooted by war?
A family photo shows Balqes Jassem with her late husband, Abdul Ameer Alwan, and their daughter, Aman Alwan, at home in Richardson, Tex. The older Alwan was an Iraqi painter who passed away in 2015. The family came to the United States as Iraqi refugees in 2007.

New Americans

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis displaced by war have settled in the U.S., their journeys spurred by tragedy and loss in the wake of 9/11.

The Electoral Politics of "Migrant Caravans"

To alleviate voters' fears during the Civil War, Northern governors refused to open their states to formerly enslaved refugees.
Rachel Cockerell’s “Melting Point" tells the story of an exiled people and their effort to find a place to call home.

When Jews Sought the Promised Land in Texas

While some Jewish exiles dreamed of a homeland in Palestine, the Jewish Territorial Organization fixed its hopes on Galveston.
Henrietta Szold welcoming Jewish refugees from Poland to Palestine, February 1943.

Henrietta Szold & the Return to Zion

Henrietta Szold devoted her life to building a Jewish society in Palestine. But how useful is her ’cultural’ Zionism for Jewish Americans today?
Bust of Isaiah Bowman at Johns Hopkins University.

Why is Johns Hopkins Still Honoring an Antisemite?

Isaiah Bowman was one of the worst college presidents in American history.
Marine handing water to evacuees

The End Of Nation-Building

History offers a guide for why the American project in Afghanistan went wrong — and for the future of foreign engagement in the country.
Men lined up on a set of stairs.

Who Is "Essential"?

On the need to rethink the U.S. immigration and refugee policy, which was shaped as part of Cold War strategy.
A violinist and a guitarist play at a square dance in Mcintosh County, Oklahoma.

Government Song Women

The Resettlement Administration was one of the New Deal’s most radical, far-reaching, and highly criticized programs, and it lasted just two years.

The Christian History of Korean-American Adoption

How World Vision and Compassion International sparked an Oregon family to raise eight mixed-race children.
The April 1966 cover of “Ramparts," featuring a caricature of Madame Nhu dressed as a Michigan State University cheerleader

The University That Launched a CIA Front Operation in Vietnam

A Vietnamese politician and an American academic led Michigan State University into a nation-building experiment and pulled America deeper into war.
Slave revolt in Haiti.

The History of the United States’ First Refugee Crisis

Fleeing the Haitian revolution, whites and free blacks were viewed with suspicion by American slaveholders, including Thomas Jefferson.
Woman holding belongings and a teddy bear.
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As Red States Send Migrants to Blue States, Sanctuary Cities are Crucial

A very old concept remains a key part of navigating the United States' broken immigration system.
Olivier Bancoult, center, the leader of the Chagos Refugee Group, stands on Capitol Hill with Roger Alexis, a Chagossian, left, and Philip Ah-Chuen, a Mauritian advisor to the group. They met last week with lawmakers to demand reparations and an apology for the forced removal of thousands of native inhabitants from the Chagos Islands in the 1960s and 1970s to make room for a U.S. military base.

They Were Deported to Build a U.S. Naval Base. Now They Want Reparations.

50 years after native inhabitants of the Chagos Islands were forced out to make room for a military base, a Chagossian leader came to D.C. seeking reparations.
Gelringer family, who were later deported to Auschwitz.

The Millions We Failed to Save

The recent documentary "The US and the Holocaust" is a scathing, even bombastic indictment of US immigration policy over the past 160 years.
Migrants discuss their journey in 2018, using a map posted inside a sports complex in Mexico City.
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Biden’s Announced Asylum Transit Ban Undermines Access to Life-Saving Protection

Similar bars have been marshaled against Central Americans since the late 1980s — severely undermining access to asylum.
Cover of "The Deportation Express"

How American Deportation Trains Represent a Century of American Immigration Policy

"The Deportation Express: A History of America through Forced Removal" traces the historical roots and spatial routes of systemic denial, arrest, and removal from the United States.
A group of migrants standing behind a chain-link fence with barbed wire in El Paso, Texas, trying to seek asylum.

The Long History of the U.S. Immigration Crisis

How Washington outsources its dirty work.
A boat landing in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Where the Waters Meet the People: A Bibliography of the Twin Cities

St. Paul and Minneapolis have a history as long, deep, and twisted as the Mississippi River.
Demonstrators listen to speakers during a rally outside the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond
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Trump’s Attacks on Refugees Expose the Inadequacy of the Current System

The administration’s historically low ceiling for refugee resettlement may signal the end of an era.

My Grandfather Was Welcomed to Pittsburgh by the Group the Gunman Hated

He came to this country a refugee, and paid his debt forward.
Migrant women and children
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Never Never Land

The legacy of Operation Pedro Pan, a plan to save Cuban children from communist indoctrination by leaving their families and resettling in the United States.
Map of Sterling Heights

What Explains Michigan's Large Arab American Community?

Why has Michigan continued to draw so many immigrants from the Arab world, creating one of the largest Arab communities outside the Middle East?

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