The site has been deluged since the moment it went live in 2001, and users may very likely find it difficult to access. Those lucky enough to get through will find a searchable database that contains records on the 22 million passengers and ship crew members who passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924. In addition to a basic passenger record (name, ethnicity, place of residence, age,...

Drawn from the collections of the University of California Berkeley and the California Historical Society, this addition to American Memory presents about 8000 digitized items that document the Chinese in California from 1850 to 1925. Like other American Memory collections, both searching and browsing options are available. One nice feature is the Topical Overview section, where users can read...

Released in conjunction with a PBS television series dealing with the Chinese experience in America (hosted by Bill Moyers), this site provides a host of information, video clips, personal recollections, and other materials that serve as an excellent complement to the series. Visitors may want to start by examining the Portraits section, which highlights some first-person narratives of what their...

Started in 1942, the Bracero Program brought millions of Mexican guest workers to the United States, and over the next two decades, more than 4 million Mexicans came to work in the country. This fine public history resource from the Center for History and New Media at Georgetown University brings together oral histories and artifacts pertaining to the program. Visitors can read the "About" section...

Founded in 1985, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization which happens to be the United States' only think tank devoted "exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States." From the homepage, visitors can peruse a number of common topics in...

In this 55-page working paper from the Office of Population Research at Princeton, Marta Tienda examines the relationship between demography and the social contract in the United States, with a particular emphasis placed on historical and contemporary debates about the nature of immigration. As Professor Tienda states in her work, "immigration strains commitment to the democratic principles of...

While it never really left us, immigration has once again emerged as a central issue for many Americans. For a first-hand look at the history of immigration in the United States from the years 1789 to 1930, this website is quite a pip. Created as part of the Open Collections Program at Harvard University, this online archive includes approximately 1,800 books, 6,000 photographs, and 200 maps. Just...

Immigration has been on the forefront of American policy issues for sometime now, and the foreign population in the United States is approaching historic levels. In March 2010, the Brookings Institution's Audrey Singer and John Mollenfkopf offered a presentation that examines this transformation. The presentation is focused on the "numerous affects of the country's changing demographics, from...

President Bush announced on Wednesday that he was "plenty hot" to learn that student visas for Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi were delivered six months after they flew hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center. Bush expressed his displeasure that the two terrorists remained in the immigration pipeline even though the names on the forms were widely known. Bush further stated that...

The Migration Policy Institute has worked on a number of resources for scholars and journalists, and this latest addition to their site is another worthy venture in this vein. The State Legislation Database is a free, searchable data tool designed "to generate information about all immigration-related bills and resolutions introduced in state legislatures." The information is classified by state,...