This course examines the history of Latinx immigration to the U.S., considering both federal efforts to shape immigration policy to serve national elites AND the lived experiences of immigrants. We’ll analyze U.S. immigration from the late 19th century to the present, providing a complex historical framework for contemporary immigration debates. We will consider how the why federal immigration records are constructed and maintained; the role of quantitative arguments in formulating racially motivated immigration quotas; what quantitative records can and cannot tell us about immigrant communities; and how statistics have been selectively applied in debates about what it means to be “American”. MWF 12