This roundtable examines the interconnectedness of U.S. domestic and foreign policy with immigration to, within, and from Latin America and the Caribbean in the twentieth century, during a period of U.S. political and economic expansion into the region. Historians such as Erika Lee and Mae Ngai have demonstrated how anti-immigrant discourse and exclusion policies reverberated throughout the Americas, especially targeting Chinese, Syrians, and other non-white groups, as well as how nations strategically deployed immigration policies to project national aspirations. Through case studies across Latin America and the Caribbean and with reference to broader imperial frameworks, we examine the linkage between domestic concerns, immigration, and foreign policy; the precarity of citizenship status during times of anti-immigrant strife; and claims to national belonging through discourses of moral standing, progress, and modernity. To foster engagement with the audience, each panelist will offer a brief introduction (8 minutes) to their in-progress research and reflect on how immigration issues of today are connected to broader historical and global contexts. We then invite guided discussion with an audience of scholars, students, and public organization representatives interested in immigration and hemispheric mobilities.

Benjamin Narvaez opens the roundtable with a broad framework for understanding seemingly contradictory U.S. policies regarding Chinese hemispheric mobilities. While the U.S. maintained Chinese exclusion at home and promoted it throughout the hemisphere, U.S. officials defended Chinese nationals residing in Latin America as part of strategy of strengthening the U.S.-China relationship. John Ermer shifts the focus to Syrian immigrants who made claims to belonging in the new Cuban republic at the outset of the twentieth century. His investigation into two life histories uncovers a growing friction between citizenship grounded in morality and service to the common good and a U.S.-influenced state apparatus requiring documentation and bureaucratic recognition. Kathleen López offers a comparative perspective from the British Caribbean to highlight the instability of rights based on birthplace during periods of political and economic tensions. Like immigrants throughout the region, Chinese and Syrians in Jamaica during the 1920s and 1930s faced increasing restrictions to entry. However, these policies also impacted Jamaican-born individuals of Chinese descent—who were British subjects—including transnational merchants and children sent to China for education. Laura De Moya Guerra brings the discussion into the early Cold War period, when Chinese immigrants and refugees of the 1950s pursued Colombian citizenship through self-portrayals as morally upstanding and anti-communist contributors to the nation. Finally, Ahmed Correa Alvarez draws on his interdisciplinary and legal background to reflect on the historical underpinnings of the current U.S. government immigration control regime, beginning with the Spanish-American War and growth of U.S. imperialism, through the expansion of migrant detention and deportation regimes in the 1980s, into the present day.