The post-1965 immigration trend is generally regarded as a turning point in the History of U.S. immigration with a new system to accommodate family reunification and labor force needs. And we have witnessed how the new system has sparked a dramatic shift in the demographics of immigration by introducing a more diverse group of migrants from Asia, Latin America, and other developing countries to the United States. The mobilization of migrants and capital flows also gave rise to many transnational businesses, such as in manufacturing, retailing & wholesaling, high technology, and education industries; however, the COVID-19 pandemic has created global labor shortages and supply-chain disruptions problems that challenged the well-established global economy. Even worse, the pandemic also fostered a widespread surge of xenophobic sentiments and anti-immigrant legislation within the United States and globally.

It is time to reckon on the past in order to gain a fuller picture of the contributions that immigrants have made to the global economy. But in many cases, the paid-offs could not offset the costs they invested into their work. Forces of imperialism and colonialism forced many migrants to leave their homeland for new sustenance opportunities. Immigrants have to overcome significant barriers to crossing national borders, sometimes with risks to their safety and the stability of their families and often lack aid or other healthcare measures in their work. Even though anti-immigrant legislation often imposed explicit or implicit discrimination on them and also created thousands of illegal aliens, undocumented immigrants have worked through a deadly pandemic to sustain the industries and services that the world relied on.

Scholars from different fields of immigration history will share their research and insights on the migration strategies that various groups of immigrants have developed and how they actively participated in a global economy. The chair of the panel, Professor Xiaojian Zhao from the University of California, Santa Barbara, will discuss how ethnic enterprises thrived in globalization. Marcus Golding, a PhD candidate in History at the University of Texas, Austin, will introduce the presence of U.S. oil firms in Venezuela and their close relationships with the local population during the Cold War era. Nivetha Karthikeyan, PhD candidate from Yale University’s history department, will share her work on South Asian “high tech” immigrants and Mexican Bracero workers to demonstrate immigrants’ contributions to the global exchange of knowledge. Keren Zou, a prospective graduate student at UC Berkley, will discuss her research on the transnational fishery business established by Chinese immigrants and the exchanges between U.S. and Chin during the Chinese Exclusion period in the late-nineteenth century