The 1929 Law That Turned Undocumented Entry Into a Crime

By Treating Migrants as Felons, the Undesirable Aliens Act Reinforced a Punitive Approach to Unauthorized Immigration

Too often, discussions of modern immigration policy are ahistorical, focusing on recent events while ignoring the past policies that led us, as a country, to where we are today.

That’s especially true when undocumented immigrants are characterized as criminals—often merely on the basis of their legal immigration status. This rhetoric isn’t new—it has long been used to justify immigration crackdowns. But the framing of unauthorized migration as illegal does have an origin point: a little-known law in 1929.

The law—Senate Bill 5094, also known as the Undesirable Aliens Act—was notable because it …

by Benjamin Gonzalez O’Brien | November 27, 2018

Let’s Make a Deal to Keep Immigrant Families Together

California Should Have the Right to Grant Legal Residency to the Undocumented

By Joe Mathews | September 11, 2017

MEMO
To: Acting U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke and Attorney General Jeff Sessions
From: The Golden (and Still Sovereign!) State
Re: An alternative to your mass deportation of …

I Survived the Gangs and the Border Crossing—but Trump Has Put New Obstacles in My Path

A Young Undocumented Salvadoran Immigrant Won't Quit His Dream of Becoming an American

By Roberto Flores | August 9, 2017

If you quit today, everything you did yesterday will be wasted.

That is the phrase I grew up living in my native El Salvador.

I emigrated to Los Angeles in 2014, a …

Using Art to Help Undocumented Students Become More Visible, On Their Own Terms

A Poet’s Powerful Example Inspired Immigrant Students in South L.A. to Dream Bigger

By Ky-Phong Tran | July 7, 2016

For three years, I was a high school English teacher at 103rd Street and Broadway, the southernmost tip of South Los Angeles, a stone’s throw west of Watts. Many Californians …

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