immigration

How Three Texas Newspapers Manufactured Three Competing Images of Immigrants

In Depression-Era San Antonio, Polarized Portraits of Mexicans Appealed to the Biases of Readers

How Three Texas Newspapers Manufactured Three Competing Images of Immigrants | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

In August 1930, an editorial writer for the largest newspaper chain on Earth proclaimed: “THE FARMER rids his barn of rats, his hen-house of weasels … the government of the United States should clean house and get rid of undesirable human vermin.”

The writer went on to demand that Congress make citizenship harder to obtain, so the government would be protected “against the vicious and criminal, the incompetent and the unfit.”

Sound familiar?

The Trump administration’s endless, bigoted campaign against immigrants may seem shocking. But the rhetoric accompanying that campaign, down …

by Melita M. Garza |

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In a Raucous Country, Our Sense of Unity Has Often Emerged Through Conflict | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

In a Raucous Country, Our Sense of Unity Has Often Emerged Through Conflict

A Diverse Nation, Built on Waves of Immigration, Has Found That Getting Along Is Not Always Easy

by Joe Mathews |

Americans of wildly disparate backgrounds have managed to find common ground over the course of the country’s history. But the process of cohering has been haphazard, raucous, messy and cruel, …

How Surf City USA Became the “Anti-California”

Riding a Wave of Litigation and Conspiracy-Mongering, Huntington Beach Defies the Golden State’s Laws—and Its Diverse Reality

by Joe Mathews |

Who says you can’t build anything in California? Huntington Beach is busy constructing a wall of denial around whatever is left of its soul.

The Orange County city has long been …

The Healthiest Californians Are the Ones Who Are Healthy Together

Immigrants Live Longer and Better Than the Native Born Because Community Heals in Ways Medicine Does Not

by Joe Mathews |

Immigrants bring cultural practices that could improve our health systems and the health of all Californians—if we do more to understand and deploy the advantages of cultural diversity, said a …

How Mexican Immigrants Changed the Way Americans Grieve

With Sugar Skulls and Altars that Maintain Our Connection to the Dead, Día de los Muertos Is Now a Therapeutic Ritual in All 50 States

by Regina Marchi |

After decades of avoiding the topic, it has become fashionable for Americans to talk about death.

Death dinners and death cafes offer people space to collectively discuss the physical, psychological, …


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