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Immigration

My New Jotwell Review of Anna Law's Book "Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship"

The book is an important new account of the early constitutional and political history of American migration policy.

Ilya Somin | 7.17.2026 12:51 PM

Oxford University Press.

Today, the Jotwell website (to which I am a regular contributor) published my review of Anna Law's important new book Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants.  Here is an excerpt:

Political scientist Anna O. Law is one of the leading experts on the history and development of American immigration policy…. Her new book builds on her previous scholarship and that of others to bring together three interlinked topics that are usually considered separately: the development of immigration law and policy in the early republic, policies on slavery and internal migration, and policy towards Native Americans.

Law makes the by-now familiar point that, during the first century of American history, power over international migration overwhelmingly resided in the hands of state governments, rather than the federal government. In a more novel and distinctive move, she links this to the desire of many Founding-era Americans and subsequent generations to preserve state authority over internal migration, slavery, and dealings with Native........

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