Oregon Connections: Immigration and Deportation
OHS presents “Oregon Connections: A Conversation Series on the Right to be Free,” an all-virtual program series featuring conversations among experts and with audience members. Although many of the decisions that affect people’s access to rights such as freedom of speech, citizenship, and due process are made at the federal level, it is often on the local level that those freedoms are both exercised and oppressed — amid debates, actions, and inspirations on a global scale.
During the months leading up to the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, the Oregon Connections series invites audiences to listen, learn, ask questions, and consider some of the ways Oregonians have struggled for justice and freedom.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first policy to restrict immigration to the United States based on nation of origin and ethnicity, making Chinese people the nation’s first “illegal aliens.” The act’s restrictions on travel and business-ownership by Chinese-ancestry Oregonians prompted creative responses to keep families and communities together.
In Oregon, laborers and entrepreneurs with Latine heritage have been affected by, and organized in response to, successive federal policies of mass deportation since the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war between Mexico and the United States. As scholars Jerry Garcia and Chelsea Rose explain, white supremacist ideology — along with ideas about rights related to family, community, culture, property, and wealth — have long been central to understanding the histories of immigration and deportation in Oregon.
This event is free but registration is required: https://orhs.ejoinme.org/OregonConnections