Goodbyes of a Sort

My time in D.C. has come to an end, and I'm honestly a bit sad to leave. Two months isn't a lot of time to spend in one place, especially a place like this one. Thankfully I've found a lot of great sources, though every door I opened led me to three more that I'll need to follow up on later on.

To recap the archival materials I used this summer:
NARA I
- Basic INS records, though these never went anywhere
- Congressional Records, especially House and Senate Judiciary Committee Records. Particularly useful here were the Special Subcommittee on Emigration and Refugees, 1955-1959.

NARA II
- Department of State Records. Vexing at times, and I'm sure I've only scratched the surface, but incredibly useful.
- Secretary of Agriculture Records. Not useful at all.

Library of Congress
- Emanuel Celler Papers. (Boxes relating to Immigration and Refugee issues.)

I spent the first few days of this week going through my notes and putting everything onto a time line in excel, so that I could sort by date, keywords, etc. I'm still going through what I have, but I already know that the 1955-1959 period, and especially the Refugee Relief Act, is much more important than what scholars have given it credit for. I also am getting more and more interested in the issue of Military Brides, and how so much of our immigration rules about what constitutes "family" migration emerged from wartime exigencies.

I'm also playing around with a few ideas about governmental institutions, and trying to place together how State fits in with the rest of federal immigration/refugee policy. Daniel Tichenor has already posited the congressional lag thesis of postwar immigration policy, where the Executive Branch led the way toward immigration liberalization, but I wonder if it's even more nuanced than that, with State leading the way, and other agencies following. I need to think about this more.

Anyways, for now this will be my last post, until I spend some more time going through my research, or until I hit my next archive!

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more posts from Emily and Sam.

Phil