Spotlight on Research: Guest author Jian Gao was awarded a 2025 Grant-in-Aid Award at the Immigration History Research Center Archives (IHRCA). He visited Andersen Library for five days to study sources on the transformation of US immigration laws in the second half of the 20th century from overt racial classifications to more subtle, birthplace-based systems. Jian Gao is Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Arizona State University. 

This year, I had the wonderful opportunity to conduct research at the Immigration History Research Center Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries. Tucked away in a quiet corner of campus, this repository holds some of the richest materials on immigrant political organizing and legal advocacy in the United States.

I was especially drawn to the Immigration and Refugee Services of America (IRSA) records, which holds valuable information on the formation and the contestation over the development of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 (located in Box 474), particularly the backlash it provoked from a coalition of civil rights and labor organizations.

One of the most striking archival documents for my research purposes was a lengthy comment submitted on April 22, 1987, by the Task Force on the Immigration Reform and Control Act, operating under the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. This coalition included the American Civil Liberties Union, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, several major labor unions, and numerous other civil rights groups. Together, they issued a scathing critique of the proposed regulations that followed IRCA’s passage, especially those dealing with employment discrimination against immigrants.

What emerges clearly from these documents is the deep concern that employer sanctions — originally designed to penalize businesses that hired undocumented workers — would inadvertently or deliberately lead to discrimination against all workers appearing “foreign.” The organizations argued that small businesses, which were often exempt from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, would act out of fear or ignorance by avoiding the hiring of anyone with a foreign-sounding name or accent, regardless of legal status. To combat this, they demanded more aggressive oversight, the immediate appointment of a Special Counsel within the Department of Justice, and a national educational campaign to inform both employers and workers of their rights and obligations.

I was especially drawn to the granular language in the coalition’s feedback. They criticized the Justice Department not only for its delay in establishing the Office of Special Counsel but also for creating regulatory definitions that placed undue burdens on immigrant complainants. The requirement that injured parties specify whether they were victims of national origin discrimination or citizenship status discrimination, for example, was seen as both legally confusing and practically prohibitive. Many workers, particularly those with limited access to legal counsel, would not be in a position to make such distinctions.

These Immigration and Refugee Services of America records do more than offer a snapshot of bureaucratic pushback; they reveal the formation of a legal-political consciousness among a broad spectrum of civil rights actors. At a time when the federal government was reconfiguring immigration enforcement to operate through the workplace, these organizations worked to create protections that would prevent new forms of exclusion from taking root. The records not only document that struggle but also helps us understand the genealogies of today’s debates over E-Verify, DACA, and workplace raids.

Equally illuminating were documents dating back two decades to the critical period following the 1965 Hart-Celler Act and the introduction of the labor certification requirement. One “Interpreter Releases” bulletin dated February 1969 outlined the U.S. Department of Labor’s revisions to labor certification procedures under Section 212(a)(14) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The Department introduced a “Schedule C – Precertification List” for occupations deemed to face genuine labor shortages, allowing streamlined certification for these categories. But the implementation was uneven, excluding U.S. territories and raising procedural hurdles for others. While the reforms aimed to balance labor needs with protections for American workers, they also laid bare the bureaucratic machinery that could either facilitate or obstruct immigration depending on policy whims.

Perhaps most revealing were internal memoranda and administrative summaries from the late 1960s that pointed to both the operational limits and political concerns embedded in the labor certification process. Officials from the U.S. Department of Labor expressed worry over the disproportionate number of certifications granted for domestic service jobs — particularly live-in maids from countries such as Jamaica and Peru — and the fraud and exploitation associated with such cases.

This preoccupation culminated in calls to revise certification standards to require evidence of prior experience and prevailing wage compliance. As Assistant Secretary of Labor Stanley Ruttenberg noted in 1968 congressional testimony, the labor certification system could serve as a “valve” to regulate immigrant labor flow in accordance with economic conditions and national labor policy.

Together, these materials illustrate a longer and more complex history of immigrant labor regulation than is commonly recognized. From the procedural tightening of the late 1960s to the backlash against IRCA in the late 1980s, we see how immigration policy was shaped not just by legislative acts but also by administrative rulemaking, legal contestation, and on-the-ground resistance. For my current project on post-1965 U.S. immigration policy, these documents provide essential insight into the bureaucratic architectures and political debates that shaped immigrant inclusion and exclusion.

As I left the Immigration History Research Center Archives, I was reminded of how crucial these collections are for grounding historical analysis in the lived experiences of those affected by law and policy. It is easy to think of IRCA or the 1965 Act as clear-cut legal milestones. What the archive reveals is how those milestones were contested, reshaped, and resisted—not only in courtrooms, but in letters, hearings, agency memos, and coalition reports that still resonate today.