U.S. immigration laws define which peoples of the world should be admitted to the United States and who should be barred or limited from living, working, or becoming citizens. These laws have consistently reflected the ideas about race and ethnicity held by the policy makers who create them.

This talk will examine a few major examples of the legacies of racism in U.S. immigration law, including Asian exclusion, quota systems, the impact of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and the ways that race is still a factor in the "colorblind" U.S. immigration policies that took shape after 1965.