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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<meta name="description" content="A collaborative, interdisciplinary digital project that provides curated access to migrant records held by the U.S. National Archives (NARA). These records, known as A-files, open a rare window on migrant experiences and the operations of the administrative state and have exceptional potential for humanities research as well as for explorations in personal, family, and community history.">
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<h1 class="responsive-headline">Migrants and the State:</h1>
<h2 class="responsive-headline">Unlocking the Potential of A-files for the Histories of U.S.
Immigration</h1>
<h3><a class="smoothscroll" href="#about"></a>.</h3>
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<h2>What is <i>Migrants and the State?</i></h2>
<p class="lead add-bottom"><i>Migrants and the State: Unlocking the Potential of A-files for the Histories of U.S. Immigration</i> is a collaborative, interdisciplinary digital project that aims to provide curated access to the hundreds of thousands of migrant records held by the U.S. National Archives (NARA). These records, known as A-files, open a rare window on migrant experiences and the operations of the administrative state and have exceptional potential for humanities research as well as for explorations in personal, family, and community history.
</p>
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<span> • </span><a href="#current_phase">Current Phase</a>
<br><span> • </span><a href="#whats_next">What's Next</a>
<br><span> • </span><a href="#get_involved">Get Involved</a>
<br><span> • </span><a href="#project_history">Project History</a>
<br><span> • </span><a href="#funders">Funders</a>
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<h2 id="current_phase">Current Phase</h2>
<p>A-files are richly complex historical documents—their length varies radically and so does their contents. In addition to standardized U.S. government forms (visas, naturalization certificates, etc.) and non-U.S. government forms (birth certificates, certificates of marriage, etc.) they may contain records of interviews at the moment of entry, personal narratives, records of medical exams, criminal records, evidence of employment and financial history, and photographs. To make files with such diverse contents searchable, we are using a training set of 650 A-files to develop machine learning models that can identify document types and enable the addition of detailed metadata about them. This level of indexing will make the diverse contents of the files searchable and shed new light on immigration history in the U.S., the history of migrants’ home countries, and the often understudied ways in which the two interconnect. <a href="#request">For more information on A-files, see below</a>.
</p>
<h2 id="whats_next">What's Next</h2>
<p>After the prototype stage is complete, we will begin the process of building a crowdsourced digital archive of A-files that comprises historical as well as recent files (with appropriate privacy protections for the latter), developed to serve the needs of both scholars and members of migrant communities outside of academia. <a class="smoothscroll" href="#about"><i class="icon-up-circle"></i></a>
</p>
<h2 id="get_involved">Interested in Joining the Project? Here is How Can You Help:</h2>
<ol>
<li> We need to expand our data base. Building a crowd-sourced digital archive will allow us to train the machine to recognize community-specific patterns and make it searchable in new ways. If you have A-files on hand, we would love to add them to our archive. We can also assist you in <a href="#request">retrieving historical A-files.</a></li>
<li>We would love to hear your questions. Imagine you could do a google search on immigration files. What would you like to know about your community’s history? Your immigrant neighborhood? The community where your family came from or that you study, as a scholar or community historian? Hearing your ideas and questions will help us make the machine as smart and responsive to community concerns as it can be. <a class="smoothscroll" href="#contact">Contact us with your questions</a>, or you can <a href="https://forms.gle/7qawzxio1yxBBBfv5" target="_blank">sign up to test</a> a prototype. <a class="smoothscroll" href="#about"><i class="icon-up-circle"></i></a>
</li>
</ol>
<h2 id="project_history">Project History</h2>
<p id="top_disclaimer">Migrants and the State was conceived in 2019 as an intervention in the increasingly chaotic and confusing landscape surrounding immigration and asylum in the U.S. Under the auspices of NYU’s Bennett-Polonsky Humanities Lab program, we investigated the record-keeping practices of migrant advocates, attorneys, and the federal government. It became clear to us that the so-called “border crisis” was ultimately inseparable from the long history of migrations and migration restrictions in the hemisphere. This history is amply documented in the rich trove of public domain A-files held by the U.S. National Archives, yet these files are by and large inaccessible to the public and cannot be explored at scale. The Migrants and the State team hopes that by harnessing new digital technologies it will become possible for communities and scholars to tell stories of migration at scale in entirely new ways.<a class="smoothscroll" href="#about"><i class="icon-up-circle"></i></a>
<h2 id="funders">Funders</h2>
<p>Migrants and the State received early stage funding from the NYU Bennett-Polonsky Humanities Lab program, NYU Center for the Humanities, and the NYU Office of the Provost Humanities Mega-Grants Initiative Seed Fund.
The Migrants and the State digital prototype has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities</span><a href="#disclaimer">*</a> Digital Humanities Advancement Grant program: Democracy Demands Wisdom.<a class="smoothscroll" href="#about"><i class="icon-up-circle"></i></a>
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<h1>Project Directors</h1>
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<h3 class="custom-h3">Ellen Noonan</h3>
<p class="subtitle">Clinical Associate Professor of History and Director, Archives and Public History Program, New York University</p>
<h3 class="custom-h3">Sibylle Fischer</h3>
<p class="subtitle">Associate Professor of History, Spanish and Portuguese, and Latin American Studies, New York University</p>
<h3 class="custom-h3">Bryan Zehngut-Willits</h3><p class="subtitle">Immigration historian and doctoral candidate in History, New York University</p>
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<h1 class="pull-right">Collaborators</h1>
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<h3 class="custom-h3-right">Marii Nyrop</h3>
<p class="subtitle-right">Senior Research Data Engineer, New York University
</p>
<h3 class="custom-h3-right">Alexandra Provo</h3>
<p class="subtitle-right">Research Curation Librarian, New York University
</p>
<h3 class="custom-h3-right">Ajay Krishnan Gopalan</h3>
<p class="subtitle-right">Data Science Graduate Research Assistant, Computer Science, New York University</p>
<h3 class="custom-h3-right">Joaquin Navarrette</h3>
<p class="subtitle-right">Data Science Undergraduate Research Assitant, New York University</p>
<h3 class="custom-h3-right">Ashley Sarkisian</h3>
<p class="subtitle-right">Undergraduate Assistant</p>
<h3 class="custom-h3-right">Elijah VanderMolen</h3>
<p class="subtitle-right">Undergraduate Assistant</p>
<h3 class="custom-h3-right">Marco Garcia</h3>
<p class="subtitle-right">Undergraduate Assistant</p>
<h3 class="custom-h3-right">Emma Jeong</h3>
<p class="subtitle-right">Undergraduate Assistant</p>
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<h2><span class="lead">Advisory Board</span></h2>
<p><span class="lead">
<strong>Adam Cox</strong>, Robert A. Kindler Professor of Law, New York University<br>
<strong>Juliana Freire</strong>, Professor of Computer Science and Data Science, New York University<br>
<strong>Maria Cristina Garcia</strong>, Howard A. Newman Professor of American Studies in the Department of History, Cornell University<br>
<strong>Irvin Ibarguen</strong>, Assistant Professor of History, New York University<br>
<strong>Kevin Kenny</strong>, Professor of History and Director of Glucksman Ireland House, New York University<br>
<strong>Shannon O’Neill</strong>, Curator for Tamiment-Wagner Collections, New York University<br>
<strong>Marian Smith</strong>, Senior Historian at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) (retired)<br>
<strong>Lauren Tilton</strong>, Associate Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Richmond<br>
<br>
<br>
Special thanks to <strong>Ben Schmidt, Molly Rogers, Elisabeth Burnes, JoJo Karlin, Jake Ersland, Gabriela Basterra, Calista LaMotte, Alexandra Cordero, Karin Burrell, Rebecca Maner, Alona Bach, Maddalena Marinari, Adam Goodman, Anna Law, Benjamin Berman-Gladstone, Bita Mousavi, Barbara Perez Curiel, Sarah Sklaw, Alexia Orengo-Green, Jason Ahlenius, Alec Ferretti.</strong>
</span></p>
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<h1 id="request"><span>More on A-Files</span></h1>
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<p class="body-black">Over ninety million migrant records, known as A-files, are held by the federal agency United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Each A-file is a collection of records generated by the state for an individual migrant, immigrant, or refugee who enters the U.S. The contents of A-files—including government forms, correspondence, identity documents and certificates, photographs, and health, employment, and financial records—document such legal and administrative processes as naturalization, deportation, and the determination of asylum claims. The A-files of any individual born more than a 100 years ago are known as historical A-files; they are transferred to the National Archives (NARA) and are in the public domain. Even though they are in the public domain, A-files requested from NARA undergo a privacy screening process and some information may be redacted to protect the privacy of other individuals referenced in the file; A-files requested from USCIS go through a similar privacy review.
<a href="https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2013/spring/a-files.pdf" target="_blank">This article by archivist Elisabeth Burnes and genealogist Marisa Louie provides a brief history of the A-file</a> record keeping system and information on how to locate an ancestor’s A-file.
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<h1><span>Request A-Files</span></h1>
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<p class="body-black">You can request any A-file contained in the NARA catalog; <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/aliens" target="_blank">information on requesting A-files from NARA can be found here.</a>
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<p class="body-black">Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Privacy Act (PA), you can request your own A-File from USCIS, or someone else’s if you have their written permission or you can prove that they are deceased; <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy/genealogy/requesting-records" target="_blank"> information on requesting A-files from USCIS can be found here.</a>
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<p class="lead" >Use the form below to reach out to the <i>Migrants and the State</i> team!
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