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b'In 1907 the U.S. Congress created a joint commission to investigate what many Americans saw as a national crisis: an unprecedented number of immigrants flowing into the United States. Experts\\u2014women and men trained in the new field of social science\\u2014fanned out across the country to collect data on these fresh arrivals. The trove of information they amassed shaped how Americans thought about immigrants, themselves, and the nation\\u2019s place in the world.\\xa0Katherine Benton-Cohen\\xa0argues that the Dillingham Commission\\u2019s legacy continues to inform the ways that U.S. policy addresses questions raised by immigration, over a century later.\\n\\nWithin a decade of its launch, almost all of the commission\\u2019s recommendations\\u2014including a literacy test, a quota system based on national origin, the continuation of Asian exclusion, and greater federal oversight of immigration policy\\u2014were implemented into law. Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy (Harvard University Press, 2018)\\xa0describes the labyrinthine bureaucracy, broad administrative authority, and quantitative record-keeping that followed in the wake of these regulations. Their implementation marks a final turn away from an immigration policy motivated by executive-branch concerns over foreign policy and toward one dictated by domestic labor politics.\\n\\nThe Dillingham Commission\\u2014which remains the largest immigration study ever conducted in the United States\\u2014reflects its particular moment in time when mass immigration, the birth of modern social science, and an aggressive foreign policy fostered a newly robust and optimistic notion of federal power. Its quintessentially Progressive formulation of America\\u2019s immigration problem, and its recommendations, endure today in almost every component of immigration policy, control, and enforcement.\\n\\nKatherine Benton-Cohen is Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University.\\n\\n\\n\\nLori A. Flores is an Associate Professor of History at Stony Brook University (SUNY) and the author of Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the California Farmworker Movement.\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law'