Introduction

NOTE 7/2025: Many of links to reports or resources have been remove from government sites. Any links that may work today may not function tomorrow. Doing a Google search of the reports you may locate them in other locations.

Terminology: Note that often the terms immigration, immigrants, migration and migrants are used interchangeably. When doing research remember that immigration refers to a movement between nations whereas migration is movement within a nation. For the U.S. experience, immigrants are often also part of migrant populations (which often refers to those individuals involved in farm labor as seasonal laborers). International immigrants (also called international migrants) face legal/judicial issues as temporary immigrants with special visas or no visas (often referred to as illegal aliens or undocumented aliens). Immigrant visas carry diverse privileges in terms of rights. It is important that as a researcher pay attention to these differentiations as they carry wide-ranging implications in terms of assumptions about rights and privileges. To further your research you might want to refer to other specific topics such as race, ethnicity, gender, or sexualities. If you'd like to learn more about research and online resources, contact me or your liaison librarian.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Books are organized via categories developed by the Library of Congress. These subject headings are slow to change and do not always reflect contemporary terms; they are, however, extremely useful in locating books and articles as KEYWORDS searches. Being open to the terminology will result in greater and diverse resources. Examples of subject headings:

Undocumented Immigrants
Illegal Aliens -- Education
Emigration and immigration
Alien labor Illegal Aliens
Agricultural laborers -- United States --History
Mexico -- Emigration and immigration
California --Emigration and immigration
Alien labor, Asian -- United States
China -- Emigration and immigration -- History
Immigrants -- United States -- Government Policy

Ethnic groups or geographical locations can be substituted for other groups or locations.
Some names and organizations can also be used in subject searches.

See a tutorial on library call numbers