In the 20th century, California’s black farmworkers settled in waterless colonies. The history endures underground, through old pipes, dry wells and shoddy septic tanks.

New research linking millions of fathers and sons dating to the 1880s shows that children of poor immigrants in America have had greater success climbing the economic ladder than children of similarly poor fathers born in the United States. That pattern has been remarkably stable for more than a century, even as immigration laws have shifted and as the countries most likely to send immigrants to the United States have changed.

Watenpaugh is the founding director of the UC Davis Human Rights Studies Program, the first academic unit of its kind in the UC system. He has been a leader in international efforts to address the needs of displaced and refugee university students and professionals, especially those impacted by the wars and civil conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey.

At a town hall meeting Monday in Davis, a group of about 20 UC Davis students urged Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, to support the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. Less than 24 hours later, the House of Representatives approved the bill, sending a rebuke to Beijing, which has cracked down hard on protesters in Hong Kong.

UC Davis researchers are examining the consequences of deportation from many angles — its effects on people, families and communities. Their findings were recently featured in the New York Times.

In 2017, Nancy Erbstein, a professor at the University of California, Davis, published findings that chronic absenteeism in the Sacramento City Unified School District could often be traced to a lack of transportation. Now the region’s school-age children will get a free transit pass to use Sacramento Regional Transit (SacRT) public buses and light rail

A project of UC Davis, Humanizing Deportation shares the firsthand stories of migrants to better illustrate the connections between immigration policy and its consequences.