The spread of a particularly virulent influenza strain in Mexico has rung a public health alarm bell because of similarities to the deadly flu pandemic of 1918. It's far too early to predict that the 2009 experience could be as devastating, but a new historical source based on fraternal association records at the IHRC may help researchers in modeling responses to today's situation.

Infections from the influenza A (H1N1) virus identified in Mexico are now appearing in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1918, a flu virus was identified in the United States, with waves of infection following as the virus mutated and traveled to Europe, across the globe, and back to the United States the following year. The UFA database provides a range of demographic information that allows both multivariate analysis of social patterns and, with the support of manuscript holdings, access to long-term correspondence revealing the context of Ukrainian migration to the United States.

The horror of World War I overshadowed the 1918 pandemic in public memory, but about twice as many people died from the early 20th-century virus as from the war. The fact that the virus seemed to target healthy victims has remained a hallmark of that pandemic. Recent deaths in Mexico have also been among those in the prime of life rather than the youngest or the elderly, but this parallel should not be overstated, because the course of the disease is not fully predictable, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Health scientists have begun mathematically modeling the social interactions of communities to devise effective ways of reducing transmission, and the UFA data can be incorporated into such models.

The UFA database includes information much broader than mortality and health, however. The new data set, available for onsite use at Elmer L. Andersen Library, reveals the crossroads of immigrant life. The level of information for individuals is deep and includes village of origin in Europe, changes in family size, and type of occupation, among many possible variables. Fraternal associations often were the only institutional providers of assistance for new immigrants. The insurance policy records of organizations such as the UFA are a vital source for reconstructing evidence about ethnic communities and migration.

For the 2009 virus, the World Health Organization has raised its designation of the threat level because of recent findings of human-to-human transmission and the ability of the virus potentially to spread at the community level. Although the WHO has not advised travel restrictions, the CDC has issued guidelines for travel to infected areas.

As in the opening decades of the twentieth century, global travel has increased dramatically, making a truly world-wide threat extraordinarily difficult to halt. Understanding the global aspects of how diseases operate is important, but it is even more critical to determine the specific patterns of interaction within communities, where containment and mitigation efforts can be implemented successfully.

Institutions in the United States have begun implementing procedures to ensure preparedness. The University of Minnesota is among those institutions with plans in place to deal with public health disasters, whether the spread of swine flu or another threat.

The IHRC currently is working to obtain a grant for expanding the project to the beginning of the Ukrainian Fraternal Association’s files in 1911 and extending, in time, across the 20th century. Digitizing the collection will allow the IHRC to provide individual-level information while putting in place controls for ensuring confidentiality as the project moves forward. The UFA data set for 1918-1920 creates a window for new scholarship with significant public health applications, and especially for careful analysis of historical parallels with the 1918 pandemic.

Global health concerns have provided special urgency for making the IHRC’s vast collections of fraternal association records available, and they can be used for much more than the study of immigrant and ethnic health. The three-year snapshot of UFA records allows scholars to analyze linguistic patterns and literacy, occupational mobility, and the effect of nation-state formation on diaspora identity. As the UFA project expands longitudinally and IHRC databases broaden to include other collections, the value of preserving the records of American immigration will only increase.

There have been many articles in the papers about the raids that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has carried out in the name of national security. But instead of focusing on the criminals and terrorist suspects, ICE is targeting those that are relatively easy to find. They are finding them hard at work in the meatpacking plants.

ICE is rounding up foreigners who do not have proper documentation to work in the United States and deporting them. This is not how ICE has stated its purpose and goals to congress.

The unintended consequence is that instead of making our nation safer, it is actually contributing to the problems of the economic crisis! These meatpackers go to work every day; taxes are automatically taken out of their checks. They are paying mortgage or rent, paying taxes, buying food and clothes, and living otherwise normal lives.

When hundreds are deported, taxes are no longer collected, nor mortgages or rents paid, nor goods bought. Families are separated, and children suffer -- which requires more social services, as reported at the Urban Institute, Immigration Studies Program.

The businesses are suffering, with a shortage of trained meatpackers, losing money daily. This affects the food supply as well as the economic conditions of everyone in an area that rely on the meatpackers to spend their hard-earned money in town. “It’s chaos out there; the shortage is all over the country,” said Menachem Lubinsky, the editor of koshertoday.com, which monitors kosher food markets. “Everybody has begun to scramble.”

Deporting meat packers is not keeping America safe .

Businesses that rely on these workers need to advocate for immigration reform. Having these jobs filled is good for business, for the workers and their families, and helps keep America stronger in this economic crisis.

About the Author: Debra Kay Markert is a candidate for a master's degree of public affairs in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. Her article appears as part of a policy research project conducted by graduate students in "Immigration and Public Policy" (PA 5490, Prof. Katherine Fennelly).

Many Ukrainians who came to the United States after the Second World War as Displaced Persons were survivors of Holodomor, the great famine of 1932-1933. Some came as children with memories; others heard about it from their parents or the elders in their respective communities.

Many of the eyewitnesses to the tragedy perished, leaving empty villages that in time were populated by incoming Russian settlers. Survivors who came to the United States commemorated the famine, but few shared their personal stories until the latter 20th century.

Famines still occur even in the 21st century. Darfur, Rwanda and other countries are often on the news and in the press. However, little if anything is known about the horrific tragedy of a man-made famine that took place in Ukraine during the years 1932 and 1933. An estimated 6 to 10 million people died of hunger. Historically, Ukraine was considered the “bread basket�? of Europe. Although there was a drought prior to those years, the grain harvest was average in 1932 and there was no danger of famine. Instead, it resulted from forced appropriation of harvests, harsh measures against peasants who refused to participate in collectivization, and attacks against the social importance of Ukrainian villages, which were at the heart of the Ukrainian national revival (Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Toronto, 1984).

Reports of this horrific event reached the West but were played down by the Soviet government. Individuals like British correspondent Malcolm Muggeridge and Welsh journalist Gareth Jones traveled to Ukraine to investigate reports. Jones wrote eyewitness accounts of Holodomor based on his travels through Eastern Ukraine in early 1933 (www.garethjones.org). Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Duranty, a New York Times correspondent, publicly denied that there was a famine. However, privately he acknowledged that peasants were dying in the thousands.

With the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the establishment of an independent Ukraine, access to archives previously closed to scholars is shedding more light on the famine as genocide. People in areas affected by the famine are finally able to speak of the horrors of those years, previously forbidden to mention the famine – were told to forget and that it never happened. There are about 400,000 famine survivors still living in Ukraine today.

Archival sources documenting Holodomor in the IHRC’s Ukrainian American Collection include the papers of Alexander A. Granovsky, Luba Mensheha, a community activist; Oleksander Kaniuka, a graphic artist; and Ivan Baczynskj. Baczynskj’s materials include a questionnaire from a survey conducted in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany of famine survivors. The IHRC also holds the records of the Ukrainian National Association’s Washington Office, the lobbying arm and national office of the largest Ukrainian fraternal organization.

Secondary sources available on this topic include, among others, Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the terror-famine (New York, 1986), The Man-made famine in Ukraine (Washington, 1984), and The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties (London, 1968); Dmytro Solovey’s The Golgotha of Ukraine: Eyewitness Accounts (New York, 1953), Viktor Kravchenko’s I Chose Freedom; the personal and political life of a Soviet official (New York, 1946); and the three volume Oral History Project of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine (edited by James E. Mace and Leonid Heretz, Washington: 1990). The latter has recently been translated and published in Ukraine. A more recent publication to consult is Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933: genocide by other means, co-authored by Taras Hunczak and Roman Serbyn (New York, 2007). In Ukraine 17 regional, Kyiv city and all-Ukraine volumes of the National Memory Book have been published just in time for the November commemoration.

World community awareness of the Ukrainian famine-genocide Holodomor has brought some positive results for Ukrainians everywhere. In America, thanks to efforts of Rep. Sander Levon (D-MI) the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously approved H. Res. 1314 – a resolution recognizing the 75th anniversary of the Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor). The latest development is that The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) has approved and awarded a parcel of federally-owned land to the Ukrainian Government as the site for the Memorial to Victims of the Ukrainian Genocide of 1932-33.

Ukraine has been seeking acknowledgement of the famine as genocide by submitting a resolution to the United Nations. The UN didn’t pass the resolution but instead tabled it; the United States also hasn’t. Canada has, however, recognized Holodomor as genocide. Canada also was the first to recognize independent Ukraine. Most recently, the European Parliament has recognized Holodomor as a “crime against humanity.�?

Many commemorative events taking place in Ukraine and the Ukrainian Diaspora include the International Holodomor Remembrance Flame traveling through 33 countries, starting in Ukraine and returning in November for nationwide observances of the 75th anniversary. This torch of light is being carried in remembrance of those who perished during the famine. Also a number of national (Harvard, Columbia University) and international (Kyiv) conferences are underway, as are screenings of documentary films such as Harvest of Despair (1984) directed by Slavko Nowytski and Eternal Memory: Voices from the Great Terror (1991) directed by David Pultz and narrated by Meryl Streep, and exhibits in New York at the Library of Congress, The Ukrainian Museum and Ukrainian Institute of America. Documents related to Holodomor can also be found in the archives of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York.

Immigrants have been making music in the United States for over 200 years. So why is it that no journalist writing recently about Osmo Vänskä’s jazzy clarinet-playing at New York’s Avery Fischer Hall referred to the Finnish-born Vänskä, director of the Minnesota Orchestra since 2003, as an immigrant? To reporters, he’s a Finn who happens to live in the United States.

Archives are full of documentation on immigrants who sang, played musical instruments, conducted musical groups, or wrote music. Some of that music will be performed this fall at First Fridays in Andersen Library on Nov. 7, in the “Caveret: Performing Arts from the Archives.�? Some immigrants–for example the Latvians who arrived in the United States as refugees in the aftermath of World War II–transformed their music into a medium that expressed their politics, their connections to their homelands, and their emerging American identities.

Vänskä’s Finnish origins certainly mattered to those attending the recent performances in New York. There he appeared as part of a Finnish-themed “Mostly Mozart�? program. Recently, he also led the Minnesota Orchestra in a program of “Finland’s Finest Pieces�? as part of FinnFest 2008.

Like many immigrants, Osmo Vänskä came to the U.S. to pursue his career and to work. Like others, too, he may or may not remain all his life in the U.S. (Americans often assume that immigrants commit permanently to life in the United States but that’s never been a requirement of those seeking green cards.) Highly skilled and well-educated foreigners may face shorter waits for visas than immigrants with more modest qualifications, but their status is otherwise little different once they are here.

So what’s going on here? Would journalists insult Vänskä by calling him an immigrant? Despite continuing paeans to the United States as a nation of immigrants, increasing numbers of Americans apparently do understand the label immigrant to be a pejorative term. Maybe that’s why so few Americans know of the large numbers of immigrants–more than one-third entering the United States–who are professional, middle-class, and extremely well-educated. They’re part of the nation of immigrants, too.

During my first year as IHRC program director in 2007-2008, I became aware of how my work expresses continuity with the partnerships and programs initiated and sustained by Donna Gabaccia, Rudi Vecoli and their predecessors in the “Minnesota School of Immigration History.�?

The IHRC’s research agenda focuses on how individuals experience migration and cultural identity across the boundaries of nations and time periods. Whether by promoting a greater understanding of large-scale immigration or by remaining vigilant yet innovative in our caretaking of historical materials entrusted to us, our work builds upon the work of others.

Donna Gabaccia has been at the helm of the IHRC for three years; our past director, Rudi Vecoli, retired after serving for nearly four decades at the IHRC; and before them, and before the IHRC, the University of Minnesota was the fertile ground in which immigration history as a field was seeded and thrived.

Our community has gone through a tremendous loss this year with the passing of Rudi Vecoli. His imprint upon the IHRC was profound, and I am reminded nearly every day of how the partnerships and programs that I carry forward often are the fruit of labors begun years ago. We welcome your remembrances of Rudi as contributions to the IHRC tribute page.

The passion that Rudi brought to the mission of preserving and creating access to ethnic materials continued the work of George Stephenson and Theodore Blegen dating from the early 20th century. It is important to note the recurring theme of the personal and the global, of the individual and large historical events, and of how ethnic self-awareness lies at the heart of working in concert across ethnic identity so that all histories may be preserved.

My outreach efforts and the IHRC’s work toward closer relations with diaspora studies centers around the world stem from the conceptual outlook of these scholars. The IHRC’s correspondence files with diverse centers and ethnic communities often go back decades, initiated by personal connections made by Rudi Vecoli, Joel Wurl, Timo Riippa, and Heather Muir, as well as our long-time staff member Halyna Myroniuk and, with “only�? seven years at the IHRC, Daniel Necas. Continuity in the midst of change, indeed.

These personal connections resulted in a long-term commitment by and trust of the IHRC, keeping the University of Minnesota’s students and scholars in contact with ethnic communities and unique historical materials.

I recently culled from IHRC correspondence files a letter from the Latvian publisher Hugo Skrastins to Director Vecoli that could have been written today, rather than three decades ago:

“Being a historian myself, I have discovered along the American countryside a tremendous amount of material showing the different nationalities and the cultural values they brought to this country…. All of this material will disappear in a decade or two if it is not documented today.�?

Each generation feels the urgency of preserving the material culture and intellectual legacies of its cultural footprint, and that continues to be as true today as in the 1970s.

At the IHRC, it is our goal to encourage more people to consider themselves historians and to become aware that all of us have a great interest in understanding the experiences of those who have come before us. As we at the IHRC continue our decades-long tradition of bringing together scholars and public communities, we stand on the shoulders of those who themselves stood on the shoulders of others.

Immigrant and refugee students face a challenging path at the University – a place that often treats their multilingual and multiculturalism as a deficit.

This summer I had a great opportunity to attend and present at the 6th International Conference on the History of Youth and Community Work. Before the conference, I hadn’t really considered the work I do as an instructor here at the University of Minnesota’s Commanding English Program “youth work,�? but this conference moved me from my usual thinking about writing and language into seeing connections to youth as an important part of teaching and working with immigrant and refugee students. The conference asked key questions, including “How can we be most helpful to immigrant and migrant youth and families as they attempt to enter society’s mainstream with an intact sense of cultural continuity?�? A project here at the University of Minnesota takes on just this issue.

My students, most of them immigrant and refugee youth, have been involved in creating history and historical records. They do this through a project called a “Life History Project�? in WRIT 1301, currently offered by PSTL in the College of Education. As part of their research and writing, they interview and document the life of elders from their own communities. The students do primary research as they interview a subject and document the elder’s life. To really understand all the forces affecting the life of the individual, they also look at other sources and conduct research that contextualizes that person’s life. In the end, students create a 15- to 25-page document preserving a person’s story for future generations. Usually the interviews are conducted in the elder’s native language, but written in English, giving future monolingual generations the chance to know about an important family and community member’s life. The writers give the story as a gift to the elder. Selected histories, with an elder’s permission, are archived at the Immigration History Research Center to be read by future researchers.

Students learn more than how to research and write in my classroom. At the History of Youth and Community Work, I had the pleasure of being accompanied by a former student, Shukri Guled. She read from her paper, the story of a Somali woman she had met on the bus. This elder had escaped from the Somali civil war and come with her family to resettle in Minnesota. Shukri interviewed her three times, focusing on her childhood, middle age and current life. Shukri reflected that the project had allowed her to realize that this woman, highly educated in Somalia, shared the same interest as her own – psychology, which was then her major.

Other students have commented that the project helped them maintain their identities. One young man commented that “as a Somali boy who feels that the identity of his people is endangered, getting advice and a historical perspective from a Somali elder has great value.�? Other students have mentioned new perspectives on intergenerational conflict, with one describing his personal change in attitude through completing the project. “When I heard of an elder, I pictured elders in the Somali community…I doubted their significance since they cannot even drive to the Health centers or talk to their own doctors, let alone [be] helping others.�? But he said the experience of researching and writing about an elder in the community provoked new understanding within him. The Commanding English class project “gave me a new perspective and helped me realize their importance.�?

Connecting academic progress with individual growth in just this way is what undergraduate education should be and do, for immigrants as well as for all students.