From the late 19th century to the present, immigration policy in the United States has been defined by exclusion: rules and laws designed to exclude certain people entirely, restrict others to particular roles in the U.S. economy, and maintain further limits on others. Despite this, many people have come to this country and thrived, building communities and enriching others.
In this talk, Sarah Yore-VanOosterhout, founder and managing attorney at Lighthouse Immigrant Advocates, and her partner, Aaron Yore-VanOosterhout, a historian of Mexico and researcher at Grand Valley State University’s Johnson Center for Philanthropy, will discuss the migration of people from Mexico and other Latin American countries into West Michigan, placing this movement in an international context. Through this talk and the broader LAUP exhibit, the Holland Museum is attempting to make visible a group of people that have long officially been rendered invisible, through the elevation instead of white people of European descent and the exclusion of all others.
Watch the recorded program now!
This program was live on Thursday, December 2, 2021
7:00–8:30 p.m.
Free, virtual adult program.
This is a United for Progress: The LAUP Story Exhibition Program
and Holland Museum Cultural Lens program
More information about LAUP. Follow LAUP on Facebook.
Speaker Biographies
Sarah Yore-VanOosterhout
Sarah Yore-VanOosterhout (she/her) completed her undergraduate studies at Calvin College in 2008. Sarah attended the Michigan State University College of Law, devoting herself to the study of immigration and public interest law. Following law school, Sarah, her husband, and young daughter moved to Mexico for a year where her husband completed his doctoral research.
In the fall of 2013, Sarah started work at the Diocese of Grand Rapids, Immigration Legal Services, serving as one of two full-time attorneys. She tackled a wide variety of family-based immigration cases and grew accustomed to handling a high-volume caseload while still offering high-quality legal services. Sarah left the Diocese of Grand Rapids in December 2014 and soon discovered for-profit legal services were not what Holland immigrants needed. And so, she pioneered Lighthouse Immigrant Advocates. In addition to her work at Lighthouse, Sarah is a mother to two young daughters.
Aaron Yore-VanOosterhout
Aaron Yore-VanOosterhout (he/him) has worked as a research manager at the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University since 2017. In this role, he designs and conducts a variety of community-based research projects on topics ranging from homelessness to postsecondary education in prison. Aaron has a doctorate in history from Michigan State University, with a focus on race/ethnicity and anti-state rebellion in 19th-century Mexico. Before joining the Johnson Center, he taught Latin American history at a number of colleges and universities, most recently at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
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