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Webinar: Rich Venezia / Records Not Revenue: Genealogy and Public Policy

16 Aug 2021
2:00pm - 3:30pm EDT

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In November 2019, U. S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) proposed a fee hike to historical documents held by their Genealogy Program. Records that once were free could now cost up to $625 to obtain. With quick thinking, an ad-hoc group of genealogists and records access advocates came together in a matter of days to create a campaign which garnered national media attention and Congressional intervention. Hear what this lecturer learned as the leader of this campaign about public policy, how proposed rules like this are published every day, and what we as a community can do about it.

About the Presenter: Rich Venezia lives in Pennsylvania and specializes in twentieth-century immigration research. He researches frequently at the National Archives and elsewhere in record sets related to twentieth-century immigrants, and lectures nationally on these record sets. He taught a weeklong course on 20th-century immigrants at SLIG 2019, and has reworked that course for GRIP 2021. His lecture on USCIS record sets is his most popular lecture, and he recently led the popular #RecordsNotRevenue campaign in the fight against USCIS’ proposed fee hikes to their Genealogy Program. He served on Genealogy Roadshow’s research team for two seasons and spoke at TEDx Pittsburgh 2017.

16 Aug 2021
2:00pm - 3:30pm EDT

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