Harvard Professor Awarded MacArthur 'Genius' Award For Immigration Studies

It's not uncommon for hundreds, sometimes millions of people to leave their home country and end up arriving in a very hostile place.

Harvard Southeast Asian history professor Sunil Amrith has been studying migration from India to other Asian countries, and this month he won a $625,000 MacArthur 'Genius' Award for his work.

Although Amrith's research focuses on migration in Southeast Asia in the 19th century, he says there are several lessons the U.S. can learn from this period from 1850 to 1930.

Sunil Amrith, professor of Southeast Asian history at Harvard University. He tweets @sunilamrith.