Dr. Benjamin C. Montoya is an Associate Professor of History and chairs the Department of History and Regional Studies at Schreiner University. He studies the history of U.S. foreign relations and immigration. His first book, Risking Immeasurable Harm: Immigration Restriction and U.S.-Mexican Diplomatic Relations, 1924 to 1932, (University of Nebraska Press, 2020), explains how the prospect of immigration restriction affected diplomatic relations between the United States and Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s. Dr. Montoya’s second book, A Diplomatic History of US Immigration during the 20th Century: Policy, Law, and National Identity (Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2024), offers a series of case studies on different immigrant groups to demonstrate how U.S. immigration restriction affected U.S. foreign relations from the early twentieth century to the early twenty-first century. He has published many articles and book reviews, and was a co-editor of and contributor to Beyond 1917: The United States and the Global Legacies of the Great War (Oxford University Press, 2017). In May 2024, Dr. Montoya received the Margaret Hosler Award for Excellence in Teaching, the most-distinguished of faculty awards given annually at Schreiner University. And in Summer 2025, he was awarded the Nancy and Cecil Atkission Professorship, a three-year institutional research grant that will support his next research project: an analysis of James Eastland’s (D-MS) influence on U.S. immigration policy between the 1950s and 1970s. He lives in Kerrville, Texas, with his wife and two children.