Emigration & Immigration Books - Page 5

Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America)

Mae M. Ngai

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This book traces the origins of the "illegal alien" in American law and society, explaining why and how illegal migration became the central problem in U.S. immigration policy--a process that profoundly shaped ideas and practices about citizenship, race, and state authority in the twentieth century.

Mae Ngai offers a close reading of the legal regime of restriction that commenced in the 1920s--its statutory architecture, judicial genealogies, administrative enforcement, differential treatment of European and non-European migrants, and long-term effects. In well-drawn historical portraits, Ngai peoples her study with the Filipinos, Mexicans, Japanese, and Chinese who comprised, variously, illegal aliens, alien citizens, colonial subjects, and imported contract workers. She shows that immigration restriction, particularly national-origin and numerical quotas, re-mapped the nation both by creating new categories of racial difference and by emphasizing as never before the nation's contiguous land borders and their patrol. This yielded the "illegal alien," a new legal and political subject whose inclusion in the nation was a social reality but a legal impossibility--a subject without rights and excluded from citizenship. Questions of fundamental legal status created new challenges for liberal democratic society and have directly informed the politics of multiculturalism and national belonging in our time.

Ngai's analysis is based on extensive archival research, including previously unstudied records of the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Naturalization Service. Contributing to American history, legal history, and ethnic studies, Impossible Subjects is a major reconsideration of U.S. immigration in the twentieth century.

The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation

Leo R. Chavez

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Editorial Review:

From volunteers ready to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border to the hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children who have marched in support of immigrant rights, the United States has witnessed a surge of involvement in immigration activism. In The Latino Threat, Leo R. Chavez critically investigates the media stories about and recent experiences of immigrants to show how prejudices and stereotypes have been used to malign an entire immigrant population—and to define what it means to be an American.

Pundits—and the media at large—nurture and perpetuate the notion that Latinos, particularly Mexicans, are an invading force bent on reconquering land once considered their own. Through a perceived refusal to learn English and an "out of control" birthrate, many say that Latinos are destroying the American way of life. But Chavez questions these assumptions and offers facts to counter the myth that Latinos are a threat to the security and prosperity of our nation.

His breakdown of the "Latino threat" contests this myth's basic tenets, challenging such well-known authors as Samuel Huntington, Pat Buchanan, and Peter Brimelow. Chavez concludes that citizenship is not just about legal definitions, but about participation in society. Deeply resonant in today's atmosphere of exclusion, Chavez's insights offer an alternative and optimistic view of the vitality and future of our country.

Coming to America (Second Edition): A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life

Roger Daniels

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The sine qua non for understanding immigration to America 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

Roger Daniels second edition of "Coming to America" is masterful. There is no other book, I believe, that is more authoritative by way of explaining immigration to the United States during the final third of the twentieth century. And for those interested in exploring the story extending back to the European settlement of North America since the seventeenth century, "Coming to America" is also the place to begin. Daniels narrates this history, in all of its pain, complexity, and brilliance, with a thorough-going understanding of its twists and turns. This book merits its place on the shelf of often-consulted staples in every American's home library.

Must have if you do a lot of genealogy! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This is an outstanding book that every genealogical society should own, as well as serious genealogist. The book provides information in both an overview format as well as ethnic group specific information. The price is right - add it to your collection of materials - you will not be sorry.

Editorial Review:

With a timely new chapter on immigration in the current age of globalization, a new Preface, and new appendixes with the most recent statistics, this revised edition is an engrossing study of immigration to the United States from the colonial era to the present.

Making Americans, Remaking America: Immigration And Immigrant Policy (Dilemmas in American Politics)

Louis Desipio, Rodolfo De La Garza

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Editorial Review:

Immigration policy has defined the United States as few other nations on earth. The central political dilemma is how we define who we should admit as a resident and who may become a citizen. These investigations lead us to the questions of how many immigrants we should admit, what traits these immigrants should have, and what standards we should set for naturalization. The nation must also determine what the rights and privileges of noncitizens should be.The authors present a historical overview of U.S. immigration, followed by an examination of these questions and the legislative and legal debates waged over immigration and settlement policies today. The authors also discuss the relationship between minorities and immigrants. They find that the public policy needs of immigrants are often confused with those of U.S.-born minorities. The book closes with the question: If the nation understood the kinds of demands that immigrants legitimately make, would we change the contract between the state and the immigrant?

Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs

David R. Roediger

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Editorial Review:

At the vanguard of the study of race and labor in American history, David R. Roediger is the author of the now-classic The Wages of Whiteness, a study of racism in the development of a white working class in nineteenth-century America. In Working Toward Whiteness, he continues that history into the twentieth century. He recounts how American ethnic groups considered white today-including Jewish-, Italian-, and Polish-Americans-once occupied a confused racial status in their new country. They eventually became part of white America thanks to the nascent labor movement, New Deal reforms, and a rise in home-buying. From ethnic slurs to racially restrictive covenants--the racist real estate agreements that ensured all-white neighborhoods--Roediger explores the murky realities of race in twentieth-century America. A masterful history by an award-winning writer, Working Toward Whiteness charts the strange transformation of these new immigrants into the "white ethnics" of America today.

Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey

Bruce Clark

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, nearly two million citizens in Turkey and Greece were expelled from homelands. The Lausanne treaty resulted in the deportation of Orthodox Christians from Turkey to Greece and of Muslims from Greece to Turkey. The transfer was hailed as a solution to the problem of minorities who could not coexist. Both governments saw the exchange as a chance to create societies of a single culture. The opinions and feelings of those uprooted from their native soil were never solicited.

In an evocative book, Bruce Clark draws on new archival research in Turkey and Greece as well as interviews with surviving participants to examine this unprecedented exercise in ethnic engineering. He examines how the exchange was negotiated and how people on both sides came to terms with new lands and identities.

Politically, the population exchange achieved its planners' goals, but the enormous human suffering left shattered legacies. It colored relations between Turkey and Greece, and has been invoked as a solution by advocates of ethnic separation from the Balkans to South Asia to the Middle East. This thoughtful book is a timely reminder of the effects of grand policy on ordinary people and of the difficulties for modern nations in contested regions where people still identify strongly with their ethnic or religious community.

(20060917)

Gringos in Paradise: An American Couple Builds Their Retirement Dream House in a Seaside Village in Mexico

Barry Golson

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Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A Year in Provence meets Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House in this lively and entertaining account of a couple's year building their dream house in Mexico.

In 2004, Barry Golson wrote an award-winning article for AARP magazine about Mexican hot spots for retirees longing for a lifestyle they couldn't afford in the United States. A year later, he and his wife Thia were taking part in the growing trend of retiring abroad. They sold their Manhattan apartment, packed up their SUV, and moved to one of those idyllic hot spots, the surfing and fishing village of Sayulita on Mexico's Pacific coast.

With humor and charm, Golson details the year he and his wife spent settling into their new life and planning and building their dream home. Sayulita -- population 1,500, not including stray dogs or pelicans -- is a never-dull mixture of traditional Mexican customs and new, gringo-influenced change. Before long, the Golsons had been absorbed into the rhythms and routines of village life: they adopted a pair of iguanas named Iggy Pop and Iggy Mom, got sick and got cured by a doctor who charged them sixteen dollars a visit, made lasting friends with Mexicans and fellow expatriates, and discovered the skill and artistry of local craftsmen.

But their daily lives were mostly dedicated to the difficult yet satisfying process of building their house. It took them almost six months to begin building -- nothing is simple (or speedy) in Mexico -- and incredibly, they completed construction in another six. They engaged a Mexican architect, builder, and landscape designer who not only built their home but also changed their lives; encountered uproariously odd bureaucracy; and ultimately experienced a lifetime's worth of education about the challenges and advantages of living in Mexico.

The Golsons lived (and are still living) the dream of many -- not only of going off to a tropical paradise but also of building something beautiful, becoming a part of a new world, making lasting friends, and transforming their lives. As much about family and friendship as about house-building, Gringos in Paradise is an immensely readable and illuminating book about finding a personal paradise and making it a home.

From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine

Joan Peters

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Total reviews: 70 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This monumental and fascinating book, the product of seven years of original research, will forever change the terms of the debate about the conflicting claims of the Arabs and the Jews in the Middle East.

The weight of the comprehensive evidence found and brilliantly analyzed by historian and journalist Joan Peters answers many crucial questions, among them: Why are the Arab refugees from Israel seen in a different light from all the other, far more numerous peoples who were displaced after World War II? Why, indeed, are they seen differently from the Jewish refugees who were forced, in 1948 and after, to leave the Arab countries to find a haven in Israel? Who, in fact, are the Arabs who were living within the borders of present-day Israel, and where did they come from?

Joan Peters's highly readable and moving development of the answers to these and related questions will appear startling, even to those on both sides of the argument who have considered themselves to be in command of the facts. On the basis of a definitive weight of hitherto unexamined population and other historical data, much of it buried in untouched archives, Peters demonstrates that Jews did not displace Arabs in Palestine-just the reverse: Arabs displaced Jews; that a hidden but major Arab migration and immigration took place into areas settled by Jews in pre-Israel Palestine; that a substantial number of the Arab refugees called Palestinians in reality had foreign roots; that for every Arab refugee who left Israel in 1948, there was a Jewish refugee who fled or was expelled from his Arab birthplace at the same time-today's much discussed Sephardic majority in Israel is in fact composed mainly of these Arab-born Jewish refugees or their offspring; that Britain, the Mandatory power, winked at and even encouraged Arab immigration into Palestine between the two World Wars; that by disguising the Arab immigrants as "indigenous native Palestinian Arabs," the British justified their restrictions on Jewish immigration and settlement, dooming masses of European Jews to destruction in the Nazi camps.

Joan Peters also unfolds a historical record to shatter the widely held belief that Arabs and Jews harmoniously coexisted for centuries in the Arab world-the fact is that the Jews, along with other non-Muslims, were second-class citizens, oppressed in the Muslim world for more than a millennium. And this continuing prejudicial tradition of hostility underlies, as well, every Arab action toward the state of Israel.

In addition to her pioneering archival researches, Joan Peters has frequently traveled in the Middle East, conducting numerous interviews and gathering the personal observations of the first-rate reporter she is. The result is a book that has already had a major impact on policy discussions of one of the most vital and intractable of the world's problems, shrouded until now in a fog of misinformation and ignorance.

Distributed exclusively by Jonathan David Publishers.

Do They Hear You When You Cry?

Fauziya Kassindja

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Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A true story of persecution, friendship, and ultimate triumph, Do They Hear You When You Cry chronicles the struggles of two extraordinary women: Fauziya Kassindja, who fled her African homeland to escape female genital mutilation only to be locked up in American prisons for sixteen months; and Layli Miller Bashir, a driven young law student who fought for Fauziya's freedom.

Fauziya Kassindja's harrowing story begins in Togo, Africa, where she enjoyed a sheltered childhood, shielded by her progressive father from the tribal practice of polygamy and genital mutilation. But when her father died in 1993, Fauziya's life changed dramatically. At age seventeen Fauziya was forced to marry a man she barely knew who already had three wives, and prepare for the tribal ritual of female genital mutilation--a practice that is performed without painkillers or antibiotics. But hours before the ritual was to take place, Fauziya's sister helped her escape to Germany, and from there she traveled to the United States seeking asylum--and freedom. Instead, she was stripped, shackled, and locked up in various INS detention facilities for sixteen months.

Enter Layli Miller Bashir, a driven twenty-three-year-old law student who took on Fauziya's case. When the two women met, Layli found an emotionally broken, emaciated girl with whom she forged an extraordinary friendship. Putting her heart and soul into Fauziya's case, Layli enlisted help from the American University International Human Rights Clinic. The clinic's acting director, Karen Musalo, an expert in refugee law, devoted her own considerable efforts to the case, and assembled a team to fight with her on Fauziya's behalf. Ultimately, in a landmark decision that has given hope to many seeking asylum on the grounds of gender-based persecution, Fauziya was granted asylum on June 13, 1996.

Here, for the first time, is Fauziya's dramatic personal story, told in her own words, vividly detailing her life as a young woman in Togo and her nightmarish day-to-day existence in U.S. prisons. It is a story of faith and freedom, courage and inspiration--one that you will not soon forget.

Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders With America's Illegal Migrants

Ted Conover

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Coyotes: a borderlands journey by a journalist & now professor 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This story rivets the reader to the writer's acceptance (guarded) by poor Hispanics as he seeks to be an Imbed with them when they cross the border at a couple of different sites. There was the interception by Mexican border police and their payoff; then life beyond the border on the way to nearby farms serviced by Coyotes (travel guides and job finders) and potato fields of Idaho (serviced by the same dependable families year after year).
It gives many glimpses of that struggle to pass on a better life to the kids.

The writer may influence many who would become investigative reporters.

Unique observations of life as an undocumented worker 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is one of a handful of books recently written where the author joins a group of undocumented workers crossing the border in attempt to gain employment in the United States. The interesting twist here is that the author, though apparently fluent in Spanish, is white. He also attempts to work in the fields himself, as opposed to simply observing and writing about the work of others. This leads to a number of unique experiences and observations on race relations that are rarely discussed in this context. It also allows the reader to better understand what life is like for many undocumented workers in this country. Kudos to Ted Conover for making a sincere effort to better understand the lives of those that would not otherwise be recorded.