The United States was founded by a population of immigrants, mostly citizens of England who left for various reasons–some to escape poverty, some to acquire land in the Americas, and some to escape religious persecution, ultimately displacing the native peoples who were here upon the immigrants’ arrival.
The concern over immigration/illegal immigration and how we handle it has been an issue throughout our history, weighing especially heavy on us of late. I thought we might examine a few of Smiley Library’s newer books on the subject to deepen our knowledge of immigration and its consequences, rather than just relying on the news sound bites that bombard us.
Let’s start with “The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers,” by Zeke Hernandez, a professor at the Wharton School of business at the University of Pennsylvania. In his twenty years of pioneering research on immigration from a primarily economic perspective, he has won multiple prizes and scholar awards. Evidence-based, comprehensive, and nonpartisan, Hernandez sets out the facts and addresses concerns about loss of jobs, crime, and undocumented immigrants, as well as those regarding the border, taxes, and assimilation.
“Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: the United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis,” recognized as an exceptional treatise by too many publications to name here, was a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2024. Author Jonathan Blitzer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, details in long-form journalism, forensic, “unprecedented” reporting on the stories of Central Americans whose lives have been devastated by chronic political conflict and violence with those of American activists, government officials, and the politicians responsible for the country’s tangled immigration policy.
Bestseller “Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear into Pride, Power, and Real Change” was written by Cristina Jiménez who grew up in Queens, New York from the age of thirteen as an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador. Living in fear of deportation and ashamed of being undocumented, she was able to access higher education when the law allowed. There she found her purpose as a social justice organizer and became the co-founder and former executive director of United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country. Jiménez invites us to acknowledge the America that never was and to imagine the America that could be when everyday people come together, build power, and fight for change.
Additional excellent titles on the subject include: “Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America;” and “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling,” winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Non-Fiction, and A TIME 10 Best Nonfiction Book of 2024.