"There are few subjects in American life that prompt more discussion and rancor these days than immigration. In [this book], the renowned author Suketu Mehta offers a reality-based polemic that vitally clarifies the debate. Drawing on his own experience as an Indian-born teenager growing up in New York City and on years of reporting around the globe, Mehta subjects the worldwide anti-immigrant backlash to withering scrutiny. As he explains, the West...

"The acclaimed, award-winning novelist--author of The Moor's Account and The Other Americans--now gives us a bracingly personal work of nonfiction that is concerned with the experiences of "conditional citizens." What does it mean to be American? In this starkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize Finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration...

"In this timeless book, President Kennedy shows how the United States has always been enriched by the steady flow of men, women, and families to our shores. It is a reminder that America's best leaders have embraced, not feared, the diversity which makes America great." -Former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright Throughout his presidency, John F. Kennedy was passionate about the issue of immigration reform. He believed that America is a nation...

"A sweeping history of the legislative battle to reform American immigration laws that set the stage for the immigration debates roiling America today. The idea of the United States as a nation of immigrants is today so pervasive, and seems so foundational, that it can be hard to believe Americans ever thought otherwise. But a 1924 law passed by Congress instituted a system of ethnic quotas so stringent that it choked off large-scale immigration for...

"Many of us like to think of the United States as a nation of immigrants. We pride ourselves on our history of welcoming foreigners and believe this sets our nation apart from every other. But the phrase 'a nation of immigrants' only dates from the mid-twentieth century, and has served to paper over a much darker history of hatred of -- and violence against -- foreigners arriving on our shores. As the acclaimed historian Erika Lee shows in America...

"A revelatory history of the trafficking of young Asian girls that flourished in San Francisco during the first century of Chinese immigration (1848-1943) and the "safe house" on the edge of Chinatown that became a refuge for those seeking their freedom. From 1874, a house on the edge of San Francisco's Chinatown served as a gateway to freedom for thousands of enslaved and vulnerable young Chinese women and girls. Known as the Occidental Mission Home,...

Ellis Island had been an obscure little island that barely held itself above high tide. Today it stands alongside Plymouth Rock in our nation's founding mythology as the place where many of our ancestors first touched American soil. Ellis Island's heyday--from 1892 to 1924--coincided with one of the greatest mass movements of individuals the world has ever seen, with some twelve million immigrants inspected at its gates. Historian Vincent J. Cannato...

"An epic, heartbreaking, and deeply reported history of the disastrous humanitarian crisis at the southern border that tells the story of the migrants forced to risk everything and the policy makers determining their fate"--

"The United States is in the midst of its fourth major period of immigration. Today's is the largest in absolute numbers, although not as a proportion of the total population. Unlike in previous times, today's immigrants come from every inhabited continent and represent just about every country in the United Nations. As in previous periods of large-scale immigration, there is a profound ambivalence about the phenomenon among the American public. Historically,...