This book is a work in progress. You can buy a copy, right now, in PDF format, or, if you like, as a paperback. See the collected chapters so far, FREE online at If You’d Asked Me… For details, visit our home page or send a request through our Contact form.

To follow the progress online, click on the little orange icon beside the P&S Press feed, over there in the right-hand sidebar. ⇒ ⇒ ⇒

SECTION 1, Continued:

God Is Great, Beer Is Good, and People Are Crazy

15.

Is life in Mexico bad enough to justify immigrating to the US illegally?

I’d like to hear from Mexican citizens, illegal immigrants, and other viewpoints. I think Americans discount their luck for being born here.

Yes.

I recently indexed a book of short memoirs by second-generation descendants of Mexican immigrant farm workers. Some of the authors describe the conditions their parents were fleeing.

What they came to, in the fields of California, were working and living conditions that those of us who are middle- and working-class Americans can’t even conceive . . . but they were better than what people had to deal with in rural Mexico. And they had hope that their children could build better lives—something they did not have in Mexico.

The book, recently published through the University of Arizona Press, is titled Claiming Home, Shaping Community. It is an amazing thing to read. You should get yourself a copy . . . it’ll change your point of view on the immigration issue.