**Exposes the false narratives at the heart of Americans' fear of
Latino/a immigration
**
The election of Barack Obama prompted people around the world to herald
the dawning of a new, postracial era in America. Yet a scant one month
after Obama's election, Jose Oswaldo Sucuzhanay, a 31-year old
Ecuadorian immigrant,
was ambushed by a group of white men as he walked arm and arm with his
brother. Yelling anti-Latino slurs, the men beat Sucuzhanay into a coma.
He died 5 days later.
The incident is one of countless attacks--ranging from physical violence
to raids on homes and workplaces to verbal abuse--that Latino/a
immigrants have confronted for generations in America. And these
attacks--physical and otherwise--are accepted by a substantial number of
American citizens and elected officials, who are virulently opposed to
immigrant groups crossing the Mexican border. Quick to cast all Latino/a
immigrants as illegal, opponents have placed undocumented workers at the
center of their anti-immigrant movement, and as such, many different
types of native Spanish-speakers in this country (legal, illegal,
citizen, guest), have been targeted as being responsible for increasing
crime rates, a plummeting economy, and an erosion of traditional
American values and culture.
In Those Damned Immigrants, Ediberto Román takes on critics of
Latina/o immigration, drawing on empirical evidence to refute charges of
links between immigration and crime, economic downfall, and a weakening
of Anglo culture. Román utilizes government statistics, economic data,
historical records, and social science research to provide a
counter-narrative to what he argues is a largely one-sided public
discourse on Latino/a immigration.
