“An impassioned and well-reported case for change…. Chomsky ably lays out just how brutal life can be for the undocumented.”
—New York Times Sunday Book Review
“Undocumented adds smart, new, and provocative scholarship to the immigration debate.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“From the first page to the last, Undocumented is to immigrant rights movement what We Charge Genocide was to the African American movement—a dossier that sets aside quibbles about whether immigrants contribute to the US economy or not, whether immigrants speak English or not and gives flesh to the slogan, ‘Immigrant rights are human rights.’ A clear-headed and smart book that locates the struggles of immigrants squarely in the struggles for human rights. Nothing less is to be accommodated, and much more is to be imagined.”
—Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South
“Professional in her scholarship, Chomsky has written a book that will be relevant to those who do not share her position as well as to those who do.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Dares to call the [immigration] problem ‘manufactured,’ one that could be solved with the stroke of a pen.”
—Ms. Magazine
Contents
PREFACE ix
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1
Where Did Illegality Come From? 23
CHAPTER 2
Choosing to Be Undocumented 40
CHAPTER 3
Becoming Illegal 71
CHAPTER 4
What Part of “Illegal” Do You Understand? 87
CHAPTER 5
Working (Part 1) 113
CHAPTER 6
Working (Part 2) 130
CHAPTER 7
Children and Families 152
CHAPTER 8
Solutions 181
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 209
NOTES 210
INDEX 238
