Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio *****

The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio “is for everybody who wants to step away from the buzzwords in immigration, the talking heads, the kids in graduation caps and gowns, and read about the people underground. Not heroes. Randoms. People. Characters.” Aside from the author (Harvard undergraduate, Yale graduate student), there are no high academic achievers in this book. Alternately, there are no people taking jobs from American citizens or driving up healthcare costs. As the New York Times writes, this book “profiles undocumented immigrants across the United States: the trauma of those recruited to clean up ground zero; the loneliness of day laborers in Staten Island; the challenges of those facing the water crisis in Flint, Mich.; and the role of herbalists and healers in Miami.” If you want to know the real story of undocumented immigrants in the United States, this is the book to read.

The author documents the importance of (undocumented) day laborers. Hurricane Sandy “caused $62 billion in damages in the United States, killed 125 people, and left 7.5 million people without power. [New York City] had not prepared for that kind of devastation and was slow to provide aid. Day laborers were among the first people on the ground to help. ‘In times of crisis, day laborers are often the first responders,’ one labor organizer told me.”

The same was true following September 11^th. “The first responders were firemen and EMT workers. The second responders were undocumented immigrants.”

While the undocumented were to first to line up for hazardous work, they were the last to receive support.” The undocumented community in Flint has been affected by the water crisis in disturbingly specific ways. Flyers announcing toxic levels of lead in the Flint waterways were published entirely in English, and when canvassers went door-to-door to tell residents to stop drinking tap water, undocumented people did not open their doors out of fear that the people knocking were immigration authorities. When President Obama declared a state of emergency, the National Guard was deployed to Flint, making undocumented people even less likely to open the door.”

This book has “the stories of people who work as day laborers, housekeepers, construction workers, dog walkers, deliverymen,” who obey the law, pay their taxes, and live in fear.

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