The Undocumented Americans

The final section of the book largely ruminates on age and the passage of time. Through the many stories of immigrant experiences covered in the book, the author has documented patterns in the progression of immigration policy and public sentiment. At the time of the book’s publication, immigrant communities—particularly undocumented ones—were in an especially pronounced period of peril, anticipating ICE raids, deportations, and hate crimes at increased rates. The author proves, however, that even with the intensified conditions of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, the undocumented have long suffered in this country, and the toll is most visible in the aged bodies of day laborers, broken families that could not withstand the stress, and a general sentiment among immigrants that as they neared the end of their life, they wanted to return home to their country of origin and die there instead of in the US.

The author provided information about her family steadily throughout the book, but they play a more prominent role in the ending. All along, the author had seen her own family’s concerns and struggles reflected in the research she conducted with other immigrant families. At the end of the book, the author sees her family bear some of the ultimate tolls of their living conditions. Her father changes, recedes from the family, and eventually leaves it. The author recognizes that he is old and has sacrificed so much to provide for the family, and she says, “It was his turn to be happy” away from them (172). Similarly, she hopes her mother will be free to find happiness outside of a bad marriage and among others who might share her experiences.

In addition to parents, children are very important in the final section of the book. In the Cleveland chapter, the author meets with kids of fathers who have been deported or who are hiding in sanctuary to avoid deportation. It strikes her how very young and impressionable the children are, not yet with a full understanding of the hardships they will face or the histories that have shaped their struggles. “Jesus Christ,” she reflects. “These are children” (120). She also grows close to the daughters of a man in sanctuary, becoming like a member of their family herself. She says, though, that she doesn’t want to have kids herself because she “already [has] too many people to take care of” (146). Indeed, caring for parents becomes a burden for immigrant children in more ways than it can be for non-immigrant children.

Many of the elderly immigrants she meets express their expectation that their children will care for them. Some even voice that it is wholly necessary to have kids just for that purpose. The author asks one woman “if the pressure of that might be hard on the children” (161). The woman concedes that it might be, “But that’s the tradition” (161). In her own life, the author takes that tradition very seriously, but it is yet another difficulty for immigrant families, and one that requires both money and time that are hard to secure as an undocumented person (or as a member of an immigrant family in general). The author does not express any hopefulness that these difficult patterns will change. The book is not a collection of proposed policy; it is a snapshot of the many undocumented immigrants living in the United States, what they face, and how they survive.