Those Damned Immigrants

The election of Barack Obama prompted people around the world to herald the dawning of a new, post-racial 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 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 that Latino/a immigrants have confronted for generations in America. And these attacks are accepted by a substantial number of American citizens and elected officials. Quick to cast all Latino/a immigrants as illegal, opponents have place undocumented workers at the centre of their anti-immigrant movement, targeting them as being responsible for increasing crime rates, a plummeting economy, and an erosion of traditional American values and culture. In Those Damned Immigrants, Ediberto Roman takes on critics of Latina/o immigration, using 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. Ediberto Roman is Professor of Law and Director of Citizenship and Immigration Initiatives at Florida International University. Michael A. Olivas is the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Houston Law Center and Director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at UH.