Fresh Blood

By Sanford J. Ungar

Book Overview

Drawing on richly textured interviews conducted from one end of the country to the other, veteran journalist Sanford J. Ungar documents the real-life struggles and triumphs of America's newest immigrants and assesses their contributions. He finds that the self-chosen who arrive every day, most of them legally, still enrich our national character and experience and make invaluable political, economic, social, and even gastronomic contributions. Ungar takes us inside immigrant communities - the Koreans in Los Angeles, the Poles in Chicago, the Cubans in Miami, the Ethiopians in Washington - and shows how our melting pot is becoming a mosaic in which ethnic groups proudly maintain their identities and yet add to the common good. He also introduces us to remarkable individuals - an Indian hotel keeper in Pensacola, a Vietnamese samaritan in rural Ohio, a Syrian traditionalist in Houston, a Haitian community organizer in Boston - all grappling with what it means to become an American today. Here, too, are glimpses inside the little-known worlds of the undocumented Irish, competing to win visas in the federal lottery, and of the tiny community of Iranian Jewish immigrants from Mashad, fighting to preserve their uniqueness from the perceived threat of assimilation. Ranging the country's southern frontier, the author goes on night duty with Border Patrol agents in Texas and California, crosses from Tijuana with Mexicans trying to evade the law, and visits a sanctuary for illegal immigrants in Brownsville. He explores immigration crises on both coasts and examines the new anti-immigrant mood sweeping America, finally concluding that California's Proposition 187 is as un-American a law as any wehave today.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684808609
• ISBN13: 9780684808604
• Release Date: October 1995
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Passionate defense of immigration.

Ungar focuses on the human face of immigration in this highly readable but highly slanted survey. His accounts of the experiences of the new arrivals are illuminating, and occasionally heartrending, but his unfair loading of language becomes tiresome and undermines his position. Opponents of unlimited immigration are repeatedly described as "angry"; they "sneer", exhibit "tirades" or even a "frenzy" of "vulgar...patter", while those who support Ungar's views engage in "philosophical musings" or "meekly protest". The prospect of large sections of America becoming extensions of the Third World doesn't seem to bother the author, who seems to feel that border crossings cannot and should not be controlled, and "the number officially and legally admitted should more closely approximate the number who actually come each year". He recommends that American border activities concentrate on drug interdiction and public health measures, but it is unclear to this reviewer how those measures could be implemented in the chaos of an undefended border. (The "score" rating is an ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)