“Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists,” Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, in an address to the Daughters of the American Revolution. He’s right—but that doesn’t make the immigrant experience any easier to grasp. If your family members came to America a few generations ago, their journey has been made vague by time. The struggles of present-day immigrants, meanwhile, are often obscured by difference.
This week, we bring you stories that make immigration vivid and concrete. Jill Lepore takes us back to Jamestown, reëxamining the story of America’s first immigrants. Edwidge Danticat, Chang-Rae Lee, and Akhil Sharma write about the experiences of immigrants from Haiti, South Korea, and India, respectively. Jeffrey Toobin explores the battle over immigration reform and meets immigrant families caught in legal limbo. And William Finnegan profiles the Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, who has become a powerful voice for Latino immigrants. (Last August, Ramos was escorted out of a press conference held by Donald Trump, who told him, “Go back to Univision.”) Collectively, these pieces show how the immigrant experience is changing—and how it remains a constant source of renewal and vitality in American life.
—David Remnick
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