Immigration and the American Backlash

By: John Tirman / Narrated By: Jim Sartor

Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins

Since when have human rights and dignity been left or right issues?

As I’ve said before: I’m a rather just left-of-center kinda person. The older I get, the more I tend to move to the right. So at first, I thought I’d be titling this review: A left-of-center gal listens to a left-wing book. But the more I listened to Immigration and the American Backlash, the angrier I became because really! Why is granting other human beings their right to have safe, productive lives with a little bit of dignity a left side of the aisle issue?

And perhaps you’ll feel a bit angry also. It could go either way. This audiobook definitely proposes that Mexicans and Central Americans have a right to a decent life (which might anger a few), and that, while in the country, they have a right to keep some of their culture as part of their identity as individuals. It also proposes that Mexican American Studies should be an integral part of studies to both introduce others to their cultures and to instill a sense of pride and identity to those studying such subjects. Tirman says that people with low self-esteem aren’t as productive and tend to act negatively due to low self-worth.

Does that make you angry? Actually, it started making sense to me.

The book also goes on to shed light on how the ways the U.S. has intervened politically and economically in other countries has disrupted their economies, their social structures, their political structures. Our demand for cheaper goods (cheap labor and production costs and exploitation of resources), along with our demand for drugs, has caused many to flee their homes, not in search of the American dream, but simply as a way to live safely and with the possibility of food, shelter, and with a chance for their children. When they get here, they aren’t taking high-caliber jobs, they’re down to subsistence living. And they’re relieved to have at least that much.

Does that make you angry?

But the book goes further. It starts talking about the history of our nation as being that of groups desperately struggling for rights. And I was continually reminded of Ben Sasse’s Them which I’d recently listened to and reviewed. It’s of white America feeling victimized and dumped on and misunderstood, all the while enacting divisive laws and demanding absolute assimilation in the name of returning to times when community meant: Only those who live here already.

And that’s where I started getting really angry. This country is a nation of immigrants, and our history is one of attacking the influx of the day, even though America’s indigenous population or the Mexico which once owned the Southern/Southwestern part of the United States probably felt the same. What? Do we need wars just to maintain our rights to have some dignity, to lead lives free of violence, free to feed our children?

Jim Sartor does an adequate job with narration. He trips over words every now and then in his enthusiasm, and mispronounces a few here and there, but at least he delivers an animated performance. I found nothing in his performance which made me want to doze off.

Immigration and the American Backlash will make you think, will make you angry, no matter what side of the aisle you think you’re coming from. Definitely a good book. The only part that distressed me really, however, was the end. Tirman happily says that, while draconian measures are being put in place (indeed thrived under Obama), some places and groups are standing up to the government, setting up sanctuary cities, taking care of the families of those rounded up during raids, etc. But the book was published before what’s happening now. Namely, the government striking back at sanctuary cities, groups that are trying to help.

I was emotionally exhausted by the end of the book.

…heavy sigh…

I received this as a free audiobook in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.