Immigration Books

The previous review is bizzarre and has nothing to do with what the book is actually about -- the Italian American experience and the myths that have been generated about them. The book operates on both an intellectual and pop culture level and is immensly readable- either from front to back or by chapter. You may never see such pop culture icons as 'The Sopranos' and 'The Godfather' the same again!

Okinawan Diaspora, in a collection of illuminating essays, recounts lost and found Okinawan treasure: from ancient kingdom relics to a people's identity subsumed and redefined to their history largely under-known. It depicts the Okinawans persevering through the fall of their ancient kingdom, Japanese colonialism, the hardships of emigration, World War II internment, and U.S. military occupation of their homeland. Each contributor enlightens the reader regarding Okinawan perseverance. One uses oral history to describe, for example, how World War II internees made traditional instruments out of tin cans in the camps, creatively living their heritage with limited means in oppressive environments. Another focuses on the endurance of Okinawan culture and resistance through the eisaa dance. From the positive ramifications of Okinawan (Uchinanchu) spirit to the atrocity of World War II internees welcomed to America with insecticide, the Okinawan experience finds a riveting portrayal in this book.

As Okinawa held a unique place in the Asian Pacific as "the bridge to all nations," Nakasone and the book's contributors provide a bridge between the Okinawan experience and the disparate reader-the scholar, Okinawans scattered throughout the world seeking connection to their heritage, as well as any person interested in a fascinating account of an oppressed, resilient people. Okinawan Diaspora serves as a model of the fluidity of national identity and of how transnational forces affect the diasporic experience. It also emphasizes the importance of maintaining one's cultural identity through pilgrimage. Nakasone, in the final essay, takes the reader along with him and family elders to Okinawa's sacred sites. The reader finishes the book with a strong sense that Okinawans, with as much as they have lost throughout history, continue to maintain the ancient Uchinanchu spirit of helping others, living as a cooperative community, and sparking the greatness of their lost kingdom through remembrance of their diasporic story.

An excellent monograph by an outstanding scholar

Superb book!!


I feel very honored that Mr. Tancredo is my Congressman (6th Congressional District of Colorado).


He is right on the money about illegal immigration.


TANCREDO FOR PRESIDENT!!!

The subtitle, "A Dramatic Personal Story of 'Illegal' Immigration to Israel," totally describes the tone of this incredible book. Ehud Avriel, his girlfriend (later to become his wife), and his family were Zionists from way back, and were among the sadly small group of people with enough foresight to realise what was happening in Europe. They left Austria for Israel in the late Thirties, before it was too late. While he was still in Austria, Mr. Avriel was instrumental in helping many other people to leave occupied Europe for Israel, and after he himself was evacuated, he was shortly transferred to netural Turkey, where he spent much of the war involved in the same pursuit. Although there were some tragedies and bitter disappointments, he did help to get ships and travel visas for countless people to travel through Romania, Bulgaria, Jugoslavija, and Greece on their way to Turkey and ultimately Israel. He wished he could have been at his kibbutz near Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) with his new wife, particularly after his brief sojourn back in Israel when he became a father for the first time, but duty called him and he had no choice but to continue slaving overtime to save as many people as possible. Among the many fascinating people he worked with during the war included Yoel Brand, whose mission to save the Jews of Hungary before the Nazis devoured them was tragically unfulfilled (except for a relatively small number of people, among them his relatives, who were allowed to travel to safety). Brand himself was also treated practically like a war criminal for the mission he had gone on and the travel route he had taken. There was no way he or many of the people in this circle could win, thanks to both the British, who were controlling Israel, and the Nazis.

After the war, Mr. Avriel continued to work on getting people into Israel. The majority of Shoah survivors longed to go to Israel, the only nation on earth that wanted them, the only place where they felt they would belong, but the British continued to brandish their White Paper and to strictly curtail immigration, coupled with the indescribable actions of the infamous Ernest Bevin, Britain's Foreign Minister at the time. Although Avriel did manage to forge visas and to secure ships for many people, many more had their ships pirated by the British when they got within sighting distance of Haifa. These people, who had already been through so much, were once again sent to camps, even if the British-run camps on Cyprus didn't have gas chambers and Kremchies. They were physically abused and treated like evil people and horrible criminals for daring to want to go to their homeland. World opinion turned against the British, however, as stories about hunger strikes on these ships and how these refugees were being treated gained worldwide attention, and finally they rescinded the White Paper and let the UN vote on Israeli statehood. The book ends with a chapter about how Avriel managed to get a large shipment of arms and ammunition through the blockade, and with the declaration of Israeli Independence.

A bestseller in Israel and winner of Israel's most prestigious literary awards, this book tells of the exodus of 250 000 Iraqi Jews from Iraq to Israel between 1947 and 1952, with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.
The author tells of his own very pivotal role in this biggest airlift in history.
The world's oldest Jewish community in exile, Iraqi Jews began to suffer increased persecution during the 1930s under Nazi-inspired Arab Fascism. The teaching of Hebrew was prohibited and Jewish cultural programmes abolished.
Then came the Farhud of June 1-2,1941, sparked by the incitement of Iraq's pro-Nazi regime, which had just been removed by the British.
Jewish homes and shops were torched, about 180 Jews were murdered and 240 wounded.
Jews were snatched off the street or dragged out of busses and cars and brutally beaten or stabbed to death.
Violent mobs burst into homes and buchered the Jewish families inside. Not even infants were spared.
Pregnant Jewish women were slit open and left to die in agony.
The pogrom left the Jewish community of Iraq traumatized and terrified.
The author traces the blocking of Jews, by the British, from entering Palestine during holocaust, and the anti-Israel riots that erupted across the Middle East when the State of Israel was proclaimed.
The author himself witnessed anti-Jewish riots in Beirut.
As the fledgling Jewish State fought to survive, anti-Jewish persecution worsened in Iraq.
The balance of events leading to the Jewish exodus from Iraq is traced.
The exodus was partly forced by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, who hoped that an infusion of hundreds of thousands of homeless and destitute Jews would cripple the tiny fledgling Jewish State.

The British did nothing to help the Jews of Iraq, as they did nothing to help the Jews of Palestine, as they wanted Arab friendship and support.
It is ironic to read in these days of Iran's threat to Israel's exitance, how Iran then under the enlightened reign of the benevolent Shah Reza Pahlavi helped thousands of Jewsd to escape from Iran.

The author describes the secret preparations and espionage behind the airlift, including a cast of characters such as secret Jerwish agents, British officers, American soldiers of forune, Iraqi pogromchiks and Iranian officials.

The airlift was a heroic chapter, among many, of the Jewish State's efforts to save Jews from murder and persecution.

I was in Ethiopia working with some of the Israeli groups when this book was written. It is an exciting read - very accurate as far as i can see, and beautifully written. Worth a look even after all this time.

The skeleton of this publication could be positioned under the Labour Relations, Organizing "minorities", Immigrants penetration and Job market in the U.S.

Even though the main body of this textbook was made based on empirical research based it is enjoyable and readable. The most of the contributors of the title give descriptions of the situation under the social science conceptualisation; nevertheless they denude in awareness manner the human situation of this "minority" population.

Matters as the consideration of the immigrants as a group who should be trait in a cultural sensitive way, under my point of view is worthwhile. The topic is product in it -self of a sociological (with the effects and repercussion in the economic, diplomatic and legal facets) problem in the whole world. Migration it is an issues reflex of the actual anthropoid circumstances. It urges responses from governments, trade unions, humanitarian organizations, community groups and civil society in general terms.

Organizing Immigrants is an advantageous and worthwhile textbook that presents a series of case studies (successful and unsuccessful campaign, traditional and innovative tactics) about the impact in social and economic context in California. The chapters in the book provide a sensitive, perceptive and scientific account of the backgrounds: the problems and the prospect involved in the task of foreign-born workers organizing.

The volume describes and analyses three important victories in organizing Immigrants:
1. Justice for Janitors (JfJ).
2. Drywaller's campaign.
3. The American Racing Employment. (ARE)

In California, immigrants make up a quarter of the population and hold many of the manual jobs that were once key strongholds of organized labour. The new immigrants, in a big percentage, had been arriving to the very bottom in the job market and in the society.
The book inquiries critically Issues as comparison between the receptiveness to unionisation in native-born and foreign-born; the preponderances in undocumented immigrants job market sector; the influence of the political, cultural, social, economic and ethnic background and conditions impact the likelihood to organizing.

Under the frame of reference of these matters, the social scientific contributors to this book analyse in nine chapters the task involving Immigrants organizing and the impact on the future of organized labour.

With valuable empirical data support the authors show that immigrants are less inclined than natives to hold union jobs. Parts of the reasons are that unions have poor participation with the social issues that difference Immigrants from Natives.

The situation for immigrants are not radically different in comparison of discriminates minority groups. For this reason campaigns from unions respect on with Immigrants may demand cultural sensitive. Innovative organizing tactics depend on new levels of participation, organizing and commitment. It supposes Education to the members about importance of organizing, and it requires a change in the old mentality.

The Authors were stressed in ethical standards reporting their interest in the research in favour of organizing immigrants and to evidence its impacts in the cultural, political, social, economic, legal and ethnic scopes.

I consider the experiences elucidated in the book could be to provide to the academia (postgraduate and researchers), organized labour sector (trade unions, employee associations) and as well to groups in defence for the minorities rights data and background for the struggle of organizing the bad known as "unorganizable".

From 1853 to about 1929, more than 200,000 children and several thousand adults were sent west on "orphan trains," leaving crowded urban areas on the East Coast behind. Holt's book focuses on the placing out system--from its creation to its demise--instituted by the Children's Aid Society of New York. Estimates of the number of destitute children living in the streets of New York in 1853 ranged from 10,000 to more than 30,000. Charles Loring Brace, who became secretary of The Children's Aid Society believed there was no better place for vagrant or outcast children than "the farmer's home." Placing out removed destitute children from the streets of New York City, placing them with families in the west. The system was intended to provide Christian homes and families for orphaned or abandoned children while fulfilling the demand for workers on farms in America's heartland. The author also discusses other charitable organizations that imitated Children's Aid Society initiatives. She uses oral histories, institutional records, and newspaper accounts to bring the orphan train era to life in this balanced account, highlighting both the positive and negative aspects of the placing out system. Her discussion of social and economic structures of the 19th century help readers view the topic in context. This is a "must read" for anyone conducting further research in the topic, or readers who are simply interested in this lost chapter of American history.

Bryan Tomasovich grew up in Wisconsin and now lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, where he teaches at Antioch University in Seattle. Ouisconsin: The Dead In Our Clouds is a poetic investigation by Tomasovich into the public history of his home state as revealed in the private lives of his people. His verse is fused with lyrical memories of his family's struggles to become American as they lived and worked in the upper Midwest. It's not often that you see a volume of poetry enhanced with a Bibliography of recommended readings by other writers. This is a collection of poems that grace the mind, stir the soul, and reveal small windows of insight into the human condition that is universal to us all. Skunk Frank Episodes: Skunk Frank's fishing hole on the Flambeau River is marked/by an alert pine draft/when standing in the ruins of the old Indian feller's shack./Go make yourselves at home/our Grandpa Frank'd say...log frame/tin billboard walls, tar paper/tumbled down and mossy/as the river but colder/home-canned jars, melted fork/bottles plenty, granite chimney shards/but not a feather.//Friends like this...our grandpa Frank is a real puzzle.