Immigration in America, Now

by Levitt, Peggy; Ashbrook, Tom

Publisher: WBUR, On Point with Tom Ashbrook

Published Date: May 2007

Publication Type: Interview

Listen to the broadcast

Field of Interest: Global Issues

“For a nation of immigrants, America has always had a complicated relationship with immigration. Some came in splendor, some came in chains, and everything in between.

In the half century since Ellis Island closed, immigration and the immigrant experience have changed massively, again. Do we still want to absorb? Do they still want to assimilate? Are we open to a permanent underclass? In a globalized world, do immigrants ever really leave the old country?

This hour On Point: the realities of the new American immigrant experience.”

Show's guests:

• Jim Pethokoukis, senior writer for U.S. News & World Report
• Ruben Rumbaut, sociology professor at University of California Irvine and author of Immigrant America: A Portrait
• Hector Tobar, Mexico City bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times and author of Translation Nation
• Peggy Levitt, sociology professor at Wellesley College and author of God Needs No Passport

Peggy Levitt is a Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Associate; Faculty Co-Director, Transnational Studies Initiative and Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Wellesley College. Her new book, God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape, will be published by The New Press in June.