Unsung America
Описание книги
Immigration Stories–A Fight for Justice and Freedom If you liked The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson, Dear Americ a by Jose Antonio Vargas, or American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures by America Ferrara, you’ll love Unsung America . Positive and heroic stories . Far too often, immigrants are demonized and scapegoated, when they should be celebrated as heroes and revolutionaries. This book strings together both triumphant and painful tales of immigrants who blazed trails and broke barriers in the fight for fundamental human rights. Unsung Heroes . These are ordinary people who have used their own stories on the fight for citizenship to illustrate their triumphs and trials as immigrants in a new land. Each uses a different strategy and tactics; what works for one does not work for another. They all have one thing in common, however—a desire for racial and social justice. Unsung America will change the way you view immigrants and refugees. Prerna Lal, who penned Unsung America , is a naturalized United States citizen, born and raised in the Fiji Islands with roots in the San Francisco Bay Area. A clinical law professor, Lal is a frequent writer on immigration, racial justice, sexual orientation, and how these forces intersect. She is a graduate of The George Washington University Law School, and works as an immigration attorney. In this celebratory book, you will discover: Powerful theories of social change, and how what seems radical in one era can be normalized in the nextHow the fight for citizenship is interconnected and interrelated to other struggles such as the civil rights movement and the LGBT movementStories about ordinary people doing extraordinary things and how you, too, can be a force for good in the world
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This book is dedicated to all migrants, emigrants, and immigrants, to the deported and departed, to those who have left their homes in search of a new one, and faced numerous challenges in order to make a better life for themselves and their loved ones. Thank you for making our world a better place.
for Freedom
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Even though the Fourteenth Amendment made citizens of all persons born in the United States, Congress still limited citizenship acquired through naturalization to white persons and, through an amendment, added those with African origins.32 In 1917, Congress specifically banned all Asian persons from immigrating to the United States. Asian Americans were caught in limbo and condemned to second-class status, even those here legally.
Since the process of naturalization at that time was a judicial function, it was up to individual judges to decide who was a white person, or a person of African nativity or African descent. This led to an interesting patchwork of court decisions whereby Iranians and Armenians were able to win naturalization, but Asian Indians and Japanese individuals were deemed to be non-white.33 Since Asians were excluded until the 1940s, courts heard many cases involving their naturalization. In nearly all of these cases, the applicants claimed whiteness.
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