Synopses & Reviews
Every year the American Dream inspires hundreds of thousands of people to risk their savings—and their lives—to enter the United States in search of a better life. Increasingly, instead of finding their dream, many encounter a nightmare—a country whose culture and legal system aggressively target and prosecute them.
In Targeted, journalist Deepa Fernandes seamlessly weaves together history, political analysis, and first-person narratives of those caught in the grips of the increasingly Kafkaesque US Homeland Security system: immigrants, non-citizens and undocumented workers. Deepa—herself an immigrant well-acquainted with US immigration procedures—takes the reader on a harrowing journey inside the new American immigrant experience, a journey marked by militarized border zones, racist profiling, criminalization, and detention.
Fernandes argues that since 9/11 the Bush administration has been carrying out a series of systematic changes to decades-old immigration policy that simultaneously constitute a roll back of immigrant rights and a boon for a growing “Immigration Industrial Complex.” She also documents the bullet-to-ballot strategy of white supremacist elements that have successfully infiltrated and influenced the writing of the country’s immigration legislation.
Deepa Fernandes is a radio journalist for Pacifica Radio whose award-winning work has aired on the BBC World Service, and National Public Radio. Her writing has appeared in the Village Voice, In These Times and the New York Amsterdam News. Targeted, her first book, is the result of four years of research collecting narratives from immigrants as well as human rights groups and lawyers who are challenging the Bush administrations policies.
Synopsis
The new immigrant experience of waking from the American dream to fortress America.
Synopsis
America has always portrayed itself as a country of immigrants, welcoming each year the millions seeking a new home or refuge in this land of plenty. Increasingly, instead of finding their dream, many encounter a nightmare—a country whose culture and legal system aggressively target and prosecute them.
In Targeted, journalist Deepa Fernandes seamlessly weaves together history, political analysis, and first-person narratives of those caught in the grips of the increasingly Kafkaesque U.S. Homeland Security system. She documents how in post-9/11 America immigrants have come to be deemed a national security threat.
Fernandes—herself an immigrant well-acquainted with U.S. immigration procedures—takes the reader on a harrowing journey inside the new American immigrant experience, a journey marked by militarized border zones, racist profiling, criminalization, detention and deportation. She argues that since 9/11, the Bush administration has been carrying out a series of systematic changes to decades-old immigration policy that constitute a roll back of immigrant rights and a boon for businesses who are helping to enforce the crackdown on immigrants, creating a growing "Immigration Industrial Complex." She also documents the bullet-to-ballot strategy of white supremacist elements that influence our new immigration legislation.
About the Author
Deepa Fernandes is an young, award-winning radio and print journalist who has reported from around the globe for the BBC News, NPR, Australia Broadcasting Corporation, ABC News, the Village Voice and anothers. She is host of the nationally broadcast program Free Speech Radio News. Historian and activist Howard Zinn's visionary telling of our history is widely considered one of the most important and influential of our era. In A People's History of the United States, A Young People's History of the United States, Voices of a People's History of the United States, and, in Spanish, La otra historia de los Estados Unidos, Zinn affirms the power of the people to influence the course of events. Zinn's other books include the newly updated The Zinn Reader, Terrorism and War with Anthony Arnove, the autobiographical You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, and the play Marx in Soho.