This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto by Suketu Mehta

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By: Suketu Mehta

Review:

Suketu Mehta, a first-generation immigrant's open manifesto on what it means to be an immigrant in this country and some other countries as well. This book backs up the personal narrative from those seeking to cross the borders with statistics about them, making his arguments much more convincing both on moral grounds and on statistical grounds. The first part of this book hit me hard. Many times it triggered me due to how close I was personally to these migrants journeys. Thankfully the second part of the book was a lot easier for me to digest due to the more global ideas on migrants. For example, he covers much about colonialism, war, global warming, and various factors that aren't covered by the Trump administration.

The last part of the book, however, gave some impressive stats on why immigration is a good thing for many first-world nations. Notability that the more immigrants there are (whether legal or illegal), the better the crime rates become (lower crime rates). There is an increase in social security benefits for the older generations since most of the new migrants are younger influx.

The hardest part that one ought to think about is the cost of the first immigrant communities. Because once the migrants are set in, the following generations provide financial, social, and educational improvements to the culture around it.

Overall, a fantastic statistically filled book on what the cost of immigration, whether legal or illegal is, that covers the full map of immigration issues.

Stats:

  • Reading Date: 12/9/19 - 12/9/19

  • Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Notes:

  • "It’s astonishing that the multiculturalism is lower Manhattan had some of the lowest crime rates since 1950s due to the amount of immigrants there."

  • "Among the various themes I've learned from this book so far, on why migration exist in many third world countries is, global warming. Migrants can't eat because the lands are dry, where the only source of jobs is the militias. Also with 1.5 raise in global temperature, there's a 15 percent lost of corn in India."