Episode Details

The American Dream is often portrayed as the hook that pulls people to the United States. What is usually left out of the story is the hell many flee, sometimes a hell fed by the very country in which they seek refuge. The story of U.S. involvement in Central America is a classic example of wars inflicted on people by U.S. financed repressive regimes and later by gangs grown in the U.S. and deported wholesale to vulnerable nations. In this episode, a scholar sheds light on the invention of the “illegal alien,” its use and manipulation for the past 140 years (and counting) to exclude and exploit people of color and more recent notions of who and who is not deserving of legal admission into the United States. Guest: Mae Ngai