To sin against hope

Alfredo Gutierrez’s father, a US citizen, was deported to Mexico from his Arizona hometown—the mining town where Alfredo grew up. This occurred during a wave of anti-immigrant hysteria stoked by the Great Depression, but as Gutierrez makes clear, in a book that is both a personal chronicle and a thought-provoking history, the war on Mexican immigrants has rarely abated. Barack Obama now presides over an immigration policy every inch the equal of Herbert Hoover’s in its harshness. In this engrossing memoir and essay, he dissects the racism that has deformed a century of border policy—leading to a record number of deportations during the Obama presidency—and he analyzes the timidity of today’s immigrant advocacy organizations. To ‘Sin Against Hope’ brings to light the problems that have prevented the US from honoring the contributions and aspirations of its immigrants. It is a call to remember history and act for the future.