The other Americans

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Challenging prevailing criticisms of immigrants, Wall Street Journal reporter Millman celebrates immigrant contributions with his look at "new business strategies and new business synergies brought on by immigration." He credits immigrantshaving at least two wage earners in a householdwith rehabilitating large sections of American cities abandoned during the 1970s. In New York, he notes, low-paid immigrant labor made a 24-hour city, from all-night grocers to take-out Chinese restaurants. Particularly absorbing is Millman's anatomization of the motel industry, improved and then dominated by Indians with no previous experience in this business. He traverses the country for ethnic festivals and explores the umbilical connection between the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais and Framingham, Mass., his hometown, with its undocumented immigrants who practice an underground cash economy that contributes little to the local economy though allows the immigrants to draw on such services as schools. Yet while the author makes a strong case for inviting immigrants to come here and work, he downplays a huge question: whether they will assimilate culturally. Nonetheless, his reporting is thought-provoking and memorable. Author tour. (July)