North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States

This single-volume book provides students, educators, and politicians with an update to the classic Carey McWilliams work North From Mexico. It provides up-to-date information on the Chicano experience and the emergent social dynamics in the United States as a result of Mexican immigration.

Carey McWilliam's North From Mexico, first published in 1948, is a classic survey of Chicano history. Now fully updated by Alma M. García to cover the period from 1990 to the present, McWilliams's quintessential book explores all aspects of Chicano/a experiences in the United States, including employment, family, immigration policy, language issues, and other cultural, political, and social issues. The volume builds on the landmark work and also provides relevant up-to-date content to the 1990 edition revised by Matt S. Meier, which added coverage of the key period in Chicano history from the postwar period through to the late 1980s.

As the largest group of immigrants in the United States, representing more than a quarter of foreign-born individuals in the United States, Mexican immigrants have had and will continue to have a tremendous impact on the culture and society of the United States as a whole. This freshly updated edition of North from Mexico addresses the changing demographic trends within Mexican immigrant communities and their implications for the country; analyzes key immigration policies such as the Immigration Act of 1990 and California's Proposition 187, with specific emphasis on the political mobilization that has developed within Mexican American immigrant communities; and describes the development of immigration reform as well as community organizations and electoral politics.

The book contains new chapters that examine recent trends in Mexican immigration to the United States and identify the impact on politics and society of Mexican immigrants and later generations of U.S.-born Mexican Americans. The appendices provide readers and researchers with current immigration figures and information regarding today's socieconomic conditions for Mexican Americans.

• Provides readers with an in-depth understanding of the changing demographics of the Mexican immigrant population in the United States

• Analyzes the major trends in U.S. immigration, including anti-immigrant policies, issues facing the unauthorized immigrant population, and the development of the immigrant rights movement

• Examines the complex interrelationship between Mexican immigrants and later generations of U.S.-born Mexican Americans and the U.S. political system

• Covers important recent topics such as anti-immigration movements, language debates like Prop 227 and other anti-immigrant legislation that address the education of Spanish speakers, cultural developments and art of Mexican Americans, and the changing economic outlook for Mexican immigrants

• Offers the latest information on the complex interrelationship between Mexican immigrants and later generations of U.S.-born Mexican Americans