Following the money: a new book looks at why people have to leave home.

TWO THINGS SET David Bacon's new book, Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008), apart from the recent spate of books on immigration. First, it is historical and global. From the Hawaiian sugar plant organizing drives of the 1930s to the 2007 miners' strike in the Sonoran Desert, Bacon chronicles the struggles and lives of Mexican, Guatemalan, Filipino, Indian and Salvadoran workers. Second, as an activist who sees the plight of the undocumented as the outcome of a global system that creates illegality by displacing people and then using their lack of legal status to criminalize them, Bacon unabashedly writes as an advocate. The result is refreshing.

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Reminding us that marginalized people can take power, Bacon also looks at the organizing tactics used by undocumented workers in the United States in a number of campaigns, exploring in particular the roles of storytelling, teatros and popular education.

Bacon observes that the current immigration debate focuses on the claim that undocumented immigration is out of control and most of the options that policymakers offer in response--increasing militarization of the border and the number of raids--are methods to suppress the flow of undocumented immigrants. Then, he takes a step back and asks two key questions: Why do immigrants actually come to the United States? And how does our policy toward undocumented residents jibe with our commitment to democracy and fair treatment?

Bacon's careful exploration of what it means to be an undocumented worker begins in Emeryville, California, with the story of picketing hotel workers. Their organizing efforts are threatened by the employer's use of "no-match" letters that the Social Security Administration sends to employers to report that a worker's name and social security number ...