Writer and civil rights lawyer Alia Malek tells the story of modern America through the eyes of old-school Arab-Americans and new-wave immigrants.

Hospitals, uninsured illegal immigrants, and the law. We’ll look at a jury’s controversial verdict in Florida and the precedent it sets.

A true story of gangs, human smuggling, and the American dream in New York’s Chinatown. We’ll talk with the author of “The Snakehead.”

Novelist Joseph O’Neill’s award-winning novel, “Netherland,” has been on the president’s nightstand. We talk with O’Neill, and with writer James McBride, about its themes of American identity.

A huge immigration raid on an Iowa meatpacking plant in May sent shockwaves all the way to Washington. Now come stark revelations on conditions in that plant.

One in five children in America today is a child of immigrants. And those numbers are only rising.
Yet as the immigration debate rages, the real lives of those children are too often invisible. Transplanted to a new country, they struggle to master a new language — and a new culture. Some will thrive in school. [...]