Missing from the national conversation are voices of pro-immigration reformers and civil rights leaders, who can speak on behalf of those who have no voice.

That experience of losing home, longing for home, that yearning for meaning and rootedness and identity in a floating world, it's what often makes an immigrant story into an American story .

In the war on terrorism, the immigrant is often the scapegoat.

Isn't the first story told in the West about the Fall? Adam and Eve were immigrants too from somewhere, a lost Eden, a paradise lost. We all now are so mobile, so nomadic .

I thought, "Wow, English is like magic." It not only shattered my voice, it changed me physiologically. I believed this for months ... There's magic in the language. I never fell out of the enchantment.

It's unfortunate that the country of immigrants has turned its back on immigrants. The atmosphere after 9/11 is toxic.

I am hopeful that the pendulum swings toward seeing immigrants in favorable terms once more.