What We're Reading - The Snakehead
Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 2:13 PM in RT recommends... 
Source: www.patrickraddenkeefe.com
“There are roughly 200 million migrants in the world today, some 30-40 million of whom are undocumented. This transnational global underclass with a population larger than Canada’s is on the move…Seventy-five percent of all the world’s migrants end up in only 12 percent of the countries.” – Patrick Radden Keefe, The Snakehead
It's been awhile since I've read a book in just a couple sittings - but after picking up The Snakehead at a bookstore this past Sunday I just couldn't put it down!
In this non-fiction work, author Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles the business of human smuggling in the United States - focusing on one such multi-million dollar operation run during the 1980s and 1990s in New York's Chinatown by a small middle-aged woman known as Sister Ping.
This true account of Sister Ping's business and the underground human smuggling economy as a whole reads like a suspenseful crime novel, but there's a lot more to the book than an intricate plot filled with shady characters, piles of cash, and intrigue. Keefe expertly weaves in the significance of the changes in immigration and asylum policy that have occurred in the United States throughout the past few decades, and he highlights the effects these policies have had upon the lives of individuals seeking to start new lives in new countries.
Most of all, Keefe paints a vivid portrait of the lengths to which so many people have gone in order to start their lives anew, and he brings to light the very real issues that exist within systems of immigration in this country and around the world.
If you’re looking for some light (well, maybe not light, more like entertaining yet educational) holiday reading, you might want to check out the book!
Sandy, PR and Development Associate/AmeriCorps VISTA