Dr. Perez,

I always find your articles insightful and intellectually stimulating. Most of the time, I learn from your articles, and as natural as it may be, I find sometimes that the point of the article may be too dull to make an impression on the reader and to effect the kind of change and consciousness raising that I believe your writing has on its readership. My hope is that you will already know that I write to you with great respect and admiration for keeping the issues at the forefront. My comments below are meant to be constructive so that the messages you send can be more effective still. In the spirit of the Academy, where ideas are shared freely in hopes of improving important ideas of social justice, I submit these comments. Respecfully, Dr. Dean Papadopoulos.

I'm trying to understand the author here - when the economy tanks and affects everyone, Latinos should not switch their concern from others to their own welfare - without feeling guilty about it? Is this the intended effect of the author via his implied message. The addditional questions on the survey should read: 1) How important is immigration to you? 2) How important is immigration to the country? 3) Other than participating in this survey, can you list what you can or are willing to do to improve immigration in this country? Looking at the correlation or lack of correlation between questions 1 and 2 would be fun or at most, insightful.

Lastly, I'm not sure the author (which is to say, I don't believe the author) supported his assertion: Immigration should be extremely important to Latinos. He merely makes a statement and implied in the statement is that Latinos - hard-working, as the author says, "average Americans", should feel guilty about the immigration issue when they're trying to hold onto or find jobs, pay mortgages or renegotiate them or even still, look for new housing. What?? Did I miss something or am I hungry and cranky? Dean