‘A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves’

October 5, 2019 — Two new books shed light and provide insight into the fraught debate on immigration and global migration. The timing could not be more apt, as the polarizing politics of our time continues to exacerbate the migration crisis all across the world.

Of course, economic and social mobility for themselves and their families is the biggest motivator for poor migrants who make tremendous sacrifices when they leave their home countries. The first book takes a deep look at three generations of one such family from the Philippines.

“A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves,” by Jason DeParle, chronicles the Portagana family’s journey out of poverty over a period of 30 years, starting in the Manila slums where he first met them. The book helps readers understand 21st-century global migration (as opposed to the movement of people escaping conflict and war), and we see this family rise to become members of a new global middle class. Matriarch Tita Portagana Comodas’s daughter, Rosalie, fulfills her dream to be one of 45 million immigrants in the United States when she lands a job as a nurse at a Texas hospital. Rosalie, a migrant mother long separated from her husband and three children, reunites with them and rebuilds her relationship with them as she starts her new life in Galveston, Texas. Several family members made similar sacrifices to climb the income ladder, some finding work in the Middle East—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates—and in Singapore.

On the PBS NewsHour, DeParle talks about his comprehensive book and how he first met Tita. A reporter for the New York Times, DeParle separates the polarizing politics of immigration from the success of families like the Portaganas. He notes that the economy of the Philippines benefits from migrant labor as remittances are three times the country’s GDP.

This 1869 quote by Frederick Douglass sets the tone for “A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves,” and the book helps us understand one family’s burning desire to leave Manila in search of new homes.

“Home has its charms, and native land has its charms, but hunger, oppression and destitution will dissolve these charms and send men in search of new countries and new homes.”

The second book, “This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto,” by Suketu Mehta, analyzes the migrant crisis and anti-immigrant backlash in light of global populism. Mehta argues that the fear of immigrants is what’s destroying the West, explaining why global migration is growing as civil strife and climate change force people to leave their native land.

Mehta, who was born in Calcutta and lives in New York City, asserts that migrants have a right to settle in rich countries that have colonized and ruined their homelands. Immigrants bring vibrancy, diversity and passion to their new communities, writes Mehta, which help countries thrive.

“I am not calling for open borders,” says Mehta. “I am calling for open hearts.”

Mehta will be giving a lecture on his book at The New York Society Library on Tuesday, November 19, 2019. You may register for tickets here.