What is the author's perspective in the nonfiction book, The Undocumented Americans?

The work is not written from a journalistic viewpoint. Although Villavicencio took notes during the interviews and met with the immigrants on numerous occasions as a journalist would, the completed project is not written from an objective viewpoint. Where journalists would report facts, such as quotes, personal appearance or note public policy and leave the reader to decipher feelings, Villavicencio is emotionally involved in the stories of the people she writes about. It is clear she finds some public policies and human behavior repugnant, and she does not hold back on her thoughts and feelings about issues. Her writing intention is clear at the end of the Introduction when she dedicates it to young immigrants and children of immigrants, “this book will give you permission to be free. This book will give you permission to be free. This book will move you to be punk, when you need to be punk; y hermanxs, it’s time to fuck some shit up” (xvii). Clearly, Villavicencio’s view of the status quo in the United States, that of the immigrant consistently being taken advantage of, is in need of intense change—a change where one breaks the mold, not try to reshape it in order for it to look like everyone is fitting into it.

Removing herself from objective journalistic practices allows Villavicencio’s personality, wit, and keen observations of events and humans to infuse the writing. When embarking on the project, she remarks, “I didn't want my first book to be a rueful tale about being a sickly Victorian orphan with tuberculosis who didn't have a Social Security number, which is what all the agents wanted” (xvi). Her perspective, told in first person, was to create a humanistic view of the immigrant who is often made into the “sickly Victorian orphan” by circumstances and frameworks that exist in the United States. She looks at society in the United States and the hierarchical mistreatment of those in poverty and newly arrived to the country and calls it as she views it: a moral tragedy that is constantly perpetuated.