Aviva Chomsky is a professor and the coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State College. She has previously been a professor at Bates College and a faculty research associate at Harvard University, specializing in the history of Latin America and the Caribbean. The eldest daughter of linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky, she has a longstanding interest in Latin American cultures and histories which she traces to the year she spent working for the United Farm Workers union in 1976-77. Her six books and many articles explore, among other questions, the history of immigration, labor, globalization, and social mobilization in Latin America and in the United States.

Her latest book “They Take Our Jobs and 20 Other Myths about Immigration”, dismantles common assumptions and beliefs underlying statements like “I’m not against immigration, only illegal immigration” and challenges misinformation in clear, straightforward prose. Claims that immigrants take Americans’ jobs, argues Aviva, are a drain on the American economy, contribute to poverty and inequality, and to a host of social ills. She adds: Race, ethnicity, and gender were historically used as reasons to exclude portions of the population from access to rights. She is currently working on a brief, analytical college-level text on the Cuban Revolution, and on a larger research project that intertwines a global history of coal with a microhistory of northern Colombia.