This week, after the Senate's defeat of President Bush's bill for immigration reform, Elizabeth Pliego's poignant interstitial should be "required listening."

To be rammed into a van with a dozen others, driven north over the border by a "coyote," settled with relatives in Cicero, and have to work packaging food twelve hours a day at six dollars an hour; to return from work every day so back-achingly exhausted that your eyes are "the color of blood"; to be separated from your small children whom you send a couple of dollars a day -- this is what it's like to be "undocumented" in Illinois.

The situation is hardly different in California or New York. Pliego's letter to her Aunt Ofelia could be the template for thousands of letters written by Chicana nieces all over this land.

To understand what we mean when we talk about immigration, listen to this piece. It may not change your opinions, but it will wrench your heart.