"We wanted something grand, something inspiring, something that said, 'Welcome to America, we're so glad you're here and even though you're waiting on hold, we value you and want to help you.'"

This is a US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) senior manager speaking to me on condition of anonymity over the telephone. He's talking about the original telephone hold music of the USCIS National Customer Service Center. They recently changed their hold music ("One of the toughest calls we’ve made at USCIS," he said) and in honor of their long-running original hold music—which is remembered fondly by many immigration attorneys and paralegals—we wanted to take a look back and commemorate.

Peruvian-American writer Daniel Alarcón, author of At Night We Walk in Circles, talks with NBC Latino about identity, writing in English and Spanish, and US patriotism. He says:

There’s something that gets lost in the immigration debate here in the United States: well, they don’t talk about how patriotic immigrants are. How much appreciation many immigrant families have for the opportunities that the United States has afforded them. So it wasn’t that we were sitting around thinking, “Oh, we’re so lucky to be here.” But there was a real patriotic strain in our family, and at least among the Peruvians that I grew up with, that was not unique.

The New York Times also profiled Alarcón and discussed how he navigates two cultures: "'I think I’m an American writer writing about Latin America, and I’m a Latin American writer who happens to write in English.'”