Songfacts®:

• Indigo Girls take on immigration issues on this song, which was written by their alto singer Amy Ray. She got the idea after wandering around Georgia with a friend. "We went into town that day," Amy said in our interview. "It was this little neighborhood where you're hidden away from everything. It's a Hispanic neighborhood, and it was a summer day and there was music playing and it was very provocative. I was like a little kid: I was wanting to discover what was going on in this neighborhood that no one knows about. And then it made me think about immigration, because I live in an area where there's definitely been a lot of roadblocks and sting operations to pick up undocumented workers. I think Georgia's got a terrible perspective on immigration, so it became about that."
• The "shame on you" refrain had a different meaning when Amy Ray started writing the song. At first, it was about how she needed to move into a different house and didn't feel like it that day. When she took the walk through the Hispanic neighborhood, the song switched meaning.