Nearly every night I pass this lot off a main thoroughfare in the heart of Denver. From here, Autobuses los Paisanos -- ''the buses of the people'' -- ferry Colorado's immigrants to dreams and dramas on the other side of the border. They are mothers off to visit deported children, single men in cowboy hats bound for weddings and funerals, grandparents moving home after years of work in factories and fields in the United States.

Sometimes I stop to chat. And I've come to see this place as a window into a deeply American feature: The immigrant's split soul.
