This article examines qualitative data from a two family case study in New South Wales. Both families are from South America and have recently moved to Australia. This study demonstrates that an understanding of the ways that the families are becoming literate in Australia necessitates moving beyond linguistic analyses of the changes that are occurring. The changes that are addressed constitute a politics of immigration, whereby the internal hopes and desires of the family make up an affective plane that transforms language learning. Such writing exemplifies the use of Deleuzian theory in the analysis of the literacy learning of the families, and shows how this rests on notions of the will to power, affect and the multiple nature of the self. The paper will use Masny's (2006) multiple literacies theory (MLT) to reconcile the politics of becoming involved with the immigration of the families and variant modes of expression. (Contains 2 figures and 2 notes.)