Active listening.
Active listening is the ability to focus completely on a speaker, understand their message, comprehend the information and respond thoughtfully. Unlike passive listening, which is the act of hearing a speaker without retaining their message, this highly valued interpersonal communication skill ensures you’re able to engage and later recall specific details without needing information repeated.
It's been a while since I've read the book and I don't really a lot of the context, so just from this passage I would say it says he notices nice houses and other people's wealth and maybe envies them a little bit. (although you don't get that explicitly from this passage.)
U.S. immigration law is very complex, and there is much confusion as to how it works. The Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA), the body of law governing current immigration policy, provides for an annual worldwide limit of 675,000 permanent immigrants, with certain exceptions for close family members.
Many people have different views of life my Opinion is that we were created and put here for a certain purpose like inventing a time machine, advancing technology, making the world a better place etc.