Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, many from farther away. Some are fleeing persecution, others crime or hunger. Very often it will not be their first attempt to cross. But their homes have become uninhabitable - they will take their chances.
In his book, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here, Jonathan Blitzer argues the immigration crisis is the result of decades of misguided policy and sweeping corruption. Weaving the stories of Central Americans whose lives have been devastated by chronic political conflict and violence with those of American activists, government officials, and the politicians responsible for the country’s tangled immigration policy, Blitzer reveals a full and layered picture of the humanitarian crisis at the U.S. border.
Jonathan Blitzer is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He has won a National Award for Education Reporting as well as an Edward R. Murrow Award, and was a 2021 Emerson Fellow at New America. Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is his first book.