The stories behind the immigration headlines

Beautiful reporting, tragic stories

“No one ever wants to migrate. The whole thing is a fight not to become invisible.” These are the words of an immigrant who lost an arm and a leg trying to enter the promised land.

Making the invisible suffering of migrants visible is this book’s ultimate triumph. Blitzer does a masterful job at capturing the harrowing stories of individual migrants making their way from Central America to the US’s southern border, setting them against a backdrop of clear and compelling historical explainers that bring the region and its serial political, economic, and humanitarian crises to life.

Focusing mostly on the ‘Northern Triangle’ — Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — Blitzer covers multiple decades, regions, and dilemmas, ultimately revealing just how much the US, with its covert involvement in these corrupt regimes, is responsible for the homegrown crises that led to the long lines of desperate migrants at its own border.

This is the kind of book and these are the kind of stories we need to bring more compassion to the conversation around ‘illegal’ immigrants. Though it is by no means a simple issue, there are many who would benefit from an understanding that ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ entry is a meaningless distinction when one is fleeing for one’s life or economic future. Asylum laws simply cannot cope with the rapidly changing and expanding nature of global humanitarian crises. It would be beneficial, too, if we could start to see the immigration crisis not as an isolated dilemma but as a symptom of a much deeper problem — one that the US could play a key role in improving. Yet something must be done, because right across the Global North, immigration — or the perception of unchecked immigration — is fuelling deeply concerning Right-wing populist movements.

The US would look nothing like it does today without the contributions of immigrants from all places. At the same time, many of these places these people left behind remain problems. No matter what Trump or subsequent administrations do about the southern border, no amount of domestic policymaking will solve the true problem — especially as economic and climate-related catastrophes continue to unravel. Though much has changed over the years, Central America is still a precarious place to make a life, and as long as human beings retain the capacity for hope, I believe we will still see people making the journey in a last-ditch attempt at building a better life.