Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis - Hardcover

by Jonathan Blitzer (Author)A National Bestseller An epic, heartbreaking, and deeply reported history of the disastrous humanitarian crisis at the southern border told through the lives of the migrants forced to risk everything and the policymakers who determine their fate, by New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer “The new book every American needs to read before they vote . . . The masterstroke accomplishment of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is the way that Blitzer weaves the gripping stories of refugees with the 45-year history of policymaking in Washington, where elected officials and key bureaucrats—some craven and nakedly political, others well-meaning—repeatedly fought the wrong wars and worried about the wrong things to spin the tangled web of policies that caused a humanitarian nightmare.” - Philadelphia Inquirer “What an incredibly thorough documentation of the causes of the immigration crisis, the discussions that have been going on through multiple administrations.” - Jon Stewart, The Daily Show “What we’re seeing today on the southern border and in cities including New York, where more than 100,000 migrants arrived in the past year—are reverberations of a long, violent history that implicates the United States for its meddling in Central America. This is the story that Jonathan Blitzer painstakingly documents in his new book, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here . . . Blitzer shows all the ways our immigration system is in shambles. A series of misguided actions and their consequences brought us to this point. This book begins the reckoning we desperately need.” - The Atlantic Everyone who makes the journey faces an impossible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. An overwhelming share of them come from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, although many migrants come from farther away. Some are fleeing persecution, others crime or hunger. Very often it will not be their first attempt to cross. They may have already been deported from the United States, but it remains their only hope for safety and prosperity. Their homes have become uninhabitable. They will take their chances. This vast and unremitting crisis did not spring up overnight. Indeed, as Blitzer dramatizes with forensic, unprecedented reporting, it is the result of decades of misguided policy and sweeping corruption. Brilliantly 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 tragically tangled immigration policy, Blitzer reveals the full, layered picture for the first time. Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is an odyssey of struggle and resilience. With astonishing nuance and detail, Blitzer tells an epic story about the people whose lives ebb and flow across the border, and in doing so, he delves into the heart of American life itself. This vital and remarkable story has shaped the nation's turbulent politics and culture in countless ways--and will almost certainly determine its future. Author Biography 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. He lives with his family in New York City.