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

Drawing on his extensive contributions to The New Yorker, Blitzer explores the traumas of displaced Central American migrants as they bravely confront the opaque and rapidly evolving U.S. immigration system. Having gained access to many key Washington policymakers, he is especially convincing when describing the zigs and zags of U.S. immigration policies as the bureaucracy struggles to manage a growing influx of asylum seekers while weighing solutions to the crisis that are both realistic and humane. The task of assessing a migrant’s “credible fear of persecution” if repatriated is especially fraught. Blitzer’s finely crafted, multifaceted book illustrates well the dilemmas of underfunded and understaffed U.S. government agencies. He also deplores the brutalities and the hypocrisies of the local elites and their backers in Washington. His sympathies lie with immigrant advocates and the progressive left; as a professional journalist rather than a policy analyst, however, he does not offer definitive answers or recommendations.