General Information
Sponsor: Carolyn Benton Cockefair Chair
Date: May 14, 2024
Time: 6:00pm Reception, 6:30pm Program Begins
Location: New Venue - UMKC Student Union, Room 401, 5100 Cherry St., Kansas City, MO 64110, (UMKC Campus).
Admission Fee: Free and open to the public
Parking Information: Cherry Street Parking Garage – Levels 5 and 6
Event Contact: Matt McLain
About the Topic:
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.
About the Author:
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.
