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

by Jonathan Blitzer

democratic governments across the world fail to address the situation, it will continue to fuel the rise of populist authoritarianism.

A long history of poor decisions

Throughout the twentieth century, American leaders touted the US as a nation of immigrants, but for most of that time the country never had a formal refugee or asylum policy written in law.

Too difficult?

“Basically everyone in the world would be better off in the US.”

Maybe. Maybe not.

Reagan’s advisers were so divided on immigration policy that they could agree only that the president should avoid the subject altogether. It was a “no win issue,” one

“the third rail of American politics.”

Immigration tapped into a rich vein of American outrage, and Trump had an instinct for a galvanizing message. He had found a unified theory that could account for declining factory jobs, the anger and insecurity stoked by far-right media, an opioid epidemic, and the indignity of the country’s first Black president. Immigrants could be blamed for everything.

The United States, he added, had become “the Wuhan of the Americas.”