Award-Winning-Author-Journalist-and-Immigration-Expert-to-Speak-at-RVC.php

Award-Winning Author, Journalist, and Immigration Expert at RVC

• Events
• 04/16/2024

Jonathan Blitzer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, has earned several awards for reporting on the immigration crisis at the Mexico/U.S. border. On Monday, April 29, 2024, Blitzer will be on Rock Valley College’s Main Campus to discuss his book, Everyone Who is Gone is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis.  

The event marks the 12^th Annual David H. Caskey Memorial Lecture, sponsored by the family of Mr. Caskey and the Rock Valley College Foundation. The event is free and open to the public.

Blitzer’s book, released in January 2024, argues that the current immigration crisis on our Southern border is largely the bitter legacy of policies our nation pursued in Central America during the Cold War. In the book, Blitzer describes a sort of collective national amnesia in the United States about the brutal regimes that were endorsed and the violence they enacted on the social fabric of these communities.

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.

We are honored and delighted that Mr. Blitzer will be our 2024 Caskey guest. This is an important topic in our nation and in our community. From a historical lens, Blitzer's work reminds us of decades of U.S. intervention in Central America and asks us to confront the human cost of that troubled legacy.

Beth Ingle, RVC Professor of History

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.

Event: The 12^th Annual Caskey Lecture featuring Jonathan Blitzer

Date/Time: Monday, April 29, 2024 at 6 p.m.

Location: Rock Valley College Physical Education Center (PEC) located at 3301 N. Mulford Road in Rockford, IL.

The event is sponsored by Mary Caskey, the RVC Foundation, and the RVC Philosophy Department.