First-world problem

Harrowing tales of migrants attempting to enter the US highlight the political failure to fully tackle the problem.

- NIK DIRGA

What does it mean to want to emigrate to the United States? Is it the American dream, or nightmare? It's one of the biggest issues in this year's presidential election, and dark rhetoric about immigrants has been a constant refrain in Donald Trump's three presidential campaigns.

But there are also a million human stories behind the scary headlines, and in his deeply reported, often harrowing, history, New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer traces the roots of the US migration dilemma.

Blitzer's primary focus is on migration from Central America, which, he explains, has skyrocketed largely thanks to years of the region being treated as a "geopolitical laboratory" by the US.

In the Reagan era, fighting communism trumped all other goals - including the human rights of people caught in the middle. Authoritarian leaders backed by US money and training took a heavy toll. Over the years, many of these countries slowly became dysfunctional, violent quagmires.

EVERYONE WHO IS GONE IS HERE: The United States, Central America and the Making of a Crisis

by Jonathan Blitzer

(Picador, $40)

Blitzer centres his narrative on people, not faceless others. He follows the stories of dozens of migrants, which gives his account its emotional kick when it occasionally bogs down in arcane policy detail.