As record numbers of migrants are detained at our nation's Southern border each month and U.S. cities scramble to assist thousands of newly arrived asylum seekers, a major national debate has erupted over immigration policy in this presidential election year.
This talk will explore the root causes of the so-called Migrant Crisis, how our government's current and historic policies toward Latin America have actually fueled it, and what a more humane and progressive immigration policy would look like.
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Juan González is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Illinois-Chicago Great Cities Institute. Throughout his career, González has become known as one of the most well-regarded Latino journalists in the United States. He was a staff columnist for New York’s The Daily News for nearly thirty years, has been a producer and co-anchor (with Amy Goodman) since 1996 of the morning news show Democracy Now!, and was the Richard D. Heffner Professor of Communications and Public Policy at Rutgers University from 2017 to 2023.
His investigative reports on the labor movement, environmental justice, race relations, and urban policy have garnered numerous accolades, including two George Polk Awards for commentary, and he became in 2015 the first Latino to be inducted into the New York Journalism Hall of Fame by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Deadline Club. He is the author of five books, including the classic Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (2001), which became the basis of an award-winning 2012 feature documentary film narrated by González and which is now in its third edition.
His News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media (2011), which he co-authored with Joseph Torres, was a New York Times best-seller and a finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. His Reclaiming Gotham, Bill de Blasio and the Movement to End America’s Tale of Two Cities (2017), examines the rise of progressive elected officials in cities across the United States and their efforts to revise urban policies. [Read more - Great Cities Institute]
