1 in 3 U.S. Latinos are foreign-born.

Anyone holding an opinion about how to treat immigrants in this country should really know why they’re here.

To be clear, U.S. immigrants and immigration are complex topics with many parts. This isn’t about covering every single angle. It’s about adding perspective, context, and experiences so we can all make better judgments for ourselves.

The 20 million foreign-born Latinos in the US are roughly the population size of New York state. Some of them come from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, which is where journalist and author Jonathan Blitzer takes us in Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis.

They are people like:

• Keldy Mabel Gonzáles Brebe de Zúniga from Honduras fleeing gang violence. She was one of the first mothers separated from her children at the border by the Trump administration.
• Dr. Juan Romagoza from El Salvador who survived torture by the Salvadoran government. Later in life he continued to serve the poor in public health as the director of La Clínica del Pueblo in Washington D.C. and Clinic El Espino in Usulután, El Salvador.
• Eddie Anzora from South Los Angeles, deported at age 29 back to a country he last left as a 3-year old. Forced to start over in El Salvador, he was an easy victim for criminal gangs targeting newly arriving deportees.

Each of these stories digs deep into their life-or-death challenges, their escape journeys, the United States reception, and their newly recreated lives. These are life experiences none of us would wish for.

These are people from countries the United States closely supported politically, financially, militarily and sometimes covertly. These are actions taken according to United States immigration policy with little regard for its humanitarian impact.

In large part we the United States created this situation. Shouldn’t it now morally influence the way we treat immigrants and immigration?

“Have you heard?” is our way of sharing another point of view on commonly held beliefs. Through this we hope to encourage curiosity, dialogue, and tolerance of diverse ideas.