Nazario Lecture

Monday, November 16th I attended the lecture on Enrique’s Journey given by the author Sonia Nazario for the Honors College. For about an hour Nazario spoke about her experience while writing the book, how she came up with the idea, and the people she met along the way. Afterward there was a question and answer session open to everyone in the audience. Hearing the author of Enrique’s Journey speak in person about the hardships of immigrants and respond to questions made the contents of the book seem even more like a reality.
However, having read Enrique’s Journey like most other honors students, I was disappointed that much of Nazario’s lecture was a synopsis of the story and its introduction. She did add some other tidbits of information on immigration that were interesting, such as current statistics and immigration in relevance to North Carolina. Nazario’s mention of the Obama Administration’s plan to control immigration was also interesting and I would have preferred her speak about that issue for the majority of her time. I was shocked that our President (whose platform during election was all about change) is pursuing the same plan previous Presidents have chosen. Build a big wall. Clearly this is not an effective strategy considering that immigrants from Central America are still pouring in. I liked Nazario’s plan she proposed during her lecture. She suggests that the United States help countries in Central America create jobs so that there would be no need for their citizens to risk their lives coming to the U.S. To me, as well as many others, this seems like a clearly plausible plan that would have more of an effect. My hope is that awareness will spread through Nazario’s book Enrique’s Journey and this plan to eliminate the hardships of Central American immigrants will become clear to politicians in power.