Tomorrow, Deborah Anker, director of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, will have the honor of moderating the 8th annual FDR memorial lecture, entitled “Formulating a new good neighbor policy.” Below is the event description from the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Foundation:
In 1943, President Roosevelt spoke at Monterrey, Mexico noting Mexico’s contributions of military support and farm laborers to the war effort. “Our two countries,” he stated, “owe their independence to the fact that your ancestors and mine held the same truths to be worth fighting for and dying for… No less important than the military cooperation and the production of supplies needed for the maintenance of our respective economies has been the exchange of those ideas and of those moral values which give life and significance to the tremendous effort of the free peoples of the world.”
In the current political atmosphere, polluted with “alternative facts” and “fake news,” it is easy to forget the realities of U.S.-Mexico relations and the roles played by Latinos in the United States. On the one hand, Latinos contribute $1.3 trillion to the American economy in buying power. On the other hand, irrespective of their citizenship status Latinos are often vilified as “the other” by those who wish to twist their story into a single narrative of drugs, guns, gangs and terrorism — a dangerous trend for other immigrant communities as well.
Join Republican entrepreneur Solomon Trujillo and Democratic former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros, co-founders of the Latino Donor Collaborative, as we renew FDR’s call for thoughtful cross-cultural engagement. Through this non-partisan conversation, we’ll gain hard data about Latino contributions to our economy, a better understanding trade and cross-border cooperation, and realistic strategies to sustain America’s role as the greatest immigrant nation on earth.