The Columbia University Record interviewed Professor Rodolfo de la Garza for the June 28, 2010 "Faculty Q & A" column.

Bridget O'Brian writes:

"As a boy growing up in Tucson, Ariz., Rodolfo de la Garza frequently accompanied his father, a cook, to his job at the University of Arizona. 'He would take me with him when he would set up the kitchen,' he said. 'It was so beautiful there that I wanted to be at a university.'

"That wasn’t an obvious jump for someone from his Barrio Hollywood neighborhood, which got its name, de la Garza recalls, as an ironic term for a not-so-great part of town. While he was a good student, 'many of my friends were gang members and stuff, and so I walked the line between them and the Anglos I befriended in high school,' he said. 'I was on both sides of the fence all the time.'

"Now a professor of political science here, de la Garza was the first member of his family born in the United States and to go to college. His first political experience was going door-to-door in his Mexican American neighborhood trying to drum up votes for presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. He’s been involved in politics ever since, and while his research specialty is the political behavior of Latinos, he also is a noted expert on immigration.

"He examines the topic not just for its impact on the United States, but also from an angle often overlooked: how it affects the countries from which many immigrants come to the U.S. 'The damage that migration causes to families left behind is really very large, and there’s very little attention given to that,' he said. With his birthplace now the nexus of national hand-wringing over immigration, de la Garza talked with The Record about what will almost surely be a turning point in this conversation, given its political, cultural and legal ramifications. 'You’ve got a divide, a cultural and an economic divide, and the nation doesn’t know what to do,' he said."

Please click here to read the entire column.

Photo: Eileen Barroso, Columbia University