Roberto Suro

Immigration Expert

As an author, speaker, and television commentator, Roberto Suro is a nationally recognized expert on immigration and its economic, cultural, and political impact on the United States. A veteran international journalist, Suro is also an authority on the Washington scene and national security affairs.

Although he was born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area, Suro's father was from Puerto Rico, his mother from Ecuador. After graduating from Yale (B.A. 1973) and Columbia (M.S. Journalism 1974) he began a career as a newspaper reporter in Chicago. In 1978 he became a correspondent for Time, eventually doing tours in its Chicago, Washington, Beirut, and Rome bureaus. From 1985 to 1993 he worked for a bureau chief for The New York Times first in Rome and then in Houston. In 1994 he joined the staff of The Washington Post where he worked both as a staff writer and as an editor and covered national security affairs.

Roberto Suro is currently the director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington-based think established in 2001 with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Center's mission is to improve understanding of the diverse Hispanic population in the United States and to chronicle Latinos' growing impact on the nation. Affiliated with Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California, the Center strives to inform debate on critical issues through dissemination of its research to policymakers, business leaders, academic institutions and the media.

He is the author of Strangers Among Us: Latino Lives in a Changing America. Suro is also the author of two Twentieth Century Fund papers on immigration: "Remembering the American Dream: Hispanic Immigration and National Policy", 1994, and "Watching America's Door: The Immigration Backlash and the New Policy Debate", 1996.

Suro was a panelist on the National Dialogue on Race with President Clinton broadcast by PBS in July 1999. He has spoken on immigration, race relations, and ethnic identity at numerous venues including annual meetings of the Business Council and the Council on Foundations. He has given keynote addresses at major events for the U.S. Department of Justice, George Mason University, and the Loomis-Chaffee School, among others. As a visiting lecturer, Suro has spoken at a variety of universities including the New School for Social Research, Georgetown University, and UCLA. Suro appears frequently on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" and has been featured on the "ABC Evening News", "Frontline", and numerous other television-news programs.