The Immigration Debate: Remaking America

*Examines the past and current arguments both for and against immigration

*Topics include: the US history of immigration, the structure of current immigration policies and laws, and the demographic impact of immigration on population growth

In another breakthrough book, Isbister provides readers with the historical facts and current issues of immigration, allowing the reader to navigate this complex debate. The author analyzes the short and long-term economic, ethical, social and environmental effects of immigration in America.

This comprehensive book examines the past and present arguments for and against immigration. It provides necessary background and current information, allowing the reader to navigate this complex debate. Topics discussed include US history of immigration, structure of current immigration policies, the demographic impact of immigration on population growth, and much more.

Publishers Weekly

Isbister's third book (after The Promises Not Kept and Thin Cats) is an impressive, eloquent and engaging exploration that effectively debunks many widely held myths about the nature of immigration in America. It is both a coherent analysis of argument and statistics and a deeply personal essay. (When Isbister was a teenager, his father was Canada's Deputy Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, and Isbister himself emigrated to the U.S. in 1964). Among his insights: both sides of the debate think the opposite side is "not only unprincipled but better organized." Despite opponents who characterize today's immigration levels as massive, Isbister argues that in the context of artificially imposed controls on immigration from the 1920s through the 1960s, current immigration is average. The economic advantage of immigrants is not primarily the oft-cited exploitative one of "cheap labor," but rather the work ethic of risk-takers willing to brave the hard work and fluctuations in fortune inherent in entrepreneurial endeavors. Isbister, an economics doctorate from Princeton who teaches at UC Santa Cruz, even calls the Wall Street Journal to his defense, quoting an editorial that posits, "The problem is not too many immigrants but too few." (Feb.)

John Isbister is Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. He was raised in Ottawa, and studied history and economics as an undergraduate at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. After working with Operation Crossroads Africa in Senegal in 1962, he decided to pursue the study of economic development in low-income countries. He received his doctorate in economics from Princeton University in 1969, then joined the Economics Department of the University of California, Santa Cruz, as a founding fellow of Merrill College, a liberal-arts college which concentrates on the study of the third world. From 1984 to 1999 he was the Provost of Merrill College.