Volume 48, Number 20 · December 20, 2001
Who Should Get In? Part II
By Christopher Jencks
Books Discussed in this Review
Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation
by Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut
University of California Press/Russell Sage Foundation, 406 pp., $19.95 (paper)
The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience
edited by Charles Hirschman, Philip Kasinitz, and Josh DeWind
Russell Sage Foundation, 502 pp., $65.00
Strangers Among Us: Latino Lives in a Changing America
by Roberto Suro
Vintage, 349 pp., $15.00 (paper)
Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy
by George J. Borjas
Princeton University Press, 263 pp., $40.00; $16.95 (paper)
Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities
by Mary C. Waters
Harvard University Press/ Russell Sage Foundation, 413 pp., $35.00; $18.95 (paper)
The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration
edited by James P. Smith and Barry Edmonston
National Academy Press, 434 pp., $54.95
The Case Against Immigration
by Roy Beck
Norton, 287 pp. (out of print)
The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform
by James G. Gimpel and James R. Edwards Jr
Allyn and Bacon,342 pp., $40.00
Many rich countries have tried hiring foreigners to do their dirty work. Few have been happy with the results. Hiring immigrants for unskilled jobs seems a good deal for the employer. Immigrants will usually accept lower wages than natives, and at least in the United States most employers report that immigrants are more diligent, more reliable, and less prickly than the Americans who apply for such jobs. But hiring unskilled immigrants does not make unskilled Americans disappear; it just depresses their wages. In the long run, moreover, hiring unskilled immigrants has another significant cost. Most immigrants eventually have children, and while many of these children thrive in their new homeland, many do not.
Review, 6941 words
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