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"Today the United States is home to more unauthorized immigrants than at any time in the country's history. As scrutiny around immigration has intensified, border enforcement has tightened. The result is a population of new Americans who are more entrenched than ever before. Crossing harsher, less porous borders makes entry to the US a permanent, costly enterprise. And the challenges don't end once they're here. In The Border Within, journalist Kalee Thompson and economist Tara Watson examine the costs and ends of America's immigration-enforcement complex, particularly its practices of internal enforcement: the policies and agencies, including ICE, aimed at removing unauthorized immigrants living in the US. Thompson and Watson's economic appraisal of immigration's costs and benefits is interlaid with first-person reporting of families who personify America's policies in a time of scapegoating and fear. The result is at once enlightening and devastating. Thomspon and Watson examine immigration's impact on every aspect of American life, from the labor force to social welfare programs to tax revenue. The results paint an overwhelmingly positive picture of what non-native Americans bring to the country, including immigration's tendency to elevate the wages and skills of those who are native born. Their research also finds a stark gap between the realities of America's immigrant population and the policies meant to uproot them: America's internal enforcements are grounded in shock and awe more than any reality of where and how immigrants live. The objective, it seems, is to deploy "chilling effects" -- performative displays aimed at producing upstream effects on economic behaviors and decision-making among immigrants. The ramifications of these fear-based policies extends beyond immigrants themselves; they have impacts on American citizens living in immigrant families as well as on the broader society"--
About the author
Tara Watson is professor of economics at Williams College and a coeditor of the
Journal of Human Resources, the leading academic journal in labor economics.
Kalee Thompson is a journalist and senior editor at
Wirecutter. She is the author of
Deadliest Sea: The Untold Story Behind the Greatest Rescue in Coast Guard History.
Summary
An eye-opening analysis of the costs and effects of immigration and immigration policy, both on American life and on new Americans.
