The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear

The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear

An eye-opening analysis of the costs and effects of immigration and immigration policy, both on American life and on new Americans. For decades, immigration has been one of the most divisive, contentious topics in American politics. And for decades, urgent calls for its policy reform have gone mostly unanswered. As the discord surrounding the modern immigration debate has intensified, border enforcement has tightened. Crossing harsher, less porous borders makes unauthorized entry to the United States a permanent, costly undertaking. And the challenges don’t end on the other side. At once enlightening and devastating, The Border Within examines the costs and ends of America’s interior enforcement—the policies and agencies, including ICE, aimed at removing immigrants already living in the country. Economist Tara Watson and journalist Kalee Thompson pair rigorous analysis with deeply personal stories from immigrants and their families to assess immigration’s effects on every aspect of American life, from the labor force to social welfare programs to tax revenue. What emerges is a critical, utterly complete examination 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. News coverage has prompted many to question the humanity of American immigration policies; The Border Within opens a conversation of whether it is effective. The United States spends billions each year on detention and deportation, all without economic gain and at a great human cost. With depth and discipline, the authors dissect the shock-and-awe policies that make up a broken, often cruel system, while illuminating the lives caught in the chaos. It is an essential work with far-reaching implications for immigrants and non-immigrants alike. Named one of the "5 Books to Help You Understand the Immigration Debate" by the New York Times: "Watson and Thompson complement economic modeling and policy research with stories of documented and undocumented immigrants, drawing their synthesis of white papers and census surveys into the real world. "The Border Within" is authoritative and accessible, and it offers a cost-benefit approach to understanding immigration." 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 . The American narrative celebrates the idea of immigrants arriving to build a better life in a land of abundance. Yet Americans have always struggled with immigration, particularly as it intersects with race, poverty, and economic opportunity. In the last couple of decades, the immigrant share of the US population has grown greater than at any time since the early twentieth century—as has the centrality of the immigration debate. Since the year 2000, an average of a million people from all over the world have been granted legal permanent status (“green cards”) in the United States each year. Federal law sets annual limits on how many individuals can be legally admitted to the country, with priority given to spouses, minor children, and parents of US citizens, who collectively make up two-thirds of the annual total, as well as to people with certain in-demand professional skills. There’s also a “diversity” lottery for residents of countries that don’t send many people (in 2018, more than fourteen million people competed for fifty thousand slots). But many individuals are unable to immigrate legally. Even for those with fairly close family ties—the adult children of US citizens, for example—there is currently a six- to seven-year wait for would-be immigrants from most of the world. No more than 7 percent of green cards are issued to migrants coming from any given country in any given year, making it harder to legally enter from some countries than others. For an unmarried adult from Mexico with a US-citizen parent, the current wait time is more than nineteen years. A less-educated resident of Mexico without relatives in the United States typically cannot expect any route to legal immigration in their lifetime. Though the current political rhetoric often calls for newcomers to simply “wait in line,” this sentiment reflects a misunderstanding of our immigration system. For many would-be immigrants, there is no line. Millions of people are determined to come to the US even in the absence of a legal pathway, of course, and many of them succeed. Almost a quarter of the foreign-born population now living in the United States, and more than 40 percent of all noncitizens, are in the country without legal status. Of the 10.5 million undocumented residents, about half crossed the border illegally, while the rest arrived on a temporary visa and stayed after it expired. Concerns about the scale of immigration and the fact that so many immigrants live in the US without authorization has prompted a desire for policy action. Many