immigration

U.S. Immigration Step by Step, 3E (Legal Survival Guides)
$24.95
On page 159 of the 3rd edition, it is mentioned that an individual is authorized to work with the receipt notice (for work authorization) and an SSN while waiting for the temporary employment authorization document. That is simply not true according to several Houston based immigration attorneys. I contacted the author of this book to get some clarifications but never got a response.

After I recieved my notice of receipt, I got additional confirmation of that because it explicitly states that it cannot be used as an authorization to get any sort of legal employment.

Dying to Get In: A Film by Brett Tolley
$19.95
This video, while lacking the polish of studio works, really gets at the causes of migration as well as the incredible risks that migrants from Mexico take in order to provide a better future for their children. It is powerful in its simplicity. I've used this as a training tool with social workers, police officers, health care providers and others, and it always has been well received.

Debating Immigration
$21.99
Yale Law School Professor Peter H. Schuck observes:

"In a polity in which only 17 percent of the public thinks that immigration levels should be higher and 39 percent thinks they should be lower, one would expect that at least some legal scholars who write about immigration issues would favor restriction. If so, one would be wrong. In over two decades of immersion in immigration scholarship, I have not encountered a single academic specialist on immigration law who favors reducing the number of legal immigrants admitted each year." The Disconnect Between Public Attitudes and Policy Outcomes in Immigration [In Debating Immigration, Chapter 2, p.17, the link is to an unedited version.]

So, Carol M. Swain, a law and political science professor at Vanderbilt, has done the academic world a service (although one it probably won't appreciate) with her new book Debating Immigration. She brings together 16 chapters from academic and think tank luminaries such as Nathan Glazer, Amitai Etzioni, Douglas S. Massey, and Steven A. Camarota, along with lively essays from journalists Peter Brimelow and Jonathan Tilove.

Swain is one of the more unusual and admirable scholars in public policy. Growing up black and poor in rural Virginia, one of twelve children, she dropped out of 9th grade and married at 16. In her mid-20s she started back to school. Eventually, she earned tenure at Princeton as an expert on how Congress operates.

Her views are difficult to categorize politically. I would say she's an advocate of black enlightened self-interest, left of center on economics, right of center on culture. For example, her 2002 book The New White Nationalism sensibly advocated depriving white nationalists such as Jared Taylor of their best issues by restricting immigration and cutting back on affirmative action, especially for immigrants and affluent blacks. Needless to say, that hasn't happened.

That whites and blacks have a common interest on immigration is obvious from a logical standpoint. But there's not much of a market for logic. Many black leaders, such as the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton and Minister Farrakhan, have no interest in striking a deal with whites on immigration because they are not in the business of enlightened self-interest for blacks. They are, instead, entertainers, riffing endlessly and lucratively on that old crowd-pleasing tune Sticking It to the White Man. If the average white person doesn't want more immigrants, well, then, these black leaders will help bring in more just to spite whitey.

Swain's own chapter in Debating Immigration points out the uselessness of the Congressional Black Caucus on immigration bills.

She notes that one reason for this is that quite a few black Representatives come from districts that are increasingly Hispanic.

I'd add that the weird math of the "rotten borough" syndrome is encouraging black politicians to favor the immigration that will eventually destroy them.

It works like this: Noncitizens aren't allowed to vote, but in most states they are counted in the redistricting following each Census. As Latino illegal immigrants move into black neighborhoods, the number of black-dominated districts can actually increase in the next redistricting because there will be fewer voters per district in poor areas. For instance, about twice as many votes are cast in each election in the posh Beverly Hills district of Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman as in the heavily illegal alien-populated South Central LA district still represented by black radical warhorse Maxine Waters.

Debating Immigration lives up to its title, with representatives from all sides, including some perspectives I haven't seen before. For example, Swain, who became an evangelical Christian at the beginning of this decade, has included an incisive analysis from a scriptural standpoint.

Jonathan Tilove of Newhouse News, the finest mainstream media reporter on race and immigration, writes:

"In the course of my years [since 1991] reporting about race and immigration, I have come to believe that indifference to the fate of black America, or in some quarters a passive-aggressive hostility toward African Americans, has become an animating feature of support for a liberal immigration policy and helps to explain the strange bedfellows who have made that policy unstoppable even in the face of lukewarm public support at best."

"Passive-aggressive" is right. As I've argued, immigrants are "economically cleansing" native-born blacks from the home bases of the media elite--New York City and Washington D.C. This reduces crime locally, especially in this generation before the newcomers have sons who grow up to join street gangs. Many in the national press seem to assume that the African Americans who are driven out of their cities by immigrants pushing rents up and wages down are being deported. Of course, they are just being pushed out to less fashionable cities such as Newark, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. And there the murder rates have gone up considerably since 2002 and are now four to six times as bad as New York City's.

Peter Brimelow points out in his chapter that immigration's benefit to "the economy" is surprisingly small. A larger population means the overall Gross Domestic Product is larger, but virtually all of that goes to the immigrants themselves. The net benefit to native-born Americans is nugatory--and is in fact wiped out by government-mandated transfer payments, such as education and welfare, from American taxpayers to immigrants.

As Peter notes, the main effect of immigration is to shift wealth from labor to capital. Despite all the chatter in the press about immigrant entrepreneurialism, unskilled illegal immigration is unthreatening to employers precisely because poorly educated Latinos are unlikely to ever provide effective competition against their bosses. Corporations thus get both cheap workers and additional consumers, but not future rivals. From a profit maximization angle, what's not to like?

Swain has delivered a fine and fair anthology on a topic almost criminally neglected by academia. This is no doubt why it has received no reviews that I can see.

Arguing Immigration: The Debate Over the Changing Face of America
$16.95
The editor of this book presents several different authors' viewpoints about immigration into the United Stares. many people of diferent backgrounds are presented here and compelling statements are made, discussing the ramifications of this hot topic right now.