The Immigration Equation - New York Times

A long (11 page) article from the New York Times magazine yesterday that is an excellent digest of the issues surrounding the current immigration debate...
The Immigration Equation - New York Times: "The debate among economists is whether low-income workers are hurt a lot or just a little — and over what the answer implies for U.S. policy. If you believe Borjas, the answer is troubling. A policy designed with only Americans' economic well-being in mind would admit far fewer Mexicans, who now account for about 3 in 10 immigrants. Borjas, who emigrated from Cuba in 1962, when he was 12 (and not long after soldiers burst into his family's home and ordered them at gunpoint to stand against a wall), has asserted that the issue, indeed, is 'Whom should the United States let in?'

Such a bald approach carries an overtone of the ethnic selectivity that was a staple of the immigration debates a century ago. It makes many of Borjas's colleagues uncomfortable, and it is one reason that the debate is so charged. Another reason is that many of the scholars who disagree with Borjas also hail from someplace else — like gardeners and seamstresses, a surprising number of Ph.D. economists in the U.S. are foreign-born."