Debating Immigration [Paperback]

Carol M. Swain (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0521698669 | ISBN-13: 978-0521698665

Debating Immigration presents 18 original essays, written by some of the world's leading experts and preeminent scholars, that explore the nuances of contemporary immigration and citizenship affecting the United States and Europe. The volume is organized around the following themes: religion and philosophy, law and policy, economics and demographics, race and ethnicity, and cosmopolitanism. Critical questions addressed include: What accounts for the disconnect between public attitudes about immigration and the policies produced by elected officials? Why has the United States not developed a well-articulated public philosophy of immigration?

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Carol Swain has drawn together a brilliant and insightful collection of essays on immigration. No matter what your views on immigration, you will find something to inform, educate, or engage."
Senator Bill Frist from Tennessee

"Just when I thought America could NEVER have a civilized discussion about immigration, alongcame this wonderful book. Thomas Jefferson would be so proud that many knowledgeable people spent time together wrestling with this highly charged political issue and sharing their thoughts inwriting. I wish I could mandate that NO ONE could debate about immigration until they read this book and passed the test!"
Pat Schroeder, former Congresswoman from Colorado

"This is a fascinating and distinctive contribution to our understanding of contemporary immigration issues. Most volumes on this subject are weighted heavily in the pro-immigration direction. Carol Swain, by contrast, has gotten contributions from scholars with a wide range of perspectives, and their work reveals many complexities and nuances that are too often ignored. A first-rate collection that should appeal to general readers as well as to scholars."
Stephan Thernstrom, Winthrop Professor of History, Harvard University and editor of the Harvard Encylopedia of American Ethnic Groups

"This timely volume, representing a range of ideological perspectives, features a number of powerful and thought provoking essays on the immigration debate. Carol M. Swain has pulled together a group of outstanding scholars and activists whose gripping arguments on immigration will be widely discussed and debated. I highly recommend this volume to anyone concerned about the politics of contemporary immigration."
William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor Harvard University

"..touches upon important and pressing immigration policy issues. The book is an outstanding compilation."
John C. Blakeman, Law and Politics Book Review

"Debating Immigration is a collection of essays using different perspectives to argue that immigration is harmful for the United States." -Maria Chavez, Journal of American Ethnic History

Book Description

Debating Immigration presents 18 original essays, written by some of the world's leading experts and preeminent scholars, that explore the nuances of contemporary immigration and citizenship affecting the United States and Europe. The volume is organized around the following themes: religion and philosophy, law and policy, economics and demographics, race and ethnicity, and cosmopolitanism.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 330 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (April 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521698669
• ISBN-13: 978-0521698665
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #372,409 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

From high school dropout and teenage mother to esteemed Vanderbilt University law professor, Carol M. Swain is passionate about empowering others to confidently raise their conservative voices in the public square. Dr. Swain's education and experiences make her a credible and powerful force for change in today's social and political climate where conservatives are intimidated to champion an often-unpopular message.

Carol Swain's own courageous voice for conservative causes is expressed among a variety of popular media. She's a frequent guest on Hannity's: Great American Panel on Fox News and appeared regularly on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight.

She has also appeared on BBC Radio, NPR, CNN's AC360 (with Anderson Cooper), Fox News Live, PBS's NewsHour (with Jim Lehrer), C-SPAN's Washington Journal, and ABC's Headline News.

Dr. Swain's published works have achieved many accolades. Her highly acclaimed book, Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress, has received numerous awards, including:

One of seven Outstanding Academic Books of 1994 by Choice (American Library Association)

Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award in 1994 (sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation at Princeton University for the best book published on government, politics or international affairs)

D.B. Hardeman Prize for best book focused on U.S. Congress during 1994-1995
V.O. Key Award (co-recipient) for an outstanding book on southern politics

Black Faces was cited by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in Johnson v. DeGrandy (1994) and by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in Georgia V. Ashcroft (2003).

Debating Immigration, a collection of 18 essays by Swain and other scholars, explores the nuances of contemporary immigration and citizenship in the U.S. and Europe. She has also written and co-authored books on race relations and white nationalism. She is currently working on a new book titled Broken Vows, Banished Virtues: Reclaiming America's Promise.

Her opinion pieces have been published online at The Huffington Post and in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, and USA Today.

A widely recognized expert on race relations, immigration, black leadership and evangelical politics, Carol Swain is a member of the Tennessee Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and serves on the advisory board of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Before joining Vanderbilt in 1999, Dr. Swain was a tenured associate professor of politics and public policy at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She is a foundation member of the Virginia Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Strong collection of essays June 2, 2008

By Steve Sailer

Format:Paperback

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.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars It's a particularly strong pick for any collection September 7, 2007

By Midwest Book Review

Format:Paperback

College-level collections and many a high school library will want to consider DEBATING IMMIGRATION: it offers an unusually well-balanced collection of debates on various immigration issue positions which gathers reasonings from Left, Right and Middle about immigration and border issues, and provides a wide range of theories, approaches, and ideologies. As such it's a particularly strong pick for any collection including social issues and debating in its holdings, with essays both scholarly and accessible at the college level.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent read November 27, 2010

By jackattack

Format:Paperback

Excellent assortment of essays. Several different viewpoints are portrayed creating a very objective view of the immigration issue. Great insight coupled with a great deal of factual evidence.