Customer Reviews

Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This book provides a solid argument in favor of largely expanding immigration (although the subtitle says "open borders", nowhere does he really call for truly unlimited immigration), citing multiple studies and extensive research, as well as considerable historical evidence, to support his claims that 1) immigrants do not pressure existing social systems more than natives do, 2) immigrants fill holes in a large labor market, and 3) immigrants are a net benefit to America.

That said, Riley spends a lot of time taking pundits to task for promoting arguments to stop immigration that have no basis in historical fact, which is appropriate. Unfortunately, he proceeds to make multiple statements - for example, linking Charles Darwin to the Eugenics movement, and claiming that charter schools will fix education problems, without providing any historical basis for them (in the case of the former, there is none - Riley gamely tries to re-interpret the title of Darwin's book as such, which is silly). This makes the reader question the strength of the rest of his statements. Even worse, these statements are asides, which really have very little to do with the central argument, so they weaken the author's position without really adding to his argument. Riley also wears his political affiliation on his sleeve, which is, of course, his right, but again adds a certain amount of writing that doesn't really bear on immigration.

My advice to Mr. Riley for the 2nd edition, then, would be to remove everything that does not bear directly on his thesis. I think his arguments about immigration are generally spot-on, but there is a certain amount of irrelevant content in there, without which the book would be better. I would probably give 3-and-a-half if I could.

Jason Riley, a writer for the Wall Street Journal editorial page, presents a brief for unlimited immigration from Mexico to the U.S. While Let Them In is well-written and thought-provoking, I remain far from convinced unlimited immigration is really the best thing for America and for my state of California. Riley is certainly right on one thing: the U.S. cannot simply eliminate immigration completely. But in conceding that point, I do not therefore admit that unregulated mass immigration is a good thing. Riley nowhere discusses the cost of schooling illegal children, or the fact that many American universities (unfairly) allow in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. I've seen studies by economists that illegal immigration costs California billions of dollars. It would be a mistake in my judgment to take Let Them In as the final word on the subject.

I also don't think Riley appreciates the cultural aspects of mass Hispanic immigration. That is what drives most of the angry calls to the talk radio hosts that he criticizes in the book. Certainly, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity (or Lou Dobbs, etc..) are not above criticism, but a free-marketeer like Riley should understand they are responding to popular demand. A majority of Americans --70% in a major poll done by the Council of Foreign Relations-- want immigration reduced or eliminated. Riley doesn't seem to understand--or to even want to understand-- this frustration. In a democratic system of government is it remarkable that politicians want to at least pretend to support their constituents' demands on this subject? Nor is it unreasonable for talk show hosts to tailor their show to the desires of their listeners.

For all my criticism, I still recommend reading the book. Just don't take it as the final word on the subject.

The thinking on the immigration, both in the US and even more so in other countries, is dominated by emotional arguments. In the light of that it is truly refreshing to come across a book like "Let Them In" where a principled free-market conservative ideas are promoted. In an era when there is an increasing interconnection and interdependence of world economies on each other, it becomes ever more untenable to insist on free exchange of goods and services, while preventing the free flow of people. This is particularly true in the light of the fact that it is precisely the human capital that drives most of the advanced economies forward.

Reilly is a journalist for Wall Street Journal, and this is reflected in his accessible and engaging writing style. The book is an easy read, well researched, and clear in its arguments. It is quite possible that there are flaws in those arguments, but if there are any they should be dealt on the intellectual and not personal level. The issues dealt in this book are already rife with passions on both sides of the debate and it is not helpful if they are only dealt in the lowest-common-denominator manner. Hopefully this book will help create a way for this debate to be elevated to a higher level of discourse.

Basically Mr Riley claims in this book that low skill/low wage immigrants are good for the country because they help expand the economic pie by filling jobs that there aren't enough Americans to fill. He also claims that immigrants are not a net drain on society due to their demand for social services, and any environmental impacts or security risks they may pose.

I wonder what Mr. Riley's take on the illegal immigration issue would be if he lived in a Southwest border town, rather than in suburban New York City (about as far away from the current massive influx from Latin America as you can get).

Riley chooses to bury us with numerous studies to prove his points that illegal immigrants aren't hurting, but in fact are helping the country. At first, this sounds impressive. But ultimately all the statistics beg a few key questions:

* How do we know how many illegal immigrants are in the country to calculate the statistics?
* What will be the net impacts on US society a few generations from now?
* What "side effects" are occurring that can't be easily framed in a few simple statistics?
* Even if the "net" effect is positive, how do we reimburse the burdensome costs to localities that are certainly adversely impacted?

While I agree with him on some issues -- Latino immigrants aren't a particular national security risk being one -- his use (abuse?) of selected (sometimes unnamed) studies is of concern to me.

In summary, the phrase "statistics, damn statistics, and lies" seemed to summarize the book all to well for me.

if you are looking for a populist viewpoint this isn't it.
In general the book is well done. Probably the most irrefutable
statement (repeated several times) is that immigration is a
wedge issue that speaks to many personal fears and a commonly held
stereotype about immigrants esp Hispanics from Central America.
The observation that this "issue" arises before elections to stampede
voters and then disappears immediately after the election is tough
to answer.
As an overview Riley looks at the six common areas where objections
to immigration arise:
1) population/over-population - does a good job of setting out some
little known connections and facts about this area of debate. Riley
should address "carrying capacity" and does not. Other than footnoting
this chapter extensively Riley meets the objections well.
2) economics - sets forth how much immigrants draw from the US economy
and what they add. Well done. Tackles the 'stealing US jobs' argument.
3) the welfare system - addreses the way barriers to entry into the US
and the factors that cause people to become interested in leaving another
country "select" people that are pre-disposed to seek work aggressively.
4) assimilation - numerous good points including language assimilation
and some contrasts with other countries
5) politics - should be read by all conservative politicos. Enough said.
6) national security - addresses the terrorist objection extremely well.
Worth a read by someone who wants to think about the various aspects to
this issue. There is some discussion of some aspects of a more open
immigration policy as it relates to human capital being in our NATIONAL
INTEREST that are worth some time for intellectually honest readers.

Everybody has an opinion about the immigration issue but few people seem to really a clue what they are talking about. LTI is a short (230 pages) refutation of many of the cliche anti-immigration arguments that people are so fond of regurgitating as truth, Of course, any time you are dealing with statistics, you are at the mercy of the author unless you have the data in front of you yourself. If we presume that Mr. Riley is accurate and truthful with his numbers, then he presents some very powerful arguments for the advantages of a more "open-border" policy. Fear, bigotry, and assumptions are never good bases for making public policy. LTI was a refreshingly rational approach to the subject.

Recommended.

In Let Them In, Wall Street Journal editorialist Jason Riley makes the case for a more open immigration policy. In a country where aging demographics loom as one of the biggest obstacle to future growth and prosperity, young immigrants can add much needed consumer spending and entrepreneurial energy. Unfortunately, we do not see this happening. In the post-9/11 era, the country has turned far more insular, and sentiment towards free-trade, globalization, and immigration have all worsened as a result. The confident swagger of the 1990s has been replaced by feeling of vulnerability, particularly after the 2008 finacial crisis. Rising anti-immigrant sentiment coupled with a stagnant economy have already kept a fair percentage of would-be immigrants at home. We see this trend accelerating in the coming years, as America becomes a more closed economy.

With that said, let us now review what Mr. Riley has to say about immigration.

"Most pro-immigration economists view immigrants primarily as a source of labor. But as many anti-immigration commentators have retorted, automation and mechanization can replace much of the low-end labor that immigrants do."

Unlike most authors who have commented on demographic trends, Mr. Riley understands that immigrants are both producers and consumers. In response to calls for automation of agricultural work, Riley says: "Unlike the machines, immigrants not only pick produce but also consume products and services, thus helping the U.S. economy expand."

Immigrants have also been blamed for rising health costs. But as Riley explains, "And so it goes with health care. Health-care costs aren't what they are because of immigrants but because we have employer-provided health insurance. A third party rather than the patient is paying most of the medical tab. When people are spending other people's money, they tend to spend more of it, which drives up costs."

The children of immigrants are often blamed for "flooding" American schools and driving up costs. But this assumes that education is an "expense." As Riley explains, "Such human capital expenditures, properly understood, are a net investment, and the children of immigrants - including Latinos - typically do better then their parents in terms of schooling and income. It's a strange logic that assumes American children are a fiscal burden to society."

Across all fields of study, people tend to extrapolate current trends into the future. This is probably the main reason why most economic forecasts are so terribly wrong: the future generally does not look like the past.

Americans have witnessed enormous numbers of Mexican immigrants, both legal and illegal, entering the country over the past twenty years, and as a result they believe this trend will continue indefinitely. This is what led Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly to recommend using the US Army to patrol the US-Mexican border. But as Jason Riley writes, "In fact, we may have already reached the high-water mark for illegal immigration from our main `sending country,' Mexico. Demographic trends south of the border show that the size of the young adult Mexican cohort, from which most immigrants are drawn, is declining."

Demographer Phillip Longman noted the same trend in his book THE EMPTY CRADLE, which we also highly recommend. Longman went so far as to suggest there will come a time in which Mexican border guards will be patrolling the border to prevent their promising young nationals from leaving for the United States!

Finally, Riley acknowledges that sentiment towards immigrants tends to run in cycles. All of the negative views towards immigrants expressed today have been heard before. There is nothing new under the sun:

"Most every anti-immigrant argument rolled out today is a retread. Benjamin Franklin was complaining about bilingual sign posts and 'swarms' of unassimilable Germans migrating to Pennsylvania 250 years ago. Later, in the nineteenth century, people like Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph and a leading nativist of his day, would pick up Franklin's banner. Morse was a founder and generous financier of the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic Know-Nothing movement, and in lieu of Germans he railed against Irish immigration in the antebellum decades. In his 1835 treatise against the political influence of Catholicism, Morse argued that poor, uneducated Irish Catholics were subverting the values and ideals of Anglo-America and should therefore be kept out of the country."

What is it the French say? The more things change...

All in all, Riley's book is a work of clear and concise thinking that I recommend.

I need to start by stating that these are the worst book reviews I have ever read in my life. In fact I wonder if some of these weirdos making blog posts on Amazon.com have even read the book...

I enjoyed this read VERY much! It gave me perspective on an issue I knew hardly anything about. The facts were all surprisingly intriguing and I really enjoy how the author would present an argument and dismantle it with cited facts. I think it is important to read this as you would any other political book in that it can be biased and isn't an official report by any professional agency; read this book to gain some knowledge rather than to become a professional on US immigration.

I first saw Jason Riley on FBN's Stossel, and his curious position persuaded me to buy his book. Originally a neoconservative, I was confused about what the truth about immigration was. Quickly becoming a libertarian, I put Riley's argument against that of the likes of Robert Rector and co.

This book began the journey of my conversion, and after much consideration, I now realize that market-based solutions to immigration are best. Furthermore, it is clear to me that there is no economic or cultural "cost" greater than the benefits we receive (and have received for generations) from immigrants. Make legal immigration easy and accessible; the sky will not fall! The policy advocated in this book makes absolute sense when confronted with the Dobbs/Borjas/Rector/O'Reilly model.

Overall, the book was lacking in demagoguery but not in sound data and logic. It was easy enough to comprehend as well. It opened my eyes and was extremely thought-provoking. Buy this book if you will appreciate the side of the immigration debate less told. Abandon the shoddy anecdotal evidence for restrictionism and give this book a fair shake with an open mind.

We don't have to go much beyond recent Congressional standoffs to recognize that the U.S. is currently in an unprecedentedly polarized state. What's wrong with strong opinions or polarization on public policy? It boils down to this: when opposing groups monolithically assert that they're right and their counterparts are wrong, then you know both put ideology ahead of seeking "truth" and reality. The result - endlessly repeated in human history - is flawed assumptions, costly and painful mistakes that may be obscured by short-term results (think about the 2008 crash).

I found both Ryan's book and most Amazon reviewers unusually informed and thoughtful in their arguments. But I could not avoid the conclusion that Ryan marshalled his data and arguments to win his case more than to seek truth. And his WSJ online interviewer (did you see it?) fed Ryan softballs to hit out of the park. This enhanced the idea that Ryan's book represents the perspective of WSJ. Even advocates of liberal immigration policy among reviewers tended to agree that Ryan was ideologically motivated. The two strong negative reviewers offered hard-to-deny counterarguments (the gross overstatement that Reagan was an "open borders" advocate; Ryan's tacit condoning of the flouting of U.S. laws and ignoring the feelings of opponents, etc.). But they too showed their emotional positions. Interestingly, they got low "helpfulness" percentages with large numbers of viewer hits, whereas dominant positive voters were small in number. So many of the reader-voters can be assumed to be going more by their gut revulsion to the point of view of the negative respondents - rather than recognizing "usefulness" in their counterarguments to the book's perspectives.

My study of the origin of U.S. conflict in a book published last year shows that the U.S. developed current polarization through a series of developments in the 1960s and 1970s. We stopped competing with ideas. We began assuming that opponents to ideas were bad or deluded. Conflict has become our worst enemy. It has had a debilitating effect on the nation in multiple ways. So regardless of the good and valid points that a book may make, if its sole objective is to bring people into a polarized view rather than promote balanced perspectives - then I think it could be part of the problem rather than part of the solution. It's tough to exercise self discipline - but the successful nations are doing it - the Swiss, Germans, Scandinavians, Canadians (their dollar has now reached parity with ours).