The Border Within - by Tara Watson & Kalee Thompson (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Today the United States is home to more unauthorized immigrants than at any time in the country's history. As scrutiny around immigration has intensified, border enforcement has tightened. The result is a population of new Americans who are more entrenched than ever before. Crossing harsher, less porous borders makes entry to the US a permanent, costly enterprise. And the challenges don't end once they're here. In The Border Within, journalist Kalee Thompson and economist Tara Watson examine the costs and ends of America's immigration-enforcement complex, particularly its practices of internal enforcement: the policies and agencies, including ICE, aimed at removing unauthorized immigrants living in the US. Thompson and Watson's economic appraisal of immigration's costs and benefits is interlaid with first-person reporting of families who personify America's policies in a time of scapegoating and fear. The result is at once enlightening and devastating. Thomspon and Watson examine immigration's impact on every aspect of American life, from the labor force to social welfare programs to tax revenue. The results paint an overwhelmingly positive picture 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. Their research also finds a stark gap between the realities of America's immigrant population and the policies meant to uproot them: America's internal enforcements are grounded in shock and awe more than any reality of where and how immigrants live. The objective, it seems, is to deploy "chilling effects" -- performative displays aimed at producing upstream effects on economic behaviors and decision-making among immigrants. The ramifications of these fear-based policies extends beyond immigrants themselves; they have impacts on American citizens living in immigrant families as well as on the broader society"--

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Experts are always telling us that immigration is good for the economy. Tara Watson, an economist, and Kalee Thompson, a senior editor at Wirecutter, give you the details. . . . 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."-- "The New York Times"

"The Border Within [examines] the costs of aggressive interior immigration enforcement tactics in the United States in human and economic terms, describing the stress and hardship that the arbitrary enforcement environment causes to immigrant families."-- "Journal of Economic Literature"

"Watson and Thompson address the most important issues swirling around documented and undocumented immigration today. They organize their book in an ingenious manner.The chapters are devoted to thorough, scholarly reviews of the literature on the impact of immigration on the economy, crime, and the social safety net as well as the effectiveness of immigration enforcement efforts. Interwoven throughout the book, however, are the stories of six immigrant families who have faced the issues the authors analyze, putting a human face on the scholarly discussion. . . . The quality of writing in the book is top-notch. . . . Highly recommended."-- "Choice"

"A thoughtful, carefully written, historically informed description of US interior immigration enforcement."-- "Foreign Affairs"

"A very well written and carefully researched book on the benefits and costs of interior immigrant enforcement in the United States. With interesting background on US immigration policy that highlights the parallels between discrimination against new immigrants in the first globalization period and now, the authors have provided a clear and engaging presentation of the most important issues related to US immigration policy."--Anna Maria Mayda, Georgetown University

"An excellent book with significant potential impact. The authors have done something quite novel: combined a review of the empirical social science evidence on the costs and benefits of undocumented immigration and the effects of various policies with personal stories about the lives of undocumented immigrants. The stories provoke an emotional, moral response, while the more scientific approach taken by the academic summaries provides evidence and rational calculations of costs and benefits. The writing is clear and propulsive, and the personal narratives lend a sense of urgency to the discussions of policy. If I were teaching a class on immigration economics, I would assign this book."--Megan MacGarvie, Boston University Questrom School of Business

"In The Border Within, Watson and Thompson masterfully distill decades of economics research and interweave it with stories of real people. Anyone looking for a clear understanding of issues surrounding undocumented immigration in the United States, delivered in engaging prose, would do well to read this. It is a terrific book that gets the economics research right, makes it readable, and puts a human face on it. That is hard to do."--Kristin F. Butcher, director of the Center on Children and Families, Cabot Family Chair, and senior fellow in Economic Studies, Brookings Institution, and the Marshall I. Goldman Professor of Economics, Wellesley College

About the Author

Tara Watson is professor of economics at Williams College and a coeditor of the Journal of Human Resources, the leading academic journal in labor economics. 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.