Abstract

In his latest book, We Wanted Workers, Harvard economist George Borjas provides an account of immigration to the United States based on the premise that immigrants are not, in his words, the “army of worker robots” economists too often assume. Borjas’s evidence suggests that the most economically rational immigration policy would be to exclusively admit high-skilled immigrants, who only contribute to the economy. Borjas’s emphasis on immigration allows him to ignore questions that should be at the forefront of any assessment of American work. Borjas’s silence on these questions is particularly frightening given how his views feed into the connection Trump has drawn between his anti-immigration stance and commitment to his working-class base. Abigail Fradkin reviews We Wanted Workers: Unraveling the Immigration Narrative by George J. Borjas.