Books, Arts & Manners: What, Me Worry?

How Do Immigrants Affect Us Economically?, by Julian L. Simon (Center for Immigration Policy and Refugee Assistance, Georgetown University, et al., 103 pp., $3)

Immigration reform promises to be one of the most hotly debated topics of this and coming years. The Reagan Administration now supports legislation that would penalize employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. Attorney General Edwin Meese has testified that aliens take jobs from citizens and lawful residents, declaring before a Senate panel, “Vast as our country may be, and dynamic as our free economy undoubtedly is, the U.S. simply cannot throw its doors open to the world.” Yet not everyone agrees that we need to “do something” about immigration. For several years now, Julian Simon, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, has argued that, essentially, the U.S. has no immigration “problem” at all. Simon asserts that immigrants—legal and illegal combined—are raising our standard of living, not lowering it. Far from restricting immigration, Simon urges us to increase it, though he concedes that if a billion Orientals, Africans, and South Americans were to suddenly arrive, “everything would at first be in terrible shape.”

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Wayne Lutton

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How Do Immigrants Affect Us Economically?, by Julian L. Simon (Center for Immigration Policy and Refugee Assistance, Georgetown University, et al., 103 pp., $3)

Immigration reform promises to be one of the most hotly debated topics of this and coming years. The Reagan Administration now supports legislation that would penalize employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. Attorney General Edwin Meese has testified that aliens take jobs from citizens and lawful residents, declaring before a Senate panel, “Vast as our country may be, and dynamic as our free economy undoubtedly is, the U.S. simply cannot throw its doors open to the world.” Yet not everyone agrees that we need to “do something” about immigration. For several years now, Julian Simon, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, has argued that, essentially, the U.S. has no immigration “problem” at all. Simon asserts that immigrants—legal and illegal combined—are raising our standard of living, not lowering it. Far from restricting immigration, Simon urges us to increase it, though he concedes that if a billion Orientals, Africans, and South Americans were to suddenly arrive, “everything would at first be in terrible shape.”