Darrell West, a well known political scientist and commentator from Brown University before he became the Director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institute, decided to explore immigration in America after the great difficulties he had with bringing his German wife to the country after their marriage. His goal was to take an expansive look at the issue to identify what was broken and make suggestions for how the process could be bettered.

As part of his presentation, West has done a wonderful job of presenting the history of immigration in the United States, highlighting the ebb and flow of the country's willingness to welcome those from other countries to become Americans. In the process, he has explained the reasons why Americans changed their views, including economic challenges, fear and xenophobia, health concerns, and other issues. He also highlights the reasons why America opened the flood gates of immigration, such as a need to people the quickly growing nation, a desire for specialists in science and engineering, or to help connect families that have been split by borders.

The latter seems to be the major philosophy for American immigration policy since the 1960's. That has lead to an increasing amount of newcomers coming to the United States. People, such as West with his wife, basically sponsor family members to come and join them. While he is not opposed to this policy, he is concerned that those numbers seem to be overwhelming the quotas for immigrants from various countries. This pushes out the ability for specialists in various fields (such as science, the arts, and engineering) and needed low-specialty employees from being allowed in to fill a need left open by a lack of interest from the American workforce.

He highlights that somewhere along the way, Americans have forgotten that immigrants, such as Albert Einstein, played major roles in boosting our technological advancement as well as providing a great deal of economic development. West highlights the fact that companies such as Google and Yahoo were founded by immigrants who came to America for their education and stayed in order to use that education to become extremely successful, providing jobs and money to support the American economy.

West does try to examine whether their is a net gain or loss in what our society spends in relation to illegal immigrants/resident aliens. He looks to a number of studies that political scientists have done in recent years. While it would be impossible to come up with an exact cost/benefit that results from the arrival of illegal aliens because costs vary widely by age. For example, children will bring about higher expenses due to their need to be educated, and the elderly will higher costs related to health care. Statistically, the majority of those coming across the border illegally tend to come from the age ranges with lower costs. These working-aged immigrants also tend to work (illegally), which usually results in contributions of income, social security, TDI, and medicare taxes. These are services for which they will never be able to collect from. He suggests that the result is probably a small net gain for our society, though not on any significant level.

West focuses more on what can be done to fix the broken immigration system. His suggestions include:
*better border controls using new technologies to track illegal crossings
*better oversight of companies that hire those who cannot work legally due to their immigration status (e-verify)
*better focus on the reasons why people are able to come into the country
*speedier processing of green card/residency applications
*better court system for dealing with immigration cases that includes legal representation through lawyers and an appeal system
*improved media presentation and political discourse that talks honestly about the costs and benefits of immigration

West does a great job of presenting his points in a simple language that is supported with examples, historical precedence, or thorough explanation. He definitely supports the idea of immigration, but wants the system improved in order to lower the rate of illegal immigration and protect the needs of America on the economic and developmental level.

I really found this interesting. I wish folks that are involved in the immigration debate on the states and federal levels would all read this book because it might help move things along in order to fix the problems.