Anyone wishing to learn more about the economic effects of immigration on America and American workers would do well to read this book. George J. Borjas is a highly respected economist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and one of the world’s foremost experts on the economics of immigration. While most of his past writings have been technical works, We Wanted Workers is chiefly intended for a popular audience. It is very clearly written, contains ample yet easily digestible data, and offers a balanced and careful treatment of an issue that is generally treated in a very different manner.

The “narrative” to which the subtitle refers is the widespread view that immigration is an unalloyed benefit for America and those already here. Borjas argues that the reality is more complicated: Immigration creates winners and losers, and as the laws of supply and demand would lead one to expect, workers who must compete directly with immigrant workers (legal or illegal) suffer as a consequence. Working with census data spanning many decades, Borjas has found that “if immigration increases the size of a group by 10 percent, the earnings of native workers in that group fall by 3-4 percent.”