The Case Against Immigration
by Roy Beck

Boston Globe: Beck documents the way employers have used cheap immigrant labor to slash pay or worsen working conditions in blue collar jobs.

Business Week: All sides can learn from Roy Beck...a powerful argument that immigration hurts America's poor.

Washington Post: Always balanced and never strident.

New York Review of Books: 'Who Should Get In' (Read the Part I of the review | Part II)

Louisville Courier-Journal: ...compassionate...profoundly moral

Foreign Affairs: A powerful and disturbing tract...as persuasively as anyone (the book) states the case and marshals the evidence for restricting the high levels of legal immigration.

1996 Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jack Miles: Some Americans make money when legal immigration is high. Other Americans lose money. The line between the two groups is, roughly, the line between management and labor. Gently and in a distinctly democratic and liberal tone of voice, Roy makes the case for returning immigration to traditional levels.

Aaron Bernstein, Business Week: It presents a powerful view that has been ill argued by opponents of immigration and largely ignored by the other side. The nub of his case: Large immigration flows have a tremendous impact on U.S. labor markets -- especially the bottom half.

James Pinkerton, Los Angeles Times: It puts the argument in terms that liberals can relate to.

Lolis Eric Elie, New Orleans Times-Picayune: When I began the book, I was inclined to support current policy. Having read it, I'm inclined to change my mind.

John Payne, Spencer (Iowa) Daily Reporter: For readers who skip ahead to the book's final chapter in which Beck suggests appropriate levels of immigration the author's views may seem radical. In the preceding chapters, however, Beck lays a solid platform for his argument: a drastic reduction of immigration into the United States is needed if Americas are to maintain their current standard of living.

Former governor of Colorado, Richard D. Lamm: It will make you rethink many of your most basic assumptions about American immigration.

Houston Chronicle: Beck is one of five leading thinkers in the national immigration debate.

Economist Herman Daly in Ecological Economics: Highly recommended...a great service in raising the moral and analytical level of the immigration debate.

Harvey C. Roberts, Miami Times: One of the most profoundly informative and insightful books I have read. It has given me a totally new perspective on what immigration has been doing to our country and our people. We American Blacks must once again be vigilant and again diligently mount an intense protest movement against high immigration.

David Simcox, Louisville Courier-Journal: America's immigration policy is racist, Roy Beck argues, but not at all in the way you might think. The author sees the descendants of slavery as having a unique moral claim on society's conscience. But a mindless immigration policy is giving them wage depression (and) added competition for quality housing and public education...Beck's work is a humane but hard-hitting brief that attacks the most cherished defenses of high immigration.

Lindsey Grant, former assistant secretary of state for environmental and population affairs: Read this book before you decide how to vote in November. It brings the impact of today's mass immigration on America's towns and cities vividly to life, and its discussion of earlier waves of migration puts our history in a new perspective. It is not anti-immigrant, but it makes a convincing case that the impact of mass immigration is devastating and the need for new legislation urgent.

Vernon Briggs, professor of labor economics, Cornell University: A populist manifesto that truly captures the heart of the issue. I have never seen a book which so effectively delivers a social message, but which is also so carefully documented in the support of this message.

Joe Daleiden, demographer and economist under President Jimmy Carter: I thought I had read everything worth reading on the subject, but by far, Roy Beck's book is the best that has been written on the issue.

Rosemary Jenks, J.D.: This compassionate and powerfully persuasive book is the first of its kind. it is just the right mix of academic research and on-the-ground reporting. As I read it, I found myself getting more and more angry at what Congress's policy of sustained mass immigration is doing to American workers and, particularly, the black underclass.

Norman Matloff, professor of computer science, University of California, Davis: Roy Beck's gentle tone, sympathetic to native Americans and immigrants alike, is a welcome contrast to the strident approach taken by most commentators on both sides of the immigration issue. He demonstrates that immigration policy has been set in an incoherent manner without any stated goals, and with no regard for the harm it does to both high-skill and low-skill American workers. And his chapters on the adverse impact of high immigration levels on the black underclass should be required reading for all of our nation's policy makers.

Dr. Katharine Betts, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia: Beck's position is that of a committed liberal. He focuses on humanitarian values and an equal chance for the nation's poor, including recently arrived immigrants. But he writes with especial emphasis on the miserable situation of the failed black third', the substantial proportion of black citizens who remain mired in poverty….Roy Beck has written a carefully documented, compassionate and highly readable book. Of course it speaks for a particular point of view, a view that the author believes to be shared by most Americans. In putting this position it also lays down an implicit challenge to the growth lobby. Refute these arguments if you can.”