Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy » (1st Edition)

"This provocative and carefully researched book will create a lot of waves. In well written and engaging prose, George Borjas addresses some difficult questions and bravely provides some difficult answers to issues that America as a nation must confront. Heaven's Door will be controversial, but it will be by far the best and most important source document for the coming national debate on the Second Great Migration."--William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University

"A new book by George Borjas always provides original and honest insights that help us better understand immigration's impact on our country.Heaven's Door breaks important new ground on the social mobility of immigrants and their children and on the causes of the recent decline of immigrants' skills relative to those of natives. At the same time, it updates Borjas's work of the past decade on the costs and benefits of immigration. No one interested in the consequences of American immigration policy, present or proposed, should be without a well-worn copy."--U.S. Representative Lamar Smith

"The steady, thoughtful work of George Borjas has had a profound impact on the always emotional debate over immigration policy in the United States. The present nature of the national immigration debate would be different indeed were it not for Borjas's work. This book may well be controversial, but its clarity, sincerity, and relevance for anyone fascinated with immigration issues is rock solid."--Alan Simpson, U.S. Senator (Wyo.), Retired

"George Borjas has written a well-reasoned and well-documented book on the costs and benefits of immigration for the American economy. He offers imaginative proposals for reforms in immigration policies that deserve serious attention."--James J. Heckman, University of Chicago

"George Borjas has nearly single-handedly turned the economic study of immigration into a respectable and heavily researched topic. Like all his other work on the subject, this book is important reading and maybe even more valuable because it is accessible to anyone with a serious interest in the subject."--Orley Ashenfelter, Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics, Princeton University

"Borjas is the leading American economist today writing about immigration policy. I do not share all of his views, but they have to be taken seriously by everyone in the field, and indeed his research has shaped the field more than that of any other writer."--John Isbister, University of California, Santa Cruz

Irwin M. Stelzer

At last, the emotional subject of immigration has been addressed by a scholar who does four things right: he asks the appropriate questions; he is scrupulous in his use of complicated data on immigrants' performance and behavior; he carefully considers opposing interpretations of those data; and he sets out policy proposals that constitute the basis around which future debates should resolve. —Commentary