The US edition of Immigrants is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. It will be on sale from 16 July.
The US cover features recommendations from Tim Harford, FT columnist and author of The Undercover Economist, who says:
We expect crisp writing and careful analysis from Philippe Legrain. In Immigrants,
he adds reporting from across the world and a passionate defense of our
freedom to cross borders. By turns logical, daring, and compassionate,
this is a terrific book.
and from Tyler Cowen, New York Times columnist, co-author of the Marginal Revolution blog and author of Discover Your Inner Economist (forthcoming) and other books, who says that Immigrants is:
The single best non-technical defense of a liberal immigration policy.
What I liked most was how it put U.S. debates in a broader context;
most American sources don’t do this…. The book is original in this
regard, yet without moving beyond easily understood arguments.
Dear Philippe,
Having heard you on Swedish radio (Tuesday), I thought you must be knowledgeable enough on the topic of immigration to answer a couple of questions seldom addressed.
(You were interviewed for a matter of minutes only. Surely, subject matter was selected by the radio interviewer.)
The argumentation seemed to me lopsided. The subject at hand was treated – as it often is – exclusively from the standpoint of the society (Sweden, in this case) receiving immigrants.
Said society is one where garbage and old people (i.e. “human garbage”) cannot be taken care of, unless manpower is imported from Third World countries.
Here is my first question:
Is the importation of manpower equally beneficial to the exporting countries (those in the underdeveloped world)? Is the riddance of these people to the common advantage of, say, France and Senegal?
Does this concern only unqualified manpower – i.e. the handlers of waste? What about the already existing phenomenon of “brain drain”?
The second question is:
Assuming that nobody wants to completely evacuate countries in the third world, it is not reasonable to state criteria for the importation of people (asylum seekers included)?
Is it not a fact that the overwhelming majority of people will have to be excluded in any case? In one way or another, the emigrant/immigrant has to pay his way to the receiving country.
Where does the money come from?
Can it be in the interest of European countries to receive those who have accumulated riches by, for example, abusing local or political power? Or criminals on the run? (Surely, you know that I am not citing idle examples; aforesaid instances are common.)
Apart from that, are not better – rather than worse – safeguards needed in order not to encourage the people transportation racket, painfully patent in the waters of the Canary Islands?
I should be grateful to read your comments.