If you want to find out about the truth about immigration…..

Then you must read Zeke Hernandez’s The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers.

Hernandez, an Associate Professor at the Wharton School in Philadelphia, reviews a trove of research studies and analyses in an engaging style that will leave the reader hooked and reluctant to put down the book. He supplements this review with lively anecdotes including from his experience as an immigrant.

If you think that immigrants take jobs from citizens, you would be incorrect. If you think immigrants commit more crimes, you would be incorrect. Hernandez does not condescend but carefully responds to common misperceptions that are not only held by hardline opponents of immigration but by well-intentioned laypeople.

Aside from rebutting common myths, Hernandez describes the incredible benefits of immigration to our economy and culture. Throughout the decades, immigrants have contributed to innovation that has boosted productivity to an extent that exponentially exceeds their population in the United States. He describes several products and cultural contributions such as Salsa that has added variety and fun to our country.

In fascinating passages, Hernandez describes innovations in the workplace arising from teams composed of immigrants and native-born Americans. There is a variety of ideas that would not be present if companies only had native-born Americans in their workforce.

There are two ways to respond to immigrants in the workplace as well as in other settings – walling them off and ostracizing them or engaging them in collective learning endeavors. The learning experiences can include instances in which disagreements arise about how to solve problems. But if we work through the issues and adopt compromises, the result is often innovation and productivity that would not have been achieved if there had been no disagreement on how to solve problems. I have experienced this at the workplace, sometimes ditching my approach to adopt either someone else’s approach or melding the two competing approaches. Some of my most innovative work has resulted.

The end of the book reviews our broken immigration system and suggests compelling directions for reform. In a particularly revealing passage, Hernandez explains how Mexicans would cross the border during harvest season to work as migrant farmworkers and then go back to Mexico after the season was over. There was no border control in the decades leading up a 1986 legislative reform. But then a surge in undocumented workers occurred because it was no longer legal to cross the border for unlimited numbers of workers. Hernandez does not suggest open borders but makes a compelling case for increasing the number of economic-related visas. He suggests a novel method for making regular adjustments that I will leave it to readers to find out. Believe me, it is worth reading to the end to enjoy a book that addresses immigration in a multidimensional and enjoyable manner.

And lastly, today a Census report came out about the decline of birth rates among native-born Americans. Who will pay for your Social Security checks – I agree with Hernandez that one key to keeping Social Security solvent is robust immigration.