Who Should We Let Into the US?

Episode description

Our speakers will be economists Ran Abramitzky from Stanford and Garett Jones from George Mason. Ran is the author of Streets of Gold: American’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success and Garett wrote the book The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move to a Lot Like the Ones They Left. 

Both speakers are pro-immigration, but Garett wants us to focus our efforts on recruiting immigrants with skills. Garett believes that the success of immigrants’ descendants is a function of the culture imbued from the old country. In addition, the immigrants social and cultural mores will affect America’s social mores as well, so be very careful who you let in.