Debating immigration reform
Upcoming book follows up conference
The organizers of last fall's conference on immigration at Wake Forest are now planning a book to examine in more detail what they call the major issue of the immigration debate: undocumented workers entering the United States from Mexico.
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David Coates, Worrell Professor of Anglo-American Studies, and Peter Siavelis, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation Fellow and Associate Professor of Political Science, are assembling a collection of essays written by participants at the conference for their book. The book, tentatively titled Getting Immigration Right: What Every American Needs to Know, is to be published in early 2009 by Potomac Books.
The book will have a narrower focus than the conference. "The editors recognize that illegal immigration from Mexico is only part of the illegal immigration issue with which Congress and the President are currently being called upon to deal," Coates and Siavelis noted in their book proposal. (They estimate that 40 percent of all undocumented workers currently in the United States are not from Mexico, and did not enter the U.S. across the US-Mexican border.) "However, illegal immigration from Mexico is the most visible face of current immigration into the United States, and one that attracts its own share of intensely held opposition, widely disseminated mythologies, and strongly advocated solutions."
The book will draw on the expertise of many of the speakers at last October's three-day conference, "Immigration: Recasting the Debate." The conference attracted leading policy advocates, legal experts, economists, sociologists, political scientists and leaders in the Latino community.
Essays in the book will examine the history and current state of migration in the United States and globally; the economic and social impact of immigration; the myths and realities of Latino migration; the complexities of illegal immigration; and the strengths and weaknesses of alternative proposals for immigration reform.
— Kerry M. King ('85)
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