From Publishers Weekly: Drawing on immigration history and left-wing economic analysis, historian and immigrants’ rights activist Chomsky (Profits of Extermination) aims to debunk the assumptions informing the current immigration debate in this well-researched if stiffly written account.

She offers straightforward arguments against anti-immigrant perceptions such as the one in the book’s title: the “number of jobs is not finite, it is elastic,” Chomsky asserts, pointing out that in the “postindustrial economy,” many manufacturing jobs have been replaced by low-paying service jobs.

In response to the accusation that “immigrants don’t pay taxes,” Chomsky notes that textile jobs that were once a part of the “formal sector” are now informal (i.e., they do not offer benefits or collect taxes)–for which she blames the employers.

As for immigrants’ alleged reluctance to learn English, the author observes that as one generation becomes fluent, new Spanish speakers arrive; she defends non-English speakers by citing the waiting lists for ESL classes and explaining that immigrants with a history as a conquered people (e.g. Mexicans) more stubbornly retain their heritage.

Though Chomsky presents an agile blend of the history of race and immigration in the U.S. with current events, the book’s format of offering liberal polemics to anti-immigrant questions forces her into a defensive, didactic tone.

Publishers Weekly: “Chomsky presents an agile blend of the history of race and immigration in the U.S. with current events.”

Library Journal: “Solidly recommended for public library current events sections.”

Demythologizing Immigration, December 17, 2007
By Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA)

What a timely and important book. Aviva Chomsky takes on what she believes are the 21 most common misperceptions about immigrants. She looks at economic objections such as the claims that immigrants drain the economy, take away jobs and drive down wages; legal ones such as the claim that the U.S. already as a too-generous refugee policy; racial ones such as the claim that immigrants threaten our national identity and won’t learn English; and security ones such as the claim that immigrants make us particularly susceptible to terrorist attacks.

The interesting thing about these misperceptions is that they all have a ring of plausibility, and it’s to Chomsky’s credit that she takes them seriously enough to examine them in detail. Moreover, her examination isn’t a simplistic “no, that’s wrong” kind of approach. One of the best qualities of her treatment is that she helps the reader to put claims about immigration into a broader context.

For example, Chomsky points out that while it’s true that real wages for laborers are dropping in this country, it isn’t because immigrants are driving them down. It’s because of the last few years’ general flow of wealth in the U.S. towards the top, which is leaving almost everyone except the very wealthiest in the lurch. Or what about the misperception that immigrants won’t assimilate into our culture and hence are jeopardizing our national identity? Chomsky offers statistics that show that immigrants of color in fact do try to assimilate just as much as white ones, but that assimilation for them is complicated by the fact that it almost always means “downward mobility.”

Chomsky’s book is clearly written from a progressive viewpoint, and her conclusions, I’m sure, will anger many. But her book is valuable because it invites a more reflective dialogue about immigration than we’ve had in this country for a long time–and certain since 9/11. With presidential elections coming up, that dialogue is even more important.

Ammunition in discussion, December 2, 2007
By Linda R. Weltner

So many times I have wished to challenge the position of those tight-fisted angry people who want 12 million immigrants deported immediately and a huge fence built along both our borders. However, I never had the arguments at my fingertips to counter their charges that immigrants use up our resources, take US jobs, and give nothing in return. This book makes it easy to understand how immigration improves our country and could contribute to our future if we only treated immigrants as potential contributors to our national wealth and power. Right now, businesses need poor immigrants one down in order to exploit them, but Chomsky points to a better world in which all workers, including Americans, could work for a fairer economic model here in the US.

Read More Reviews Here: They Take Our Jobs!”: and 20 Other Myths about Immigration