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Reviewed by:
  • America’s Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity
  • Joseph P. Zompetti
America’s Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity. By Frank D. Bean and Gillian Stevens. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003; pp xvi + 228. $32.50 cloth.

The main purpose of Frank D. Bean and Gillian Stevens in their new book, America's Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity, is to illuminate the current controversies surrounding immigration. They also seek to examine relevant studies to determine what areas, if any, are lacking coverage in the current immigration debate. The book offers an in-depth account of historical and current immigration practices, policies, and arguments. It looks into multiple sources of information to provide balanced evidence on the raging contemporary immigration debate. While the book is written from an objective perspective, the authors make their position on the immigration debate clearly known by stating: "the overall consequences of immigration over the past thirty years or so have been more positive than negative for American society" (251). In their ten chapters, the authors write a comprehensive book, analyzing the general themes of race, ethnicity, welfare, assimilation/incorporation, marriage, language, and the economic implications of immigration.

In addition to providing one of the most comprehensive books covering immigration, Bean and Stevens show how the debate concerning immigration is delicate, complex, and vulnerable to misunderstanding. Their discussion of relevant studies, census reports, government press releases and statistics, and other material makes it quite clear that immigration is a complicated issue—involving the question of "legal" versus "illegal" immigrants (or authorized vs. unauthorized), the impact of macroeconomic conditions, and relations with other racial and ethnic groups. What becomes evident is that the arguments about immigration get constructed in ways that reflect certain factual truths, but that are easily malleable to one's ideological position.

Throughout the book, Bean and Stevens describe in depth a particular argument that is common about immigration, and then they explain how each component of the argument has merits or problems. For example, they spend a good deal of time discussing the economic impact of immigration. For many, immigration, particularly unauthorized immigration, represents a threat to jobs and to the American welfare system. Bean and Stevens report that this single theme has "captured" the [End Page 432] public's "attention" (207), and thus they examined decades of data to analyze the economic consequences of immigration. What they found may seem surprising to some: during periods of economic growth, immigrants seemed to benefit the economy and the frequency of public arguments against immigration was low. On the other hand, periods of economic stagnation saw rising economic problems for immigrants, greater demand by immigrants on resources, and consequently a more prominent display of anti-immigrant public discourse.

Bean and Stevens first discuss the history of U.S. immigration and U.S. immigration policies. They carefully look at the current immigration climate by describing the main countries of origin, the role of refugees and asylum-seekers, and the differences between authorized and unauthorized immigration in the United States. The rest of the book is a thorough examination of the arguments that have "dominated the debate on immigrant welfare" (67) in the United States. They begin this analysis by stating: "Many observers see welfare-receiving immigrants and unauthorized immigrants as indications that immigrants falling outside the guidelines of existing policy are coming to the United States, which lends impetus to efforts to reform immigration policy" (67).

The book concerns immigration to America in general, but emphasizes Mexican "illegal" immigration in particular because it is generally thought to be the highest statistical population of "illegal" immigration into the United States (42). As a result, the complicated discourse of immigration must include an examination of language issues. While many observers argue that immigrants' inability to speak English impedes assimilation and poses serious sociocultural difficulties, the authors point to a startling fact: "Almost all of the available evidence suggests that English acquisition proceeds quickly and, at an aggregate level, is complete within a generation or two" (170). Somewhat paradoxically, Bean and Stevens also argue that the rising trend in multiculturalism in the United States encourages immigrants to retain parts of their culture as they incorporate...

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