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Gordon Hanson's Research on Impacts of Immigration Featured in NPR

The Economic Reality Of Tough Immigration Laws

10/08/2011
NPR Staff, NPR

Whatever you think about the immigration policy in the United States, there is clearly the law and then there is reality.

The immigration issue is often debated in terms of justice, rights and the protection of our borders, but there's a business story to be told as well. The question is: Can the U.S. economy really function without undocumented workers?

Gordon Hanson, an economist specializing in the impacts of immigration, studies the reality side of things at University of California-San Diego. He says that for decades there has been an unwritten social contract that says the U.S. isn't going to make it easy for immigrants to get in; there will be physical barriers and it will cost time, money and personal risk.

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Gordon Hanson is director of the Center on Emerging and Pacific Economies and professor of economics at UC San Diego, where he holds faculty positions in the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and the Department of Economics.  He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a co-editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics. Prior to joining UCSD in 2001, he was on the economics faculty at the University of Michigan (1998-2001) and at the University of Texas (1992-1998).

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