This blog is intended to go along with Population: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues, by John R. Weeks, published by Cengage Learning. The latest edition is the 13th (it will be out in January 2020), but this blog is meant to complement any edition of the book by showing the way in which demographic issues are regularly in the news.

You can download an iPhone app for the 13th edition from the App Store (search for Weeks Population).

If you are a user of my textbook and would like to suggest a blog post idea, please email me at: john.weeks@sdsu.edu

Sunday, July 31, 2016

The Real Scoop on Undocumented Immigrants in America

Donald Trump has made undocumented immigrants, and the need to build a wall to stop them, a huge part of his presidential campaign. The reality is vastly different than his description of them as criminals and rapists who are coming across the border to take jobs from Americans. Thanks to my son John for pointing to me an a truly excellent interview that WNYC had a couple of days ago with Professor Douglas Massey, Professor of Sociology at Princeton and past president of the Population Association of America. Massey is the genuinely the world's foremost authority on migration issues and you will hear nothing but the truth in the 12 minutes that he is interviewed.

A less detailed, but also very good, editorial on this topic appeared in today's NYTimes, with an appropriate reference to Professor Rubén Rumbaut's work demonstrating that undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than are citizens of the U.S.

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