On the 20th episode of Immigration Today! Angeline Chen welcomes Dr. Tara Watson. Tara Watson is an economist who focuses on U.S. social policy, with interests in the safety net, health, and immigration. She is a Professor of Economics at Williams College since 2004, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a Co-Editor of the Journal of Human Resources. In 2015-2016, Watson served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Microeconomic Analysis in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Economic Policy. She was previously a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and a Research Associate at the Princeton Center for Research on Child Wellbeing. Dr. Watson earned her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 2003. Her 2021 book, “The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear,” (University of Chicago, 2022) co-authored by journalist Kalee Thompson, provides a compelling analysis of the costs and impacts of immigration and immigration policy on every aspect of American life, from the labor force to social welfare programs to tax revenue.
In this interview, Dr. Watson discusses her background as a professor, and explains her passion for researching and writing about immigration. She was approached by the University of Chicago Press in 2014 and was asked if she would be willing to write a book, so she embarked in a years-long journey to do so. One of the most important goals here is to bring more statistical and evidence driven information to the narratives of migration. Tara realized that when an audience learns about immigration its entirely focused on the humanitarian and ethical point of view which can be easy to dismiss. When economists write about immigration, they often just focus on statistics which aren’t very compelling, so marrying the humanitarian and statistical point of view seemed ideal. Economist Tara Watson and Journalist Kalee Thompson pair rigorous analysis with deeply personal stories from immigrants and their families to assess immigration’s effects on every aspect of American life. In this episode, Tara gives us a brief insight into her book as she discusses stereotypes about “immigrants taking American jobs” and “being criminals” and what the data really says about this.
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“As I was writing my book, there are two things I really took away. First, the level of unpredictability and chaos in the immigration system and how vicious it was. People, who on paper, would look like they’ve had very similar situations and had made very similar decisions, just end up in completely different circumstances because of their immigration status and the draconian policies that rule it. Second, the degree to which fear and anxiety around these issues dominate the policies that we have on the books.”
You can buy this book on Amazon and the University of Chicago website. You can also follow Dr. Watson on her Twitter account and LinkedIn to stay up to date with her findings.