Tune in Monday for the August issue of Cato Unbound, devoted to the topic of “Mexicans in America.”

Richard Rodriguez, author of the celebrated Hunger of Memory and, most recently, Brown: The Last Discovery of America, leads off this month’s issue with a provocative meditation on the role of Mexico and Mexicans in the U.S. economy and consciousness. Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson, author of Mexifornia, will reply, along with Douglas Massey of Princeton University’s Mexican Migration Project, and labor economist and immigration expert Steve Trejo at the University of Texas.

Here’s the subject:

Today’s heated debate over immigration and border control is largely a debate about Mexicans. It is often argued that Mexican immigrants in particular place a heavy burden on social services, especially in border states, bring crime in their wake, depress wages, and displace American workers. Some argue that although we are a nation of immigrants, and that immigration is generally good, Mexican immigrants are different: they are either unwilling or unable to assimilate and become full-fledged Americans, and, therefore, a heavy concentration of Mexican immigrants in the Southwest threatens a distinctly American way of life. How much truth, if any, is in these arguments? A reasonable debate about Mexican immigration requires that we really know about Mexicans in America. Who are the Mexicans coming to the U.S.? Are they fitting in? Are their children fitting in? Their children’s children? What kind of contribution are they making to the American economy and national character? In what ways are the U.S. and Mexico interdependent? Are the new Mexican immigrants buying homes, starting businesses, setting down roots? Are they upwardly mobile? Civically active? Is their participation in the labor market hurting American workers? Making America richer, economically and culturally? Answers to these questions can make a huge difference–between belief in amnesty and openness, or deportation and a wall. Getting it right matters. So let’s try to get it right.

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